6 A.M.— River nine and fifteen sixteenths above summer level; has risen one and three sixteenths inches since last evening at 6.30.
Thus, it having rained two days most of the
time, though not much the last afternoon, the river had risen some six inches
at the end of the last afternoon, by the time it cleared up, and only some one
and a quarter inches in the next twelve hours of night.
P.M.– To Gowing’s Swamp and Copan.
Red maple seed is still in the midst of its
fall; is blown far from the trees.
This is a southwest-breezy day, after the rain
of the last two days. There is on the whole a fresh and breezy
coolness in June thus far, perhaps owing to the rains and the expanded foliage.
White clover already whitens some fields and
resounds with bees.
Am surprised to find that in that frosty
Holbrook Road Hollow (call it Frosty Poplar Hollow) none of the poplars (P. tremuliformis)
less than ten feet high (or parts of others less than ten feet above the ground)
in the bottom of the hollow have burst their buds yet, making this which in
some localities is perhaps the earliest conspicuous tree, in others the latest
to leaf.
Also the shrub oaks are but just begun to leaf
here, and many maples and white birches have but lately leafed, having yet very
small and tender leaves.
These poplars, and I think the oaks (for I detect no dead and withered leafets on them), etc., have here acquired a new habit, and are retarded in their development, just as if they grew in a colder latitude, like the plants by the snow in Tuckerman’s Ravine. They have not put forth and then been frost-bitten, as in most hollows, but the spring has come later to them.
The poplars generally look quite dead still
amid the verdure that surrounds the hollow; only those that rise about ten feet
are unfolded at the top.
The amount of development is a matter of
elevation here. Generally speaking, all poplar buds above a
certain level have burst, and all below are inert. The line of separation is very distinct now,
because the tops of the tallest are already leafed out and are green. This level line extends to the hillsides all
around, and above it all trees are leafed out.
This is true of the shrub oaks also, except
that a great many of them which stand much higher have already leafed and been
frost-bitten, which makes them look about as late as those which apparently
have not leafed.
This hollow seems to be peculiar, — a dry
depression between Beck Stow’s and the Great Meadows, — to be steadily cold and
late, and not warm by day so that the buds burst and are then killed by frost,
as usual.
Perhaps it is not so much a frosty hollow as a
cold one. It is most open north and south.
Standing at Holbrook’s barrel spring, a female
chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me, inquisitively holding its
head down one side to me and peeping at me.
Seeing house-leek on several rocks in the
fields and by roadside in the neighborhood of Brooks Clark’s, Farmer told me
that it was the work of Joe Dudley, a simple fellow who lives at one of the
Clarks; that, though half-witted, he knew more medicinal plants 335 than almost
anybody in the neighborhood.
Is it necessary that the simpler should be a
simpleton? I noticed rye (winter rye) just fairly begun to bloom, May 29th.
A painted turtle beginning her hole for eggs
at 4 P.M.
Yellow bugs have come by thousands this clear
and rather warm day after the rain; also squash-bugs have come.
When, in a warm day after rain, the plants are
tender and succulent, this is the time they work most.
River at 6 P.M., twelve and five eighths
inches above summer level.
To-night the toads ring loudly and generally,
as do hylodes also, the thermometer being at 62 at 9 P.M.
Four degrees more of warmth, the earth being
drier and the water warmer, makes this difference.
It appears, then, that the evening just after
a rain-storm (as the last), thermometer 58, the toads will be nearly silent,
but the hylodes wide awake; but the next evening, with thermometer at 62, both
will be wide awake.
Dor-bugs come humming by my head to-night.
The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young
ones, are to be observed. As I now remember, there is
- the whitish shoot of the white pine;
- the reddish brown of the pitch pine, giving a new tinge to its tops;
- the bead work of the hemlock;
- the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps;
- the frizzly-looking glaucous-green shoots and leafets of the fir (and fragrant now or soon);
- the thin and delicate foliage of the larch;
- the inconspicuous and fragrant arbor-vitæ;
- the bead-work of the Juniperus repens (red cedar inconspicuous);
- probably the bead work of the yew;
- the tented leaves of the white oak;
- the crimson black and white oaks and black shrub lately, and now, in hollows, the downy grayish (at first) of black and white, etc.;
- the now tender, delicate green of swamp white and chincapin;
- the large and yellowish, rapildy expanding (at first), of the nut trees;
- the gamboge-yellow of the birches (now as dark as most, for leaves are acquiring one shade at present);
- the thick darker green of alders;
- the downyish of buttonwood still small;
- the soon developed and darkened and fluttering early aspens and Gileads;
- the still silvery Populus grandidentata; the small-leafeted and yellowish locust;
- the early yellow of Salix alba;
- the fine-leaved S.nigra; the wreath-and-column-leaved elm;
- the suddenly expanding but few-leaved ash trees, showing much stalk, or stem, and branch;
- the button-bush, with shoots before leaves;
- the reddish-leafed young checkerberry; the suddenly developed and conspicuous viburnums (sweet and naked);
- the unequal-leafing panicled andromeda;
- the purplish-brown stipules of the Amelanchier Botryapium;
- the downy stipules of the A.oblongifolia.
The red maples now become darker and firm, or
hard.
The large-leafed sumachs.
Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed."); August 1, 1860 ("If you look carefully through a dense red maple swamp now, you find many little maples a couple of inches high")
Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed."); August 1, 1860 ("If you look carefully through a dense red maple swamp now, you find many little maples a couple of inches high")
A female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me. See note to June 15, 1854 (" A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. "); See also JJ Audubon ("In the beginning of May 1808, I shot five of these birds, on a very cold morning, near Pottsgrove, in the State of Pennsylvania. There was a slight fall of snow at the time, although the peach and apple trees were already in full bloom. The females had the ovaries furnished with numerous eggs, about the size of the head of a common pin. I have never met with a single individual of this species since.")
The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones . . .
- the whitish shoot of the white pine. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.")
- the bead work of the hemlock See June 5, 1853 (" The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage.")
- the gamboge-yellow of the birches. See May 21, 1860 ("The color of the new leaves is surprising . The birches by the railroad , as I am whirled by them in the cars , flash upon me yellow as gamboge , their leaves more like flowers than foliage.")
- the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps. See May 21, 1857 ("The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red."); May 22, 1856 ("The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days?"); June 10, 1855 (" The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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