Monday, April 7, 2014

First herbaceous flowering

April 7

The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. 

April 7, 2014

On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. 

Fair Haven is completely open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1854


The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.
See  April 7, 1855 ("The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. "); See also April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 11, 1856 ("the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth") April 13, 1855 ("many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig."); See also A Book of the Seasons: the Hazel.

One sedge above the rocks . . .— the first herbaceous flowering. See April 7, 1861 ("The common great tufted sedge has started under the water on the meadows,") See also April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i.e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass."); April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower.

Fair Haven is completely open. See March 26, 1860 (" Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56 ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

April 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 7

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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540407

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