Home Resources Gardener News reprints: Syrup At Over $100 A Quart
This article by Hubert Ling (NPSNJ horticulture) was published in Gardener's News without the photos. He is a regular contributing writer to Gardener's News. Photos by H & M Ling.
Syrup At Over $100 A Quart
What forest product sells at $112 a quart? Our latest syrup was first commercialized in 2019 from the native beech tree, Fagus grandifolia. The reason for the high cost is that beech trees don’t gush sap like maple or even like black birch. Special vacuum equipment must be used. According to the producers beech syrup has flavor hints of raisin and pear. For limited budgets a 2 ounce sample is only $7. An even cheaper way to sample this material is to suck on a beech twig in spring; a few drops of sweetish sap may be obtained.
If bleeding a tree isn’t your thing you might consider the beech nut. No not the baby food or the chewing gum! Beech nuts are probably our least recognized and utilized native nut. However, the Iroquois, Potawatomi, Huron, and Ojibwa made widespread use of raw or roasted nuts, crushed and boiled them for a drink, and added crushed nuts to beans and cornmeal to make bread. The nuts are nutritious with about 50% oil and 20% protein. Raw nuts however contain saponin, a toxic glycoside, but roasting removes this compound and gives nuts a wonderful aroma.
Beech nuts generally have not been commercialized because of their small size and the difficulty removing thin but tough shells. In addition, nut production by mature beech trees is sporadic and insect pests frequently beat you to them. However, a high quality oil has been produced commercially in France from the crushed nuts of the closely related European beech and a coffee substitute has occasionally been made from the roasted nuts.
Native Americans made use of the beech bark tea for lung ailments and used leaf tea for treating poison ivy and burns. The young leaves have been used as a vegetable and the inner bark has been used in Europe to stretch flour for bread making in times of famine. In addition, Early American colonists used the fluffy dried beech leaves to stuff mattresses and the leaves and bark are used to dye fabric.
Western European interest in the medicinal properties of beech started in earnest in 1833 when Reichenbach suggested using beech wood tar (creosote) as a treatment for TB. He also suggested that it be used for cholera, epilepsy, neuralgia, diabetes, and chronic glanders. Experiments with beech wood tars for TB continued until 1910 when it was replaced by radiation treatments. The two most common ingredients in beech and other wood distillates are Cresol 35% and Guaiacol 25%. Smoking is a popular method of curing meat and cheese; Guaiacol is responsible for the smoke flavor and other wood distillates, Cresol etc., are antimicrobial and retard spoilage. The commercial product ‘liquid smoke’ is produced from wood tar.
A Canadian scientist Eldon M. Boyd tested guaiacol and a newly synthesized chemical analog guaifenesin in the 1940’s and discovered that they act as efficient expectorants and ease chest congestion. Currently guaifenesin is still produced from beech wood and is found in a number of the most popular cold and flu medications such as DayQuil and Robitussin. Beachwood tar is still found in Creomulsin a popular cough medicine which also contains the cough suppressant dexotro-methorphan. Beech, pine, maple, and oak wood tar are also used in Seirogan a popular anti-diarrheal drug first used in Japan in 1904. Our Native Americans appear to have been on to something with their beech bark tea.
Wood tar creosote has also been used to preserve wood in contact with water or soil. It was commonly used for Roman ships and later for European ships in the 18th and 19th centuries. Subsequently it was found that wood tar creosote worked more effectively if combined with coal tar creosote which is much stronger and more toxic. Wood tar creosote’s biggest health hazard are the deaths caused by chimney fires. Several years ago I was 200’ away from a chimney fire which sounded like a jet airplane taking off in my front yard; truly a very frightening experience; so keep your chimneys clean.
Next month I will really write on beech tree biology.