Lesson 3: What is Made of Sap

Every thing that you see in a tree or a plant, is made from the sap. The bark, the wood, the leaves, the flowers, the fruit, are all made from it. Even the root that sucks up the sap from the ground, is made out of the sap itself.

It is strange that so many different things can be made out of the same thing. It is strange that a rough bark and hard wood can be made out of the same thing with the beautiful flower and the delicious fruit. Look at a peach-blossom, and look at the bark of the tree, and think of them as being made out of the same sap. You can hardly believe that it is so. How strange it is to think of the sharp thorn on a rose-bush as being made out of the same sap that makes the soft, and smooth, and beautiful leaves of the rose!

If any man should tell you that he could make a brick, and a piece of cloth, with beautifully colored figures on it, out of the same thing, you would say he was crazy. But there is not as much difference between the brick and the cloth, as there is between rude bark and a flower, made from the same sap. The Creator does, in the most common plants and trees, what man can not equal in any way.

There are some things made out of sap that I have said nothing about as yet. There are many bitter, and sweet, and sour things made out of sap. Sometimes sweet and bitter things are made together at the same time out of the same sap. You see this in the orange. Out of the same sap that comes to the orange through the stem, are made the sweet juice and the sharp and bitter peel.

Almost all our sugar comes from the sugar-cane. This is shaped like the stalks of corn. The sugar is made from the sap that comes up in the pipes of the cane from the ground. The cane, then, is really a sugar factory. Man does not make the sugar, but it is made for him in the cane. It is in the juice of the cane. This juice is mostly sugar and water. In making sugar, as it is called, the sugar is not made; it is only separated from the water and other things with which it is mixed in the cane.

Perhaps you have seen maple-sugar. This comes from a tree called the sugar-maple. The sugar is in the sap, just as it is in the case of the sugar-cane. The sap is obtained early in the spring, by tapping the trees, and then it is boiled down, as it is called. In this boiling the water goes off in steam and leaves the sugar behind. The sugar-maple, then, is a sugar-factory as well as the sugar-cane.

There are many roots in which there is sugar. Sugar has often been obtained from a kind of beet, called the sugar-beet. There is sugar in many fruits, making them sweet to the taste.

Now, where does the sugar in the sugar-cane, the maple, the beet, etc., come from.? The sap, in which the sugar is, comes up from the roots. You will say, then, that the little mouths in the roots suck up sugar from the ground. But there is no sugar in the ground. No one ever found any there. Take up a handful of earth, smell of it, and taste of it. There is no sweetness in it.

Though there is no sugar in the ground, what the sugar is made out of is there. This the little mouths in the root drink up, and it is made into sugar in the plant. You see, then, how true it is, that the plant is a sugar-factory.

Now, do you think that any man could, in any way, make sugar from the earth under his feet? He can no more do it than he can make a flower or a leaf.

There are a great many other things made by plants out of what they suck up from the earth. I will mention more of them.

Some plants are starch-factories. They make the starch from the sap that comes up from the root, just as the sugar is made. There is starch in every kind of grain, in potatoes, and in many other roots.

Some plants are medicine-factories. Camphor is obtained from the bark and wood of a tree. Opium is found in the different kinds of poppies. There are various bitter medicines that are found in different plants. Castor-oil is obtained from the seed of a large plant. These, and various other medicines are made from sap.

Some plants are gum-factories. You have sometimes seen gum on the bark of peach-trees and pine-trees, when the bark has been wounded in some way. Now, there are some kinds of trees in which there is a great deal of gum. The India-rubber is a gum that is obtained from some kinds of trees in warm climates. When the bark of these trees is broken, this gum oozes out. It is collected as it flows. It is dried in smoke, and this gives it its dark appearance.

Many trees are perfume-factories. The perfumes are made most often in the flowers, but they are sometimes made in the leaves, and other parts. You know how fragrant the leaves of the geranium are. Even wood is sometimes fragrant. The sandal-wood is very much so.

Some plants are color-factories. They not only make color for their own use--that is, to color their flowers--but they make them for us to use. Many of our dyes, with which we color cloths, come from plants. They are made in the plants from the sap that comes up from the ground. It seems strange that the blue indigo should be made out of what a plant drinks up from the brown, dull earth. But it is so.

Now, just think over the various things that are made out of the sap in plants. There are wood, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, thorns, perfumes, colorings, sugar, starch, gum, various medicines, etc. And then, there are many other things that I have not mentioned. How strange it is that so many, and such different things, can be made from what the plants suck up out of the earth! As you look at the ground under your feet, you can hardly believe that so much can be got out of it. It is the busy little mouths in the roots that get from it what is needed to make all these different things.