Island’s Bigleaf Maple enjoys sweet success

Island Wild for Fri. Feb. 19, 2010

Collecting maple sap is a simple process.


As Canada celebrated Olympic gold last Sunday, Vancouver Island’s biggest maple garnered its own awards at Duncan’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival. Sweet liquid gold literally flowed from the podium, as local producers offered samples and vied for prizes.

Hosted each February, “maplefest” showcases food items produced by ‘The Sapsuckers’ – an island-based group of maple tappers. A taste-test of local syrups revealed yummy elixirs ranging in colour from black to light amber, with a flavour reminiscent of butterscotch.

Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) is the largest and most common maple in the Pacific Northwest. Tapping begins once the leaves are off the tree in November and continues until buds are about to open in early March, but flows are normally sweetest in January and February.

Sap is boiled down to produce some of Canada’s most unique maple syrup. Over the past few years, local syrup production has become a burgeoning industry, with more ‘tappers’ involved every season in Vancouver Island’s newest cottage industry.

There’s good reason for this sweet success. Pure Canadian maple syrup has more calcium than milk by volume and more potassium than bananas by weight. It contains amino acids, vitamins and many trace minerals and – best of all – has fewer calories than sugar, honey or molasses.

Maple sap is 98 percent water and must be evaporated to reduce it to syrup. Large batches are boiled down outdoors, using wood or propane heat, to allow steam to dissipate.

Gary Backlund, co-author of the Bigleaf Sugaring guidebook, says West Coast maple sap contains less sugar than maples in eastern provinces, but the end result is a more concentrated flavour from the extra sap.

Trunk size and tree age are no guarantee of sap quantity. Limbs as thin as 10 to 45 cm have successfully been tapped, while overgrown, gnarly old trees are poor producers.

Tapping for sap simply involves drilling a hole, plugging in a tap (spile) and collecting. Sap (a.k.a. maple water) can be used raw in place of water for cooking and beverages – hot maple-mint tea is divine.

Long considered a garbage tree of little commercial value, Bigleaf Maple is now treasured for non-timber forest food production.

The future seems secure for distinctly-flavoured western maple syrup, and for value-added items like maple-cranberry-apple jam, honey maple mustard, maple vinaigrette, caramelized maple popcorn and even maple wine.

Bigleaf Sugaring guidebook (blmaple@shaw.ca), or (250) 245-4939. Find West Coast maple syrup production info online at: members.shaw.ca/blmaple or at: bcforestmuseum.com. Also: woodlot.bc.ca/agroforestry.

CONGRATULATIONS: Campbell River placed second in B.C. for most species seen, at 71, in last weekend’s Great Backyard Bird Count. Victoria topped the province with 101 species. E-mail Christine at: wildernesswest@shaw.ca.

Red maples mingle with the golden Bigleaf
Island Wild for Fri. Nov. 6, 2009

Vine maple leaves glow bright red alongside the Campbell River estuary.
Photo: Christine Scott.

The venerable maple leaf is rightly front and centre in the lead-up to Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic winter games. Canada’s national emblem also dominates the landscape when the country’s ten indigenous maple varieties splash on their autumn colours from coast to coast.

Gold is unquestionably maple’s dominant hue along the Pacific Northwest coast where indigenous (wild) Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) reigns supreme with dinner-plate sized leaves in brilliant yellow-gold.

Given the abundance of leafy outdoor gold in autumn, a sure head-turner is any tree or shrub with red foliage, and many gardeners satisfy their colour cravings with flaming domestic species such as Japanese maple and Virginia Creeper.

Things are no different in local forests, where indigenous trees and shrubs form a mosaic of gold AND red leaves. The foliage of three wild maple trees turn various shades when days shorten and nights grow cold.

The Pacific Northwest has its own red maple leaf – vine maple (Acer circinatum) – a shrubby species with rosy autumn leaves growing alongside the Campbell River estuary (Myrt Thompson trail). These ruby gems hold their own amidst showers of the much larger golden Bigleaf maple leaves.

Perfectly-shaped 7-9 lobed leaves are an eye-catching sight where they grow in wet places – their preferred environment. While the vine maple occurs naturally in many coastal areas, city crews planted this species alongside the estuary as streamside re-vegetation about a dozen years ago.

The third maple species native to coastal British Columbia is Douglas maple (Acer glabrum), a shrub or small tree growing to 10 metres in height. Douglas maple leaves turn bright yellow-orange or crimson in fall. Often overlooked, it’s a proud Canadian maple and well worth knowing.

Maples aren’t the only leaves providing wild seasonal colour. Oregon-grape (Mahonia) is a shrubby evergreen species holly-like leaves. In autumn, many of its leathery ‘evergreen’ leaves turn reddish-purple. A veritable forest of Oregon-grape spreads as far as the eye can see at the western entrance to the Canyon View Trail alongside the Campbell River.

Red and yellow autumn leaves differ in the way they change colour. When days shorten, green pigments in the leaves (known as chlorophyll) diminish, then yellow pigments already inside become dominant and the leaves turn yellow. Green pigments only masked he leaves’ true yellow colour.

A different process causes leaves to turn red. As the chlorophyll diminishes in autumn, the leaves of some species produce anthocyanin, a red pigment not previously present.

Mother Earth supplied a variety of colour for Canada’s west coast, and indigenous species with red autumn leaves provide a vibrant jolt on nature walks. Native trees and shrubs with reddish autumn foliage include: evergreen blackberry, highbush-cranberry, ocean spray, Pacific crabapple, Pacific dogwood, red-osier dogwood, salal, Sitka mountain-ash and saskatoon.