Flowering season closes

July 31.

P. M. - To Walden. 

The bristly aralia berries in dense patches with their numerous umbels, the central ones ripe for two or three days. They are about two inches in diameter and perfect hemispheres of dark-blue or blue-black berries, size of a huckleberry, on slender peduncles of equal length, forming a dense hemispherical umbel, two inches in diameter.  I counted a hundred and thirty such berries in one.

Rum cherry just ripe.  

Purple gerardia by tomorrow or the next day; the linear-leafed gerardia. 

The anychia, or forked chickweed, grows larger, with spreading red stems, on the south side of Heywood Peak. 

The commonest Lespideza violacea, with small elliptical leaves, perhaps a week. 

Desmodium nudiflorum, naked-flowered tick-trefoil, some already with loments round-angled; probably more than a week; the tall, naked flowering stems, some-times more than two feet high, appearing like separate plants, at some distance from the rest, which are much lower, about ten inches high, with a bunch of oval leaves. 

Lespedeza hirta out. 

I find also a trefoil plant with long, wand-like (?) panicled racemes, rising a foot or more above the leaves, with flowers turned a bluish or verdigris green, apparently wilted, and leaves below, simple stem, on short petioles, oblongish, one to two inches. May be Desmodium Canadense (?)  or lævigatum (?) or ? Somewhat downy-stemmed. Some time ––a week –– out. Also in J. Hosmer's pines beyond Clamshell Hill. 

Also the Gnaphalium decurrens, to the eye much like the fragrant one near by, but a lighter green and very sticky. 

Pennyroyal well out for some days at least there, in large bushy tufts.

White goldenrod. 

Bushy gerardia, showing no radical leaves yet. 

I see some galls on under side of hickory leaves, red like currants, hollow with a grub within. 

Solidago nemoralis. 

These desmodiums, etc., etc., on the south side of Heywood Peak, a warm dry sprout-land, where I suspect they were not to be found before the wood was cut. They are very forward there. 

Goodyera repens well out at Corallorhiza Hillside; some time out. Put it close after the gracilis. 

 

I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1853

The bristly aralia [Aralia hispida] berries in dense patches. See August 6, 1851 ("The berries of the bristly aralia are turning dark."); August 6, 1852 ("The bristly aralia  berries are ripe; like the sarsaparilla, a blue black."); August 6, 1856 ("Middle umbels of the bristly aralia ripe")

Rum cherry just ripe. See August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe."); August 15, 1852 (' In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.")

Purple gerardia by tomorrow or the next day. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Purple Gerardia (Gerardia purpurea)

White goldenrod. See August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season"); September 21, 1856 ("[On top of Cliff, behind the big stump] is a great place for white goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees."); October 11, 1856 ("The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees.")

Solidago nemoralis. See July 17, 1853 ("The Solidago nemoralis (?) in a day or two, -- gray goldenrod."): August 5, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, two or three days."); August 18, 1854 ("The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields.”)

These desmodiums, etc., etc., on the south side of Heywood Peak . . . were not to be found before the wood was cut. See August 10, 1853 ("New plants spring up where old woods are cut off, having formerly grown here, perchance. Many such rarer plants flourish for a few years in such places before they are smothered. I have also found here, for example, round-leaved and naked-flowered desmodium and Desmodium loevigatum (??) and Gnaphalium decurrens and queria."); August 14, 1853 ("I find on Heywood Peak two similar desmodiums of apparently the same date, – one that of July 31st, which I will call for the present D. Dillenii, two or three feet high, curving upward, many stems from a centre, with oval-lanceolate leaves, one to two inches long, and a long, loose, open panicle of flowers, which turn blue- green in drying, stem somewhat downy and upper sides of leaves smooth and silky to the lips; the other, which I will call D. Marylandicum, of similar habit (and date), but a little smaller and the leaves rhombic ovate and blunt, and some of the lower round, about three quarters of an inch long, and stem quite smooth, or some a little roughened; also by Woodside Path to White Pond flowers turn blue-green in drying."); July 31, 1854 ("Desmodium rotundifolium. Lespedeza hirta, say 26th, at Heywood Peak.")

Goodyera repens well out at Corallorhiza Hillside; See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves")

Corallorhiza Hillside This name probably refers to the hillside at Brister’s Spring since HDT mentions the coral root orchid twice at this location (July 29, 1853, and August 20, 1852), and it is on the way to Heywood’s Peak, ~ Ray Angelo Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord,

Less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year. See July 31, 1852 ("The absence of flowers, the shadows, the wind, the green cranberries, etc., are autumnal."); July 26, 1853 ("I reckon that about nine tenths of the flowers of the year have now blossomed")