4/11/09 WHY MAPLE SAP IS SWEET

Saturday, 9:00 AM. 32 degrees, wind SSW, calm to very light. The sky is clear and the barometer predicts the same. There was a light skim coat of ice over the channel this morning that has pretty much melted.
Well, the sap run yesterday morning was very light, about 15 gallons of sap, but by the time I finished collecting at 10:30 AM, there was a continuous drip, drip in most of the buckets, so there should be plenty to collect this morning, but not by me, as I am through for a while, needing to attend to other things. I think Andy has cooked about 1,250 gallons of sap, down to about 50 quarts so far.
We know more-or-less how and when maple sap runs, but we do not know why. Why do only maples and a few other tree species, notably birch, have sweet early sap runs. Many acquired traits of living things are beneficial to their survival, and are passed on to their progeny for that reason. Many more are harmful, and if passed on at all are done so as recessive genes, sort of a stealth characteristic. Neither Andy nor I have come across any information which indicates that sweet, early running sap is a characteristic beneficial to the trees which have acquired that trait, nor can we ourselves think of any particular benefit, as those trees which do not have such sap evidently survive just as well. Now, many acquired characteristics are neither beneficial nor harmful, and are passed on merely because they are there, and that may be the case with maple sap.
However, if one were a Native American shaman, or a Christian creationist, one might very well attribute the why of maple sap and thus maple syrup to a beneficent creator, who has given Man a great gift in the maple tree and its sweet sap. Now don’t turn your nose up at such a theory; it is straightforward, logical and answers the question, all characteristics of good theories. So, why shouldn’t we accept this theory, since we have none better to present ourselves? It seems particularly arrogant for any of us in our own ignorance to deny the perfectly good theories of others. All truth is but partial, its completeness to be further revealed to us as our own ability to understand increases ("we see as through a glass, darkly"). Thus, a good theory is always succeeded by another that is better, and so it is, ad infinitum.
Therefore, in the absence of any scientific theory which explains the “why” of maple sap, I will boldly attest to the simplest, most straightforward and complete theory yet promulgated: maple sap is sweet and runs early simply because it is a generous gift from Nature to those with the ambition to obtain it.