This past holiday season was a particularly cold one. Temperatures in the single digits with the windchill factor sending some neighborhoods in our region below zero! Which is somewhat unusual for our area, at least in recent years it has been much warmer over the month of December in the Tri-State area. Then again, it IS winter after all right?
Over the extremely cold Christmas weekend I was visiting my family in Delco when I noticed these large, brown colored icicles hanging from my parents’ tree. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be tree sap… that had formed an icicle. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Of course, I touched it to see what its consistency was, leaving a brownish film on my fingers. And no, I didn’t taste it… though, I definitely thought about breaking off a piece to sample.
Apparently when the temperature warms up during the colder months, it causes the trees to “wake-up” a bit, which gets the sap flowing a good bit more through the entire tree. Once that happens, and then colder temperatures return, this phenomenon (to me anyway) occurs. If squirrels gnaw on branches in the winter months, this could also cause sapcicles to form on the limbs too.
There’s a term called ice segregation – this is when moisture is drawn out of an object and freezes in the colder air. Apparently, you can eat the sapcicle, but it won’t taste as sweet as you would think. You can also boil sap into a syrup by adding a certain ratio of water to the mix.
Next time you are out and about on a cold day and happen to be surrounded by a bunch of trees, look around a bit and ya just might see a SAPCICLE. It could also be a sign of an early spring!
I’ll take it… bring on the warmer weather! -bp
Sapcicles
Sapcicles
