Early cliff dwellers

April 27.

Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." It sits on a birch and sings at short intervals, apparently answered from a distance. It is clear and sonorous heard afar; but I found it quite impossible to tell from which side it came; sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer. 

Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis). 

It has rained a little in the night. The landscape is still dark and wet. The hills look very dank, but I notice that some houses, one yellow one especially, look much better in this light.

On Conantum Cliffs, whose seams dip to the northwest at an angle of 50° and run northeast and  southwest, I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss.

Early Saxifrage

April 27, 2024

Following thus early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world.  It can take advantage of a perpendicular cliff where the snow cannot lie and fronting the south.

In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are.

Also the first plantain-leaved everlasting (Gray's Antennaria plantaginifolia) is in blossom in a sheltered place in the grass at the top of the rock. The thimble-berry and the sweet-briar are partly leaved out in the crevices of the rock, and the latter emits its fragrance.

The half-open buds of the saxifrage, showing the white of the petals in a corymb or cyme, on a short stem, surrounded by its new leaves mingled with the purplish tips of the calyx-leaves, is handsomer than when it is fully expanded.

This is a place to look for early blossoms of the saxifrage, columbine, and plantain-leaved everlasting, - the first two especially. The crevices of the rock (cliff) make natural hothouses for them, affording dryness, warmth, and shelter.    

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1852

Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird."  See April 27, 1855 (“The principal singer on this walk, both in wood and field away from town, is the field sparrow.”) See also April 9, 1856 (“Wandering over that high huckleberry pasture, I hear the sweet jingle of the Fringilla juncorum.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow

Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis) See April 27, 1857 (“I hear the prolonged che che che che che, etc., of the chip-bird.”); and note to April 12, 1858 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird and, I think, the Fringilla socialis.”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Chipping Sparrow (Fringilla socialis ).

I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage . . . following early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world.  See April 3, 1853 ("To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. . . .With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. This faced the southeast, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock."); See also April 28, 1852 ("Are not the flowers which appear earliest in the spring the most primitive and simplest?") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are. See March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even, the former as conspicuously as any plant . . . Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced. Even if a fallen fragment of the rock is so placed as to reflect the heat upon it, it has the start of its neighbors. These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development. "); April 1, 1855 (" At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft.");April 7, 1855 ("At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc.");April 8, 1854 ("The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant. ")

April 27 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 27

Early saxifrage

one of the first flowers in

the spring – and  the world.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Early cliff dwellers

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