Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/117

 CHAPTER IX THE REAL SUGAR TREE

Several generations of Caucasian Americans have called the sugar maple the "sugar tree." It had been done before by countless generations of American Indians. Rare indeed is the person who will not say that maple syrup and maple sugar are delicious.

The sugar maple is a fine tree. Its spring sap has from 3 to 6 per cent, of sugar. It grows over a wide area of cold, rough, upland country with a poor agricultural surface and in some cases a poorer agricultural climate. Possibly plant breeding could do with the maple wonders similar to those it has already done with the sugar beet—namely raise its sugar content several fold in a century and a quarter.

But why wait? Behold the honey locust! Look at Figs. 34 and 36! There is a wild tree, native, hardy, prolific, and yielding beans more than a foot long.

The beans from some of these unimproved and unappreciated wildlings carry 29 per cent, of sugar. This is equal to the best sugar beets and more than the yield of the richest crops of sugar cane. This, too, after man has been struggling with the sugar cane for centuries.

And Mr. Secretary of Agriculture Jardine tells me that his department has no time for such new things as honey locusts, that they are busy with the bugs and bites and blights of crops already established. Such is the scientific side of this democracy!

Who will apply science and horse sense to this wonderful bean tree, which may hold a hundred thousand gullying hills with its roots while its tops manufacture the world's sugar