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[FantasticDorf]

There have been tree tapping (the process of cutting a tree to expose its sap) threads before (see bibiliography at bottom) & tree tapping for a long time in human history, its a very basic art of stripping off the bark that yearns back to the practices of our earliest & closest ancestors deliberately looking for food between the trunk in the form of insects, requiring to eat the bark for fiber or being interested in the sap.

Fortress usage

In fortress mode, tree tapping is a skill carried out by herbalists generally in the field & the trees in question must be designated within a gathering zone (meaning they can be burrowed) to be selected when the command is given via a farmer's workshop.

> A metal tool called a spile is used in conjunction to a bucket, when the order is given the herbalist will go out and "milk" the tree of its sap and deposit the extract product in the bucket which can be bottled up into barrels undergoing the same process as milk (and then into vials/or used further ahead for certain things), the tree will regenerate sap over time.




Different propeties of tree saps

Based off real life counterparts, there might be many varieties of sap to tap, but only a few edible ones (which the selection could be restricted or left wide open, given the largely useless blood extracts) and even so with such things like rubberplants, not every materials has to be edible or even safe.

Only certain varieties of mushrooms have sap (hence with 'underground orchard' and the stile tool you could collect underground tree sap to embark with despite being no fruits to collect) leaving the option open for modders. For example you could reason that towercaps have waxy rubbery sap, ideal for making cheap wax objects once it undergoes a stoking process to become a semi-solid globular material at cost of fuel/lavaheat by turning extract into glob using a kiln.

Further & deeper down, the goblincaps have toxic saps being more exotic & out of range, and this would be another kind of material that would turn up in world gen in places (alchemy plus wizardry) as well as good old cloak & dagger poisoning, a alternative substance for underground animal men & crafty adventuerers to use.

Having the saps be openly moddable & also varied (for instance, bloodthorn could literally bleed a blood extract & sagaros offer water for buckets to pour into ponds & use in hospitals) would be exceptionally useful.


The rest of the world

Tree tapping is a common practice, and it is one unlikely source that elves also enjoy. Rather than hurt the plant they use a natural set of wooden grown tools & the plant "offers" its sap rather than the brutal method of harming the tree.

Offering tree sap implies that the tree was harmed (bleeding it out is distressing) so elves create their own 'natural' range of tree saps. In the hands of non-grown only entity site members, the wooden grown stile is useless, but elf entities extract their own range of ethic free-range tree sap amongst the many trees they hang around within their specific biome.

Though glumprong might have a sap, it is undoubtedly bitter & not good for your health in large quantities (therefore alcoholic) so goblins aren't interested, the extract like dwarven syrup (which is virtually the same goopy stuff) might go well with cooking however so there's still functionality for people settling in those regions. Mmm choking to death on death-sap.


Thanks for reading, i hope this thread kept you interested especially since i think it's a good step foward towards the eventual farming development roadmap goals & greater agricultural production.

Bibliography/Related Threads

> Expanding on wood and trees (author- AceSV / December 13, 2015 / Read 340 times) Notes - Very good & detailed thread, contributors also put forward lots of suggestions like certain dye/improvement extracts for lacquering/aroma being present within resins/saps

> Tapping trees and bushes for extracts  (alfie275 / March 26, 2009 / Read 1031 times) Notes - popular old thread going over different things like the saguro water gathering i mentioned here on my own thread as a alternative way to gather water.

> Exotic Foods  (Dwarmin / March 01, 2007/ Read 293 times) Notes - Another old thread from waaay way back I found quite charming, with fingers crossed for some oceanic big game whale hunting later, generally mentions tree tapping, had initially good feedback.

[Azerty]

Some of the IRL products from thees already there are wine palm, maple syrup, birch sap and rubber.

[FantasticDorf]

Some of the IRL products from thees already there are wine palm, maple syrup, birch sap and rubber.

And all of those materials can be translated into the DF game quite easily.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think elves would use tools to extract sap, but rather the same kind of magic used to create grown wood: they'd induce the tree to grow a tap.
And palm sap would be useful for fermentation (as suggested) as well as palm sugar.

