Only sugar maples produce maple syrup, the golden liquid pancakes crave, and only tall, graceful sugar maples grown in North America will do the trick. You can transplant the tree but not the climate that makes it all possible.

Maple syrup was virtually the only sweetener used by the native people of North America before the invading colonists arrived in the late 1500's and early 1600's with Italian honeybees, West Indian molasses and sugar from sugarcane. Even then, for generations maple syrup was available free to anyone with access to one or two maple trees. Many Northerners preferred maple anyway-it was not derived from slave labor as was sugar.

March is maple syrup time, a time when the nights continue to be freezing, but by day the temperature rises sufficient to force the tree's clear sap to flow. The sap is boiled for hours to produce the sweet, thick treat unlike any other.

Quebec, Canada, supplies 75% of the world's maple syrup, the rest of Canada another 5%. The U.S. brings in 20%. Vermont is the Number 1 maple syrup producer in the U.S.