Looked at plants at the Natural History Rooms

Boston Society of Natural History 

(c. 1847-1863),

Mason Street, Boston

June 19.

Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. 


Among which noticed:

• Ranunculus Purshii varieties a and b with no difference apparent, unless in upper leaves being more or less divided.

• Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry, with a loose raceme such as I have not seen, from White Mountains. 

• A circaea, or enchanter’s-nightshade, with a very large raceme and with longer branchlets than I have seen, methinks. 

• Calla palustris, very different from the Peliandra Virginia. 

• Cerastium arvense, with linear leaves, quite new to me. 

• Smilacina stellata, from Dr. Harris, very different from the racemosa, being simple. 

• Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather 'broader—leafed than mine from Maine. 

• Barbarea sativa, from Cambridge, apparently like my B. vulgaris. 

Is the Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets peculiar, there in Worcester?  I saw several in woods. 


On way to Concord see mountain laurel out in Lancaster. Had seen none out in Worcester.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1856

June 19.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823- 1911) was educated at Harvard where he developed interests in botany and entomology. From 1840-1841, Higginson was corresponding secretary and entomological curator of the Harvard Natural History Society; he was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and of the Cambridge Entomological Club. He shared HDT’s antislavery views and in 1856 had just moved to Worcester, where he joined gatherings at Blake's house to read the letters that HDT wrote to Blake throughout the 1850’s. Mapping Thoreau Country.


Ledum latifolium:  Rhododendron groenlandicum (Bog Labrador-tea) a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. GoBotany

Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets . . . See July 7, 1855 ("What that smilacina-like plant very common in the shrubbery, . . .?"); June 19, 1857 ("The Smilacina racemosa was just out of bloom on the bank. They call it the " wood lily " there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up").