A related, but distinct, process would be bark stripping, which could yield the various bark based products of the world, such as e.g. cinnamon or tonic.

[Bumber]

I don't think elves would use tools to extract sap, but rather the same kind of magic used to create grown wood: they'd induce the tree to grow a tap.

Maybe some elves would use their teeth, shunned as some kind of terrible tree vampire.

[FantasticDorf]

I suggested the grown wooden natural spile as a alternative given its practical for gameplay usage; a elf walking up to a tree, hugging it very closely & revealing its tree sap proboscis to slowly extract the tree's sickly sap sounds disturbing & impractical.

Taking magic enhanced grown tap in game terms, picking the grown bucket & the tool up and taking it to the tree in question commiting exactly the same reaction but yielding a product that is ethical for elves to use would work much more understandably. All other spiles would have to be metallic like the original real-life product required to be dug deep into the tree to funnel the sap out.

> Wood spiles do exist, but a elf wouldn't use it anyway unless it was grown, so technically the option is there but metallic spiles are preferred because of higher reliability & no risk of rotting.

Bark eating would be harder to show, and you might get annoying instances of animals eating bark & then moving off the map to rejoin the wilderness damaging the trees.

I don't think elves would use tools to extract sap, but rather the same kind of magic used to create grown wood: they'd induce the tree to grow a tap.

Growing the tap is a novel idea, but that'd be hard to show on  1 or 4 tile wide tree, what if it gets bugged & spawns taps on each side for 4 elves being queued up to use it.

Tree tapping is a common practice, and it is one unlikely source that elves also enjoy. Rather than hurt the plant they use a natural set of wooden grown tools & the plant "offers" its sap rather than the brutal method of harming the tree.

Offering tree sap implies that the tree was harmed (bleeding it out is distressing) so elves create their own 'natural' range of tree saps. In the hands of non-grown only entity site members, the wooden grown stile is useless, but elf entities extract their own range of ethic free-range tree sap amongst the many trees they hang around within their specific biome.

Already covered within the OP

[voliol]

Necro'd for the sake of the subject coming up again.

Some other trees with economical saps would be the myrrh and bdellium (fake myrrh) trees, whose saps are used for incense and and perfume.
Perfume would be practical as soon as the undead start concealing themselves (next version), so having a few ways to produce it would be handy.

+1 on the general idea, and some of the underground trees having useful saps.

[FantasticDorf]

Necro'd for the sake of the subject coming up again.

Some other trees with economical saps would be the myrrh and bdellium (fake myrrh) trees, whose saps are used for incense and and perfume.
Perfume would be practical as soon as the undead start concealing themselves (next version), so having a few ways to produce it would be handy.

+1 on the general idea, and some of the underground trees having useful saps.

Tree sap like pine is also a adehesive under the right conditions (pine particularly needs charcoal to bind) so could be important for maybe something along the lines of repair work? Glue those fault lines, reforge and apply veneers and final touches. Animal glue was common for DF's time period (15th century) but tree glue by geography also was.

I've since changed my mind on a few things. Fungi are not quite the same, you'd have to consider the "sap" or finely reduced to a goop shavings to just be the flavor and effect of the mushroom. Which would probably be better to reduce the logs from instead than have a close to infinite source.

I suppose you can do it already in a psuedo sense, bring a mushroom tree log out to a screw press, screw press out the 'liquid' globs and find a purpose for it like dyes or otherwise.

[Pillbo]

I like this idea, a couple thoughts:

- I think the elves would just ask the trees to leak some sap to them into a bucket, no tool needed.  A tree should be able to direct the flow of sap without a spile, and I don't see any reason to worry about what it looks like visually. A bucket sitting next to a tree is good enough to know whats going on.  If the tree is doing it voluntarily it wouldn't need to look like normal tree tapping, they could make the sap drip out of the end of a branch/twig into a bucket for instance.

- I like the idea of tapping fungi trees, if they produce wood I don't see any reason they couldn't have useful fluids flowing through them. Real fungi contain a lot more water than vascular plants so it's realistic enough.

- Tapping and bark stripping should run the killing the trees. (do trees die in DF right now?)