September 2.
one kind of sunflower
September 2, 2023
P. M. — To Painted-Cup Meadow.
Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves, — light reflected from the surface of each one, for they are grown and worn and washed smooth at last, no infantile downiness on them.
This, say ever since August 26th, and we have had no true dog-day weather since the copious rains began, or three or four weeks. A sheeny light reflected from the burnished leaves as so many polished shields, and a steady creak from the locusts these days.
Frank Harding has caught a dog day locust which lit on the bottom of my boat in which he was sitting and z ed there. When you hear him you have got to the end of the alphabet and may imagine the &. It has a mark somewhat like a small writing w on the top of its thorax.
A few pigeons were seen a fortnight ago. I have noticed none in all walks, but G. Minott, whose mind runs on them so much, but whose age and infirmities confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago. I rarely pass at any season of the year but he asks if I have seen any pigeons. One man's mind running on pigeons, will sit thus in the midst of a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where even naturalists do not observe, and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning till night, will surely see them.
I think we may detect that some sort of preparation and faint expectation preceded every discovery we have made. We blunder into no discovery but it will appear that we have prayed and disciplined ourselves for it.
Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.
Also, a short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. Hearing that one had found another kind, it occurred to me that I had seen a taller one than usual lately, but not so distinctly did I remember this as to name it to him or even fully remember it myself. (I rather remembered it afterward.) But within that hour my genius conducted me to where I had seen the tall plants, and it was the other man's new kind. The next day I found a third kind, miles from there, and, a few days after, a fourth in another direction.
It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.
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| September 2, 2016 |
I see bright-yellow blossoms on perfectly crimson Hypericum angulosum in the S. lanceolata path.
By the Indian hemp at the stone bridge, am surprised to see the Salix lucida, a small tree with very marked and handsome leaves, on the sand, water's edge, at the great eddy. The branches of an inch in diameter are smooth and ash-colored, maple-like; the recent shoots stout and yellowish-green, very brittle at base. The leaves are the largest of any willow I have seen, ovate-oblong or ovate-lanceolate, with a long, narrow, tapering point (cuspidate), some on vigorous shoots, two and a half by seven inches wide in the blade, glandular-serrate, with pedicellate glands at the rounded base, thick, smooth, and glossy above, smooth and green beneath, with broad crescent-shaped, glandular- toothed stipules at base of petioles, five eighths to one inch long. According to Emerson, " Sir W. J. Hooker says it is one of the most generally diffused of all the willows in British North America."
Captain Hubbard said on Sunday that he had plowed up an Indian gouge, but how little impression that had made on him compared with the rotting of his cranberries or the loss of meadow-grass! It seemed to me that it made an inadequate impression compared with many trivial events. Suppose he had plowed up five dollars!
The botanist refers you, for wild [sic] and we presume wild plants, further inland or westward to so many miles from Boston, as if Nature or the Indians had any such preferences. Perchance the ocean seemed wilder to them than the woods. As if there were primarily and essentially any more wildness in a western acre than an eastern one!
The S. lucida makes about the eleventh willow that I have distinguished. When I find a new and rare plant in Concord I seem to think it has but just sprung up here, — that it is, and not I am, the newcomer, — while it has grown here for ages before I was born. It transports me in imagination to the Saskatchewan. It grows alike on the bank of the Concord and of the Mackenzie River, proving them a kindred soil. I see their broad and glossy leaves reflecting the autumn light this moment all along those rivers. Through this leaf I communicate with the Indians who roam the boundless Northwest. It tastes the same nutriment in sand of the Assabet and its water as in that of the Saskatchewan and Jasper Lake, suggesting that a short time ago the shores of this river were as wild as the shores of those.
We are dwelling amid these wild plants still, we are eating the huckleberries which lately only the Indian ate and dried, we are raising and eating his wild and nutritive maize, and if we have imported wheat, it is but our wild rice, which we annually gather with grateful awe, like Chippewas. Potatoes are our ground nuts.
Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian. I cannot yet even find the leaves of the latter — at the house-leek brook.
I had come to the Assabet, but could not wade the river, it was so deep and swift. The very meadow, pokelogan, was a quarter of a mile long and as deep as the river before. So I had come round over the bridge.
In Painted-Cup Meadow the ferns are yellowing, imbrowned, and crisped, as if touched by frost (?), yet it may be owing to the rains. It is evident that, at this season, excessive rain will ripen and kill the leaves as much as a drought does earlier. I think our strawberries recently set out have died, partly in consequence. Perhaps they need some dryness as well as warmth at this season. Plainly dog-days and rain have had the most to do as yet with the changing and falling of the leaves. So trees by water change earliest, sassafrases at Cardinal Shore, for example, while those on hill are not turned red at all. These ferns I see, with here and there a single maple bough turned scarlet, — this quite rare.
Some of the small early blueberry bushes are a clear red (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum), and the linger ing clusters of blueberries contrast strangely with the red leaves of the V. vacillans. Smooth sumachs show quite red on dry, warm hillsides.
While I am plucking the almost spicy blueberries amid the crimson leaves there on the springy slope, the cows gather toward the outlet of their pastures and low for the herdsman, reminding me that the day is drawing to a close.
Centaurea will apparently be entirely done in a week.
How deceptive these maps of western rivers! Me thought they were scattered according to the fancy of the map-maker, — were dry channels at best, — but it turns out that the Missouri at Nebraska City is three times as wide as the Mississippi at Burlington, and Grasshopper Creek, perhaps, will turn out to be as big as the Thames or Hudson.
