Furnace-like heats beginning and the locust days.

July 19.

July 19, 2018

In Moore's Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade. 

Wild holly berries, a day or two. Black choke-berry, several days. High blueberries scarce.   

Apparently a catbird's nest in a shrub oak, lined with root-fibres, with three green- blue eggs. 

Erigeron annuus perhaps fifteen rods or more beyond the Hawthorn Bridge on right hand - a new plant.

The white cotton-grass now (and how long ?) at Beck Stow's appears to be the Eriophorum gracile (?). I see no rusty ones.

In the maple swamp at Hubbard's Close, the great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long.

Clintonia berries in a day or two. 

I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens with a dozen flowers fully open a day or more.

The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days.

A wood thrush to-night. Veery within two or three days. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1854

In Moore's Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade. See July 2, 1851 (" Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits."); July 15, 1859 ("Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height."); July 17, 1852 ("I pick raspberries dripping with rain beyond Sleepy Hollow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

The white cotton-grass at Beck Stow's appears to be the Eriophorum gracile (?). I see no rusty ones. See October 14, 1852 (" It is apparently the Eriophorum Virginicum, Virginian cotton-grass, now nodding or waving with its white woolly heads over the greenish andromeda and amid the red isolated blueberry bushes in Beck Stow's Swamp.");July 4, 1853 (“The cotton-grass at Beck Stow's. Is it different from the early one?”) Compare August 23, 1854 ("Next comes [at Gowings Swamp], half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata , — the A. Polifolia mingled with it, — the rusty cotton grass, cranberries , — the common and also V . Oxyoccus , — pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there, — all on sphagnum" ) See also July 23, 1856 ("Russsell says] that the two white cotton-grasses (Eriophorum) were probably but one species, taller and shorter,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp. Note:. a third cotton-grass, Eriophorum vaginatum, was known to HDT after May 28, 1858 only at Ledum Swamp See .. Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts compiled by Ray Angelo

The maple swamp at Hubbard's Close. (Clintonia Swamp, Clintonia Maple Swamp, E. Hubbard’s Clintonia Swamp, E. Hubbard’s Swamp, Hubbard’s Close Swamp) – a large swamp just to the northeast of Hubbard Close. ~ Ray Angelo, Thoreau's Place Names, Clintonia Swamp

Clintonia berries in a day or two. See July 24, 1853 ("The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. For some time, then, though a few are yet green. They are numerous near the edge of Hubbard’s lower meadow. They are in clusters of half a dozen on brittle stems eight or ten inches high, oblong or squarish round, the size of large peas with a dimple atop"); August 27, 1856 ("Peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stemlets or pedicels.) See also June 2, 1853 ("Clintonia borealis, a day or two. This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of what I may call the liliaceous (?) plants we have. Its beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves . . . arching over from a centre at the ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the scape [ a ] foot high, with one or more umbels of“green bell - shaped flowers,” yellowish-green, nodding or bent downward")

Great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now. See May 30, 1854 ("In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens. See July 27, 1853 ("I notice to-day the first purplish aster... The afternoon of the year.”); see also August 12, 1856 ("The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look.”)

The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning and the locust days.    See See note to July 18, 1851 ("I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day."); July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

A wood thrush to-night. Veery within two or three days. See July 17, 1856 ("It is 5 P. M. The wood thrush begins to sing"); July 24, 1853 ("I hear no veery."); July 27, 1852 ("The thrush, now the sun is apparently set, fails not to sing. Have I heard the veery lately?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Veery; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush

July 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 19

The more smothering

furnace-like heats beginning

and the locust days.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Furnace-like heats beginning and the locust days.

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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