Let’s go out to greet the first ephemerals before their brief exuberance concludes as trees leaf out.

Small white flowers bloom in spring ... expect it to top out at 30-50 feet tall in zones 4-9. Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is the state tree of New York, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Vermont ...

Bees make raw honey from the nectar of flowering plants like wildflowers ... Maple syrup is derived from the sap of the sugar ...

It’s peak maple sugar season and there’s no place better to get into the thick of it than New England. Maple trees are tapped across the region, from Rhode Island to the northern points of Maine.