Sap

“ But the roots are tough and the trunks are strong, and the sap wells surely up from those mysterious sources where, in darkness and silence, Nature works her wondrous transformations,—proving, through each waxing and waning year, by bud and leaf and branch, that, thwart and mutilate and deny her as you may, she is the same kind mother still. ”

“ The great variety of things made from sap.
Now just think over the various things that are made from the sap in plants. There are wood, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, thorns, perfumes, colorings, sugar, starch, gum, various medicines, etc. And then there are many other things that I have not mentioned. How strange it is that so many and such different things can be made from what the plants suck up out of the earth! As you look at the ground under your feet, you can hardly believe that so much can be got out of it. ”

“ Look how big we grew, how smooth and strong our trunks are, how good the air in which we spread out our slender, swaying boughs, how bountiful the soil in which we sink our roots always full of life—-giving sap. ”

“ Breathing the same air, walking the same earth, the different peoples blend the elements in different mixtures and draw from the soil a sap that permeates their being and gives individual colour to every feeling and thought. ”

“ Every crystal dances responsive to the touches of the sun, and currents of sap in the growing cells of all the vegetation are ever in a vital whirl and rush, and though many feet and wings are folded, how many are astir! ”

“ It seems strange to us, who carry the thought of the forests we have left, and on warm days, when the sap awakes in us and tries to climb again, forgetting its weakness, we miss the green boughs and the moss at our feet and the birds overhead. ”

“ BOILING SAP—THE OLD WAY.
At length the trees are tapped, the spouts and nails are driven, the buckets are set, and all is ready for the sap.
I remember once to have seen in an illustrated magazine a picture, one of a series intended to represent the process of sugar-making, in which the spouts were several feet in length, and the sap poured out in a rushing stream, as though each spout were a hose-pipe, and every tree a water-main. To carry out the idea, [Pg 212] it would have required a man to stand at every tree and empty the rapidly filling buckets into a monster hogshead. ”

“ It might be that there are more of them around about than we have any idea, neighbourly-like angel of sap and sinew, who occasionally bear a hand in our work and who loaf around of evenings by the campfire. ”

“ The sap stirs early in the legs of a country-boy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get tired of boots, and want to come out and touch the soil just as soon as the sun has warmed it a little. ”

“ Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and for the tree. ”

“ We can now have a general idea how the nutritious sap, acted upon by all the agents above mentioned during its stay in the cellular substance of the leaf, and returned from thence impregnated with them into the bark, may prove the source of increase, and of peculiar secretions, in the vegetable frame. That portion of sap sent to the flower and fruit undergoes no less remarkable changes, for purposes to which those curious organs are devoted; nor is it returned from thence, as from the leaves, to answer any further end. ”

“ You see that the blood is kept in motion in a different way from what the sap is. In a large tree there is a great deal of sap going up in its trunk all the time, but there are no large pipes there like our arteries and veins. The sap goes up and down in a multitude of very small pipes, and there is no pump in the tree, as there is in our bodies, and in the bodies of other animals. How the sap goes up to the top of the tallest tree without being pumped up we do not know. ”

“ Daytime sap is sweetest, and the nearer the occurrence of a freeze or a snowstorm the sweeter the sap. Light seems to be a powerful agent in the mystery, but a certain balance of heat and cold is more powerful still. ”

“ Finally, it is observable that all plants, as far as any experiment has been made, contain a common fluid, which at certain seasons of the year is to be obtained in great quantity, as from vine branches by wounding them in the spring before the leaves appear, and this is properly called the sap. ”

“ The trees of the Lord are full of sap, not only men's trees, which they take care of and have an eye to, in their orchards, and parks, and other enclosures, but God's trees, which grow in the wildernesses, and are taken care of only by his providence; they are full of sap and want no nourishment. Even the cedars of Lebanon, an open forest, though they are high and bulky, and require a great deal of sap to feed them, have enough from the earth ”

“ Because there is good sap in the good tree, which goes alike into all the fruit of the tree, and makes it all of a good quality, whilst the harsh and sour sap of the bad tree affects all its fruit, and makes it all bad. ”

“ We endeavoured in our last article to describe the principal circumstances of interest with respect to the ascending or unelaborated sap. We have found that it is derived from the aliment which consists of water and carbonic acid; that it is composed of a solution of sugar and gum in water; that it ascends in the ordinary trees of this country through the wood, which is situated between the bark and pith ”

“ Who can account for, or comprehend, the structure of a single tree or plant? The roots, the stem, the woody fibres, the bark, the rind, the air-vessels, the sap-vessels, the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits, are so many mysteries. ”

“ There is not a weed, nor a moss, nor the most insignificant vegetable, which does not show a multiplicity of vessels disposed in the most curious manner for the circulation of sap for its nourishment, and which is not adorned with innumerable graces for its embellishment. ”

“ Let it also be observed, whether the Sap ascends in Oak and Elme, at any time in this month of January; and likewise, which of these three, the Maple, Sally, or Willows, be the most early in yielding of Sap?
And to obtain an Universal and Accurate knowledg of the nature of Sap in Trees, its properties and accidents; Observations and tryals must be made by a Number of men, that have leisure to attend that business daily which are to examine concerning every Tree ”

