Tree Species - Sugar Maple Traditional Cache
21alpine: Maybe a new cache in another location sometime in the future to replace this one!
Tree Species - Sugar Maple
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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I am placing this series to help you identify the different tree varieties. The cache is usually hidden at the base of the tree being identified but in this case, it is tucked up higher in the center.
Sugar maple (Acer saccharum), sometimes called hard maple or rock maple, is one of the largest and more important of the hardwoods. It grows on approximately 12.5 million hectares (31 million acres) or 9 percent of the hardwood land and has a net volume of about 130 million m3 (26 billion fbm) or 6 percent of the hardwood sawtimber volume in the United States. The greatest commercial volumes are presently in Michigan, New York, Maine, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania (53). In most regions, both the sawtimber and growing stock volumes are increasing, with increased production of saw logs, pulpwood, and more recently, firewood.
Sugar maple is not just a northern U.S. tree. You can find sugar maple from Florida to Maine. However, the leaf is memorialized on Canada's flag and sugar maple tree sap is the backbone of Vermont's syrup industry. The beautiful fall foliage of New England, which includes sugar maple, attracts millions of leaf "peepers" and their dollars into the northeast U.S. region.
The sugar maple tree is the principal source of maple sugar. The trees are tapped early in the spring for the first flow of sap, which usually has the highest sugar content. The sap is collected and boiled or evaporated to a syrup. Further concentration by evaporation produces the maple sugar. Sugar maple sap averages about 2.5 percent sugar; about 34 gallons of sap are required to make 1 gallon of syrup or 8 pounds of sugar.
This cache is located on trails you can access from Portland Street in Rochester, NH. Parking is available at 43° 18.686 070° 57.751. The trail begins just behind the small pile of asphalt.
The cache is about 50 feet from the main trail and is a small round camoed tupperware container and contains the log book and a few trade items. Be sure to close the container tightly to keep out moisture and re-hide as found so that it can not be seen from the small path that passes by it.
There was a new deck of playing cards in a previous container for the FTF.
Congrats to Team.TFTC for the FTF.
Additional Hints
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