Sugar bush refers to a forest stand of maple trees which is utilized for maple syrup. This was originally an Indigenous camp set up for several weeks each spring, beginning when the ice began to melt and ending when the tree buds began to open.^[1] At a traditional sugarbush, all the trees were hand tapped and the sap was boiled over wood fires. The Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) peoples have been doing sugarbush for generations and consider the process both a part of food and of medicine.^[2]

The tree canopy is dominated by sugar maple or black maple. Other tree species, if present, form only a small fraction of the total tree cover. In the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and in some New England states, many sugar bushes have a sugar shack where maple syrup can be bought or sampled.^[3]