6 Trees You Can Safely Tap for Syrup:

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 SYRUP: The flavor of black walnut syrup is apparently surprisingly similar to a light or medium amber maple syrup, but with more butterscotch and nutty overtones. Black walnut has "pectin".  Pectin can make filtering the sap  extremely difficult and time consuming through material if thats a step you like to do, and it clogs filters more rapidly than the sugar sand particles often found in maple syrup. It is best to filter it multiple times in small batches, wash out the cheesecloth, then keep going.  

Black walnut trees are some of the most widely-grown trees in North America. Just like the name implies, they produce walnuts, making them very valuable plants. You can usually find them in forests stretching from the east coast of the United States to the Midwest. If you’d like to do some tree-spotting, the black walnut is easy to identify from spring to autumn because of its distinctive leaves. The walnut tree’s leaves are its most distinctive feature during the growing season. They grow in a green twig that’s about 1–2 ft  long and sprouts from the branches.[Each one of these twigs can have 15-24 leaves sprouting along each side. The twigs are concentrated at the end of the branches 

 SYRUP: If the idea of tapping multiple trees and boiling vast quantities of sap for hours is a little daunting. So we were thrilled to learn we could make a quicker, easier syrup by boiling the bark of the shagbark hickory tree. It's easy to harvest bark without damaging the tree, and the syrup is light, sweet, and has a distinctive smoky flavor. 

Shagbark hickory is a medium-sized to large tree with a crown 2–4 times longer than broad and shaggy bark.

Leaves are alternate,  8–17 inches long; leaflets 3–5, lance- to pear-shaped, 4–7 inches long, the end leaflet stalked; upper 3 leaflets quite larger than lower 2; pointed at the tip.

The bark is gray, separating into distinctive thick, long, shaggy strips, free at one end or both ends, curved outward.

Flowers April–May; Male catkins in threes, 4–5 inches long, slender, green, hairy; female flowers 2–5, conical.

Fruits September–October, nuts single or in clusters up to 3, oval or round, 1¼–2 inches long; husk blackish- to reddish-brown,, aromatic.

 SYRUP: Beyond its rich flavor, birch syrup is also nutrient-rich, with high concentrations of calcium and antioxidants. Different types of birch will produce slightly different flavor profiles; some more copper, others with hints of wildflower honey. While birch syrup has the same sugar content of maple, it is darker, stronger,    

Birch are generally small- or medium-sized trees or large shrubs, mostly found in northern temperate climates.  Many types of birch grow in clumps of two to four closely spaced separate trunks.

All North American birches have double-toothed leaves and are yellow and showy in the fall. Male catkins appear in late summer near the tips of small twigs or long shoots. The female cone-like catkins follow in the spring and bare small winged samaras that drop from that mature structure.

SYRUP: Before tapping Elm trees for sap, make sure you have checked whether they are protected in your area due to Dutch Elm disease. 

 Native to North America, it  lives from Nova Scotia west to Alberta and Montana, and south to Florida and central Texas. The American elm is an extremely hardy tree that can withstand winter temperatures as low as −42 °C (−44 °F). The American elm occurs naturally in an assortment of habitats, most notably rich bottomlands, floodplains, stream banks, and swampy ground, although it also often thrives on hillsides, uplands and other well-drained soils. On more elevated terrain, as in the Appalachian Mountains, it is most often found along rivers.  

 SYRUP: Sycamore sap has less sugar content than maple, so it’ will take more sap to make a good quantity of syrup. The sap has a distinctive butterscotch flavor and produces a good quantity of sap.

 Known as American sycamore, American plane tree, western plane, buttonwood, and water beech, it is a species native to the eastern and central United States, the mountains of northeastern Mexico, extreme southern Ontario and Quebec. The American sycamore is a long-lived species, typically surviving at least 200 years and likely as long as 500–600 years. It can often be easily distinguished from other trees by its mottled bark which flakes off in large irregular masses, leaving the surface mottled and gray, greenish-white and brown. 

 SYRUP: Maple syrup is a syrup made from the sap of maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Maple trees are tapped by drilling holes into their trunks and collecting the sap, which is processed by heating to evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup. The black, red, paperbark and sugar Maple are the main species tapped for their sap.

 Sugar maples are native trees, making up much of the U.S. hardwood forest along the East Coast. As the name suggests, this is the maple that is tapped to release sap, sugar maples are famous for their stunning fall color.