Sap Cups - 3

About the Sap Cups - 3

Before plastic tubing, every maple tap in a sugar bush ended in a metal cup hung from a spile driven into the trunk. A single producer ran hundreds of them, collected twice a day through the run, and stacked them in a shed for the other eleven months of the year. The design is a shallow, slightly conical tin with a lipped rim and a hanging hook — nothing more, because nothing more was needed.

Their proportions make them almost purpose-built for succulents: shallow enough that the roots do not sit in wet soil, wide enough for a rosette to spread, and light enough to hang on a wall or a fence in a group. Three or four in a cluster at different heights reads better than a row, and the dull tin sits well against both painted brick and bare wood.

If you are planting into one, punch two small drainage holes in the base and put a centimetre of grit underneath the compost. Left outside they will develop a deeper grey and eventually some rust at the rim, which most people prefer. Indoors they stay much as they are. Do not sand them; the original mill finish is the whole point.

Sap cups arrive in quantity and we sell them in threes because that is the number that looks right on a wall. Larger runs are possible on request; we have supplied twenty at a time for a single hallway. They nest inside each other for posting, so shipping a dozen costs very little more than shipping three.

A word on the spile, the tapered spout that was driven into the tree. Cups and spiles were separate purchases and rarely stayed together, so most sap cups you will see for sale, including ours, come without one. If you want the full assembly for display we can usually source spiles separately, though they are scarcer than the cups and we will not pair a modern reproduction spile with an old cup and sell it as a set.