I see a deep full river on which vessels may float.

August 12. 

11 a. m. — To Hill. 

The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour. 

The river is now at a standstill, some three feet above its usual level. The pickerel-weed is all covered, and lilies, and much of the button-bush and mikania. It is as great an accident as can befall these flowers. It is novel to behold this great, full tide in which you perceive some current by the eddies, in which no snarl of weeds is seen. So different from that Potamogeton River, where you caught a crab at every stroke of the oar, and farmers drove their hay-carts across. Instead of watery gleaming fields of potamogetons in which the boatman was entangled, and drifting vallisneria on which the dragon-flies alighted, I see a deep full river on which vessels may float, and I feel at a distance from terra firma when on its bosom. 

P. M. — To Moore's Swamp.

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. 

The mulgedium in that swamp is very abundant and a very stately plant, so erect and soldier-like, in large companies, rising above all else, with its very regular long, sharp, elliptic head and bluish-white flowers. 

Again I examine that very strict solidago, which perhaps I must call wand-stemmed. Perhaps it is only a swamp variety of S. stricta, yet the leaves are thicker and darker(?)-green, and the upper commonly broader, often elliptic, pointed, less recurved and not wavy. Stem and head is now commonly much more strict and branches more erect, and racemes less one-sided, but in larger and maturer ones they are at length recurving and forming a pyramid like S. stricta. Rays are fewer and broader, five or six; stem reddish, with apparently more branchlets or leafets in axils.

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. It has very short but not margined petioles; leaves narrower than yesterday's, and rough beneath as well as above. The outer scales of involucre a little the longest; but I think this of little importance, for the involucre of the H. divaricatus is very variable, hardly two alike; rays about ten. In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath. The bruised leaves of these helianthuses are rather fragrant. 

It is thick, smoky, dog-day weather again. 

Bradford speaks of the dog's-tooth violet as a plant which disappears early. 

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. 

Snake-head, or chelone. 

On the edge of the ditch opposite the spring, Epilobium coloratum, and also what I must call E. palustre of Willdenow and Pursh and Eaton. It is smooth or smoothish, leaves somewhat toothed or subdenticulate, peduncle one inch long, flowers white. 

The most interesting domes I behold are not those of Oriental temples and palaces, but of the toadstools. On this knoll in the swamp they are little pyramids of Cheops or Cholula, which also stand on the plain, very delicately shaded off. They have burst their brown tunics as they expanded, leaving only a clear-brown apex, and on every side these swelling roofs or domes are patched and shingled with the fragments, delicately shaded off thus into every tint of brown to the edge. As if this creation of a night would thus imitate the weather-stains of centuries. Toads' temples. So charming is gradation! 

Gerardia pedicularia, how long? 

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! Tall rough goldenrods, erechthites, poke, Aster Radula, dogwood, etc., etc. It looks as if the potatoes which grew there would be poisonous. 

An arrowhead in Peter's Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! Perchance it was, for some of the paths we travel are much older than we think, especially some which the colored race in our midst still use, for they are nearest to the Indian trails.

The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat. The leaves of Sericocarpus conyzoides are fragrant when bruised. Black cherries ripe. 

Saw the primrose open at sundown. The corolla burst part way open and unfolded rapidly; the sepals flew back with a smart spring. In a minute or two the corolla was opened flat and seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. 

Lespedeza capitata, not long. The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.

The late rains have tried the roofs severely. Tenants have complained to their landlords, and now I see carpenters setting up their staging and preparing to shingle on various sides.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1856

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. See August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
Saw the primrose open at sundown. . . . seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. See July 5, 1856 ("The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. . . . freshly out in the cool of the evening at sundown, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.”)

Snake-head, or chelone: The name of the genus Chelone comes from the Greek word meaning a tortoise, from the resemblance of the corolla to a tortoise-head. Snake-head. Turtle-head. Turtle-bloom. Shell flower. Not the snake-head arethusa of July 7, 1856.  See August 1, 1852  ("Chelone glabra [white turtlehead] just out.”)

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . See August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . ., which I will call the tall rough sunflower; opened say August 1st”); August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.”); August 13, 1858 ("The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th.")  GoBotany lists:

Helianthus annuus, common sunflower
Helianthus divaricatus, woodland sunflower
Helianthus strumosus, pale-leaved sunflower

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! See August 31, 1853 (The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. . . .One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.")