Every year, as the Spring Flower Show starts to wind down, the beautiful scent of blooming flowers at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is replaced by something just as sweet – the aroma of hot maple syrup.
On Monday, maple-scented steam piped out of the green Maple Sugar House as horticulturist Richard DeVries started making the year’s very first batch of syrup. He boiled down hundreds of gallons of sap collected from Arboretum trees to begin creating the yummy amber nectar.
It’s a wonderful time of year. It means spring is nearly here, and hundreds of children will take field trips to see maple syrup made much like the generations before them.
On March 22, visitors can inhale and taste the sweet scent for themselves – and eat as many pancakes as they’d like – at the Arboretum’s Maple Fest and Pancake Breakfast. Activities include tapping a maple using a demonstration log, watching (and smelling) the making of maple syrup, and going on a scavenger hunt. The event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
While welcoming this delicious rite of spring is as exciting as ever, it’s important to temper the joy with a little bit of caution and awareness around the impact of climate change.
In most of the United States’ maple syrup region, research predicts that syrup production will gradually decrease over time due to warmer winters and springs. In Minnesota, it is well documented that our winters are getting warmer, and we are getting more rain and snow overall but over more concentrated periods of time. At the same time, we are experiencing longer stretches of drought.
Changing weather conditions can affect maple syrup quantity – and quality. A dry winter can mean less syrup because there’s less moisture in the soil for a tree to absorb to replenish its sap. A dry fall or early spring warmup can lower the sugar content of sap, requiring producers to boil down more sap to make syrup, which is 66% sugar.
Warmer and drier winters can also affect how early the sap starts flowing. The maple syrup season is starting earlier on average in Minnesota and other parts of the U.S. In 2024, the Arboretum tapped our maples a whole month earlier than any time since 1983, when we started keeping records. Extended warm periods can end the season early.
Despite these changes, there is hope for maple syrup, said Annie Klodd, the Arboretum’s manager of interpretation and visitor learning. These are average, long-term trends, so there will still be great years mixed in with poor years.
There are ways to reduce carbon emissions, which impact climate change. Small actions add up, such as riding a bicycle, taking a bus, or planting trees. Science-based practices can help preserve the health of existing trees.
University of Minnesota researchers at the Horticultural Research Center (HRC) at the Arboretum are looking into black walnut trees – which produce syrup – as one potential alternative or even an additional crop for producers. Native black walnut trees are cold hardy like maples but can tolerate warmer temperatures, and are more resistant to diseases and pests, said research scientist Herika Paula Pessoa.
Research is early and ongoing: It’s too soon to know exactly how black walnut trees create sap or even if the public will like the syrup, which is often described as more nutty or caramel in flavor, she said.
Visitors to Maple Fest will get a rare opportunity to find out for themselves – they can taste black walnut syrup and compare it to maple.
It’s a fun bit of education about our natural world that we hope will go down sweetly.
To buy tickets to the Pancake Breakfast and learn more about Maple Fest, visit arb.umn.edu/maplefest. The event supports the Arboretum’s horticultural research, education programming, and 1,200 acres of gardens, trails and natural areas.
Editor’s note: Lynette Kalsnes is the public relations strategist at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska. She is a master gardener intern in training who cannot wait to get her hands in the dirt outside.
Kalsnes’ column on happenings at the Arboretum will appear periodically on the Eden Prairie Local News website. Contact her at arbpr@umn.edu.
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