From Wordsmith's list:
Calcar
Cal´car
n. 1. (Glass manuf.) A kind of oven, or reverberatory furnace, used for the calcination of sand and potash, and converting them into frit.
1. (Bot.) A hollow tube or spur at the base of a petal or corolla.
2. (Zoöl.) A slender bony process from the ankle joint of bats, which helps to support the posterior part of the web, in flight.
3. (Anat.) A spur, or spurlike prominence.

frit?

edit

(v. t.) The material for glaze of pottery.
(v. t.) The material of which glass is made, after having been calcined or partly fused in a furnace, but before vitrification. It is a composition of silex and alkali, occasionally with other ingredients.
(v. t.) To fritter; -- with away.
(v. t.) To prepare by heat (the materials for making glass); to fuse partially.

(This definition is from the 1913 Webster's Dictionary and may be outdated.)

huh. fritter. now that I know...

Dear etaoin: I did a bit of pottery almost sixty years
ago. A lot of fun, so much to learn. I think changes since
l913 are not important to amateurs. I was interested to learn about a year ago that the New England red men did not know how to get high temps, and so all their pottery had very short life span, and only a few items to be found in museums. Reminds me of baloney I have read about red men
making maple syrup. They simply could not have had kettles
to do it. Undoubtedly they used the sweet sap though. Which reminds me of one more thing I learned here. Aphids which spray sticky stuff on cars parked below maple trees, waste most of the sap just to get the minerals.

Dr. Bill, I see no reason why they couldn't have used the pottery they made to boil down the sap, FWIW. I'm sure they must have had some type of cooking vessels that could perform the task.

Dear consuelo: It takes several quarts of sap to make a quart of syrup. Because their firing technique was inferior,
I doubt that they could make vessels large and strong enough to do the job. And I have never read authentic accounts of their doing so. Bradford's History doesn't mention it. And when sugar was brought in from Barbados,
it was so prized by the Indians that when Canonicus was asked by Roger Williams to send and Indian force to act
as scouts for Connecticut settlers who were fighting the
Indians there, he agreed if he received a present of a
pound of sugar. Why would he want sugar if he could have
maple sugar made?

Aphids which spray sticky stuff on cars parked below maple trees, waste most of the sap just to get the minerals.


aphids excrete (piss) consentrated sap, (after extracting minerals and other nuturients), its called 'honey dew', there are species of ants that 'herd' aphids, and collect the honey dew, and use the honey dew as a food..

there is some evidence that the aphids sucking the sap is actually good for trees.. sap can get 'vapor locked' (just like a a gas line in cold weather) and the collective action of aphids help keep the sap moving.

Dare I ask whether this has any connection with honeydew melons?

Bingley

Honeydew melons are grown by farmers, whose wife constantly demands:"Honeydew this, and honeydew that......"

I doubt the origin of the name can be found. But sweetness
of honeydew is the probable source, I guess.

I found many sites about honeydew melons. None discussed orgin of the name.