February 27 - Sapsicle
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Late winter often brings warm days following cold nights. This freeze-thaw cycle creates sapsicles, icicles of frozen tree sap. Warm, sunny days with temperatures above freezing heat maple trees enough to allow sap to flow. Maple trees in particular develop sapsicles. It drips out of breaks in the bark or where branches have broken off.  As temperatures drop toward freezing at the end of the day, the dripping sap turns into a slightly sweet icicle. Some of the water in the icicle evaporates to the dry winter, air concentrating the sugar in the sap. The tip of the icicle shows a touch of a yellow color from that sugar. Tasting maple sapsicles could be how Native Americans discovered the sweet nature of maple sap. They just added heat to speed the evaporation process. Sapsicles by themselves are a tasty treat.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.