Earliest spring flowers

April 12

April 12, 2022

See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day. The speckled alders and the maples are earlier then. The yellow blossom appears first on one side of the ament and is the most of bright and sunny color the spring has shown, the most decidedly flower-like that I have seen. It flowers, then, I should say, without regard to the skunk-cabbage, q. v. First the speckled alder, then the maple without keys, then this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. 

It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.

There is, this afternoon and evening, a rather cool April rain. Pleasant to hear its steady dripping.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1852

It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow. See note April 12, 1858 ("Now the early willows are in their prime, methinks.") and  April 13, 1852 ("As I came home through the streets at 11 o’clock last night through the snow, it cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows. I mean the catkins of the earliest willow. To think of those little sunny spots in nature, so incredibly contrasting with all this white and cold.") See also April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

A rather cool April rain. See April 12, 1855 ("Still falls a little snow and rain this morning,"); April 12, 1856 ("Rains considerably in the evening.")

April 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 12

Bright-yellow blossoms

on willow catkins today –

color of the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Earliest spring flowers

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 ©  2009-2024

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