Other hardwoods can be tapped and their sap made into syrup, it’s just that maple is the tastiest, with the Sugar Maple being what we think of when it comes to making syrup. Birch and Walnut are probably the most common alternatives.
Just be careful with birch sap. You might find that you’re allergic to it and it’s pollen. The hives from the pollen is no joke.
Funny thing, in my family we’re all allergic to birch pollen. So before the pollen season we often tap some birch sap and drink to bolster our immune system in advance. Dunno if there’s any science behind it, but in my experience it’s done wonders.
I’ve heard that eating local honey similarly lowers your allergy response to local pollen, and I believed that, so I’ll believe this too.
It’s a myth. For a start most people’s hayfever isn’t anything to do with flower pollen, it’s grass and tree pollen and fungal spores. Pollen and spores can be carried by air currents and travel long distances. The flowers your local honey comes from are unlikely to be causing your hayfever. You should buy local honey over commercial honey though because it supports small producers.
So you just need to find grass, tree, and fungal honey then to make it work. Easy peasy.
Someone, somewhere, is definitely making fungal honey. But I think it might be an STD.
I think in context, I think you are desensitizing rather than bolstering. 👆 You may have meant that, 👈 but in case you didn’t.
Yes! That’s exactly what I meant 😁, thank you.
I don’t know about other countries but in Finland people sometimes extract and drink birch sap. We call it mahla.
In Russia as well. And it’s called simply “birch juice”
We call it trussy juice.
In Russia we used to drink the blood of birches. It’s pretty good actually.
In the US they turn it into soda called Birch Beer. It’s delicious
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicle
Chicle (/ˈtʃɪkəl/) is a natural gum traditionally used in making chewing gum and other products. It is collected from several species of Mesoamerican trees in the genus Manilkara, including M. zapota, M. chicle, M. staminodella, and M. bidentata.
You wouldn’t think of it as traditionally delicious, but gum arabic is in lots of foods as a stabilizer.
Sugar cane juice is delicious but I don’t think it’s a tree
It’s a grass technically
It’s the best of the best!
So, …it’s what the Canadian Tree Vampires crave!
Its got electrolytes!
But what are electrolytes?
What plants crave!
Mastic resin is very popular in Turkey and (I think) also Greece. Used as a natural additive in stuff like ice cream or puddings, but also as a natural bubble gum.
To add to this, it’s a coniferous tree so mastic resin tastes delicious if you also enjoy coniferous flavours like juniper, rosemary, pine nuts, etc. They also put it in wine and you can get mastic honey. Tastes like a pine forest, in a good way.
We used to grab globs of spruce gum off the trees to chew. Pain in the ass to get off your fingers though.
Sugar cane, Arenga pinnata
Just here to point out that sugar is not a tree, it’s a grass
