February 28 Sugaring

The '13 sugaring season so far has been pretty good so far. There have been a few short stretches where it was too cold and the trees stayed frozen all day, and some rainy periods where it didn't freeze at night and the sap petered out, but more days with a decent flow and a number of excellent days where each tap yielded a gallon or more. The first week's production was 3.25 cups of amber syrup from 10 gallons of sap (about a 48:1 ratio). The second week's operation yielded about 2 cups of clear golden syrup; the lightening of the color was probably because of a stretch of colder weather. 

 Here's a photo of a sap icicle on a sugar maple on the UConn campus last week, forming on a wound that the tree sustained over the winter. The tan tips on the sapsicle are where freezing and sublimation of ice have concentrated the sugar solution down to something that is probably pretty close to being natural maple syrup, if only a few drops of it. You can imagine that this sort of occurrence was how the Native Americans first got the idea for maple sugaring. 

Sugaring Season Start

I'm just getting done with shoveling out from the Blizzard of 2013 (and putting up a new mailbox, the old one having been pretty much finished off by the plows this time). The weather was very sunny and somewhat above freezing today, so I decided to try tapping the sugar maples. Success! Before the sun went down there was actually a strong flow, with an inch or two accumulating in the bottom of the buckets in the hour that the trees had between tap placement and the evening chill putting an end to the sugaring action for the day. Tomorrow is supposed to be a little warmer but rainy. Overall the forecast is for moderate temperatures and strong day/night temperature swings, so there should be some good sap runs.

In other locally-produced-sugary-substances news, the bee colonies have made it through the winter so far. I can hear faint buzzing from inside them, at any rate. They're pretty well covered in snow now, which should help keep them insulated from cold and wind.

Canarina

Canarina canariensis is a tuberous vine endemic to (the 7th grade geography students out there are probably way ahead of me) the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco. It's a member of the family Campanulaceae, the bellflowers. The straggly stems produced by the tuber bear one to several large and strikingly colored flowers at their tips, during the depths of winter. The flowers lack any fragrance but literally drip with sugary nectar, which together with their shape and coloration suggest that they are primarily pollinated by birds. The flowers persist for an amazingly long time, with individual blooms lasting for almost a month.

The Canaries mostly have a Mediterranean climate, and the plant life from the islands is generally adapted to a winter-rainfall regime. Canarina canariensis is a strict winter grower, with the tubers sprouting in autumn, growing for six months or so, then shedding all of their above ground parts as the days get warmer and longer in the spring. I store the Canarina pots almost dry for the summer dormant period, with just an occasional splash of water to keep a little moisture below the soil surface. During the winter, the growing plants are kept in a cool, sunny greenhouse, given a shot of balanced liquid fertilizer every few weeks and watered to keep the soil consistently moist. Canarina shoots are waxy and somewhat succulent, and the plants are fairly thrifty with water even when in full growth. 

The C. canariensis plants here at UConn derive from seed collected by Dr. Greg Anderson on the island of Tenerife. The seed packet had been sitting around an office for seven years before Greg handed it off to me, and I planted the entire batch at once in a single pot, hoping to maybe get a couple of seedlings, if I was lucky. The pot was soon a lawn of little green shoots; it seems that Canarina seed remains viable for a long time. Separated out into individual pots of loose, well-drained soil, the plants reached maturity after one or two winters.

Discocactus Advertises

Discocactus placentiformis is a small globular cactus from Brazil that flowers on warm summer nights. While open, the flowers produce a delightful honeysuckle fragrance. In common with most (all?) other nocturnal cacti, Discocactus flowers last only a single night, and rapidly deteriorate and collapse into mush the next morning. If pollinated, the flowers are followed by white, balloon-like fruits containing a few black seeds.

This particular form of Discocactus placentiformis was formerly known as D. crystallophilus, because in the wild in Brazil it grows only on open ground covered with crystalline pieces of quartz. Like all members of its genus, D. placentiformis is uncommon and highly threatened in the wild by collection and development. Under glass, the plants aren't difficult, but appreciate milder winter temperatures and more generous summer watering than most of the other genera of compact cacti.

Starfish Flowers

The flowering season for most Stapelia species is summer and early autumn, and the plants are by this time entering a period of winter torpor. Back when the weather was warmer, though, I had some nice blooms from these African desert relatives of the roadside wildflower milkweed. 

Stapelia grandiflora

 Stapelia grandiflora has impressive flowers, the size of teacups, that are both colored and scented to attract pollinators such as carrion flies. In the greenhouse, I usually realize that the flowers have opened by the smell alone, and only after checking under the benches and not finding any actual dead squirrels. 

Stapelia flavopurpurea

 Stapelia flavopurpurea, on the other hand, has small but very cheerful-looking flowers for a stapeliad. The flower colors of different individuals of S. flavopurpurea are remarkably diverse and can include various combinations of violet, red, white, orange and chartreuse. It must be pollinated by something other than the usual carrion insects, because its fragrance is pleasant and sweet.