There was an old gentleman here to-day who lived in Concord when he was young and remembers how Dr. Ripley talked to him and other little boys from the pulpit, as they came into church with their hands full of lilies, saying that those lilies looked so fresh that they must have been gathered that morning! Therefore they must have committed the sin of bathing this morning ! Why, this is as sacred a river as the Ganges, sir.
I feel this difference between great poetry and small: that in the one, the sense outruns and overflows the words; in the other, the words the sense.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1856
Apocynum cannabinum . . . See August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”); August 9, 1856 ("Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island” . . .); August 13, 1856 ("I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know.”); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).
A short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. . . . See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.”); August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . . which I will call the tall rough sunflower . . . It does not correspond exactly to any described.”); August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . I cannot identify it.”) August 29, 1856 ("The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals,. . . broader-leaved than that of August 12th “).
. . .wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. See August 30 1856 ("I seem to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society.”)
Captain Hubbard said on Sunday that he had plowed up an Indian gouge, but how little impression that had made on him compared with the rotting of his cranberries or the loss of meadow-grass! It seemed to me that it made an inadequate impression compared with many trivial events. Suppose he had plowed up five dollars!
The botanist refers you, for wild [sic] and we presume wild plants, further inland or westward to so many miles from Boston, as if Nature or the Indians had any such preferences. Perchance the ocean seemed wilder to them than the woods. As if there were primarily and essentially any more wildness in a western acre than an eastern one!
The S. lucida makes about the eleventh willow that I have distinguished. When I find a new and rare plant in Concord I seem to think it has but just sprung up here, — that it is, and not I am, the newcomer, — while it has grown here for ages before I was born. It transports me in imagination to the Saskatchewan. It grows alike on the bank of the Concord and of the Mackenzie River, proving them a kindred soil. I see their broad and glossy leaves reflecting the autumn light this moment all along those rivers. Through this leaf I communicate with the Indians who roam the boundless Northwest. It tastes the same nutriment in sand of the Assabet and its water as in that of the Saskatchewan and Jasper Lake, suggesting that a short time ago the shores of this river were as wild as the shores of those.
We are dwelling amid these wild plants still, we are eating the huckleberries which lately only the Indian ate and dried, we are raising and eating his wild and nutritive maize, and if we have imported wheat, it is but our wild rice, which we annually gather with grateful awe, like Chippewas. Potatoes are our ground nuts.
Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian. I cannot yet even find the leaves of the latter — at the house-leek brook.
I had come to the Assabet, but could not wade the river, it was so deep and swift. The very meadow, pokelogan, was a quarter of a mile long and as deep as the river before. So I had come round over the bridge.
In Painted-Cup Meadow the ferns are yellowing, imbrowned, and crisped, as if touched by frost (?), yet it may be owing to the rains. It is evident that, at this season, excessive rain will ripen and kill the leaves as much as a drought does earlier. I think our strawberries recently set out have died, partly in consequence. Perhaps they need some dryness as well as warmth at this season. Plainly dog-days and rain have had the most to do as yet with the changing and falling of the leaves. So trees by water change earliest, sassafrases at Cardinal Shore, for example, while those on hill are not turned red at all. These ferns I see, with here and there a single maple bough turned scarlet, — this quite rare.
Some of the small early blueberry bushes are a clear red (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum), and the linger ing clusters of blueberries contrast strangely with the red leaves of the V. vacillans. Smooth sumachs show quite red on dry, warm hillsides.
While I am plucking the almost spicy blueberries amid the crimson leaves there on the springy slope, the cows gather toward the outlet of their pastures and low for the herdsman, reminding me that the day is drawing to a close.
Centaurea will apparently be entirely done in a week.
How deceptive these maps of western rivers! Me thought they were scattered according to the fancy of the map-maker, — were dry channels at best, — but it turns out that the Missouri at Nebraska City is three times as wide as the Mississippi at Burlington, and Grasshopper Creek, perhaps, will turn out to be as big as the Thames or Hudson.
There was an old gentleman here to-day who lived in Concord when he was young and remembers how Dr. Ripley talked to him and other little boys from the pulpit, as they came into church with their hands full of lilies, saying that those lilies looked so fresh that they must have been gathered that morning! Therefore they must have committed the sin of bathing this morning ! Why, this is as sacred a river as the Ganges, sir.
I feel this difference between great poetry and small: that in the one, the sense outruns and overflows the words; in the other, the words the sense.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1856
Apocynum cannabinum . . . See August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”); August 9, 1856 ("Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island” . . .); August 13, 1856 ("I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know.”); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).
A short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. . . . See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.”); August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . . which I will call the tall rough sunflower . . . It does not correspond exactly to any described.”); August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . I cannot identify it.”) August 29, 1856 ("The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals,. . . broader-leaved than that of August 12th “).
. . .wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. See August 30 1856 ("I seem to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society.”)
My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things. See April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?”); May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.”); July14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnaeus's account. I now find it in abundance.”) August 16, 1856 ("By the discovery of one new plant all bounds seem to be infinitely removed“); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it. “); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”)
A clear September day. A little rough going with some blow downs and nettles we hike towards the double chair but end up at the top of the MossTrail. We sit there on the rock. A beautiful spot. I water the dogs holding the bowl in my hand. All three drink. Bushwhacking back Acorn runs into a hornet nest. I get stung as we run away and both of the other dogs. The shadows lengthen and the sun flashes through the trees as we walk easily and briskly home.
Clear September day.
Sun flashes through the trees as
we walk briskly home.
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