“ Now that it is fit for plant food, the sap sets out to run through all the plant. It must go to every part to build all up.
There are not two sets of tubes, one for raw and one for cooked sap. All must run through the same cells. So you see, the sap will be mixed. The raw sap going up has some food sap in it. The food sap runs about with some raw sap mixed with it.
Yet, after all, each kind reaches the right place. All the raw sap is cooked, all the food sap builds the plant. Here it builds root, there leaf, there stem, there flower, or seed. ”

“ All that goes from the roots to the leaves is called sap. This, when it comes to the leaves and all parts of the plant exposed to the light, transpires, and so keeps the plant cool.
The stem, on which the supreme work, the flower, will be born, is, in the case of our Carnations, divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes being those solid elbows one sees. It is towards the supreme work that our eyes are turned. It is part, if not chief part, of the pleasure of our vigil to look forward to the day when the first faint colour shows in the bursting bud. ”

“ No one can explain satisfactorily why the sap runs up in a tree and by some chemical process carries from the earth the right elements to make leaves, blossoms or fruit. Nature study is not “why?” It is “how.” ”

“ Just how the sap ascends through the stem and reaches the leaves, no one knows. All of our explanations have proved unsatisfactory, and only those who are not fully acquainted with the facts claim to be able to explain it. ”

“ From the slightest wound we can make in it, there bursts forth an abundant stream of liquid, a kind of nutritive sap, coming from the herbacious envelope which answers the same purpose as leaves, and which, so to speak, has been the principal focus of vegetable life. ”

“ Being surrounded, however, by sap, like a seed in moist earth, it is in a proper situation for growing; the influence of the sun sets in motion the juices of the bud and of the seed, and the first operation in both of them is to send down roots a certain depth into the ground for the purpose of obtaining the necessary moisture. ”

“ You know, in spring, and partly through all the year, except in frost, a liquid called 'sap' circulates in trees, of which the nature, one should have thought, might have been ascertained by mankind in the six thousand years they have been cutting wood. ”

“ We find by experiment in evaporating a quantity of sap of the pine, that it is water holding in solution a substance of a gummy nature, being composed of albumen and other elementary matters, which is deposited within the pores of the wood from the new growth of the tree; that these substances in solution, which constitute the sap, and which promote the growth of the tree, should have a tendency to cause decay of the wood is an impossibility. ”

“ On the largest trees two or more buckets may be hung, never one above the other, as the sap flows up or down, never sidewise. The sweetest and best sap comes from the outermost ring of growth, the wood of the previous year. It is sweetest at the height of the run. It flows better by day than by night ”

“ The reader may perceive that the origin from whence these two kinds of sap are derived, their chemical composition, the part of the vegetable through which they pass, the causes which produce the ascent of one and the descent of the other, together with the uses of both in the vegetable economy, are questions of great interest, as well to the farmer as the horticulturist.
The source from whence the ascending sap is derived is the aliment absorbed by the roots from the soil. This aliment consists essentially of two substances ”

“ The Experiments themselves, whereby the Worthy Doctor maketh this out, we must refer to another opportunity; as also his considerable Discourse already in our hands, giving Instances to shew, That there is a peculiar Correspondence, not onely between the Seed and the Pith, Heart or Timber of Plant; but also betmeen the Bark or Sap in the Bark, and the Pulp of the Fruit, or some encompassing Coat or Husk, or Cod, which contains the Seed. ”

“ The elaborated sap is formed out of the ascending sap. The place where this change takes place is in the leaves and green parts of vegetables; it is generally in the spring season that the ascending sap pushes out the buds into branches, and developes the little scales which had surrounded these organs into leaves; but when these leaves are formed, the sap continues to ascend into them, and there undergoes those alterations from whence the elaborated sap results. ”

“ TO the 11th.I add, that the Sap (e.g.) of a large Walnut in the latter season of its running, i.e. when it yields no sap any longer in the Body or Branches at any time of the day, runs longer at the roots on the South or Sunny-side, than on the North or shady side.
To the 12th.Birch-trees bored in the Spring so late, in respect both of the year and day, that they have afforded no Sap at all at the body, have been found sometime after, to have issued such plenty of juice, as hath condensed in the hole to a stiff jelly. ”

“ These trunkless palms, whose long leaves spring from the water’s edge, are of varied use to man, for their leaves are utilised as thatch, their sap produces sugar, and, when burnt, their ashes provide salt. ”

“ When a radical change of habits occurs, as in the sapsucker, deviating so sharply from the ancient principles of its family, many other forms of life about it are influenced, indirectly, but in a most interesting way. In its tippling operations it wastes quantities of sap which exudes from the numerous holes and trickles down the bark of the wounded tree. ”

“ Am I not right, Andrew; and will you not forthwith take my receipt, and make it for yourself? You will never wish for any other: it is warmer than ginger, and sweeter than anniseed. I am sure you will agree with me that a loving wife, in the enjoyment of the humble comforts which an industrious sober husband can bestow, smiling, healthy, well-clad children, and a clean cabin, where the fear of God banishes all other fears, make
THE TRUE TEMPERANCE CORDIAL!”
THE SAP IN VEGETABLES. FIRST ARTICLE.
Botanists describe two kinds of vegetable sap ”

“ The natural course of the sap is vertical, and when this is assisted by the direction of the branches, it rushes with astonishing force to the extremities of the young shoots, where it is wasted in the production of new and useless wood ”

“ In those organs the sap is exposed to the action of light, air and moisture, three powerful agents, by which it is enabled to form various secretions, at the same time that much superfluous matter passes off by perspiration. ”