Late flowers, berries and changing leaves

October 2. 

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard's meadow. 

Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. 

The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. 

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. 

The prinos berries are in their prime, seven sixteenths of an inch in diameter. They are scarlet, some what lighter than the arum berries. They are now very fresh and bright, and what adds to their effect is the perfect freshness and greenness of the leaves amid which they are seen. 

Gerardia purpurea still. 

Brakes in Hubbard's Swamp Wood are withered, quite dry. 

Solidago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th, or five days ago; say three or four days. 

The river is still higher, owing to the rain of September 30th, partly covering the meadows; yet they are endeavoring to rake cranberries. After all, I perceive that in some places the greatest injury done by the water to these berries has probably been that it prevented their ripening, but generally it has been by softening them. They carry them home, spread, and dry them, and pick out the spoilt ones. One gets only fifty bushels where he would have had two hundred. 

Eupatorium purpureum is generally done. 

Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, etc., of this and the angulosum are turned crimson. 

I am amused to see four little Irish boys only five or six years old getting a horse in a pasture, for their father apparently, who is at work in a neighboring field. They have all in a row got hold of a very long halter and are leading him. All wish to have a hand in it. It is surprising that he obeys such small specimens of humanity, but he seems to be very docile, a real family horse. At length, by dint of pulling and shouting, they get him into a run down a hill, and though he moves very deliberately, scarcely faster than a walk, all but the one at the end of the line soon cut and run to right and left, without having looked be hind, expecting him to be upon them. They haul up at last at the bars, which are down, and then the family puppy, a brown pointer, about two-thirds grown, comes bounding to join them and assist. He is as youthful and about as knowing as any of them. The horse marches gravely behind, obeying the faint tug at the halter, or honestly stands still from time to time, as if not aware that they are pulling at all, though they are all together straining every nerve to start him. It is interesting to behold this faithful beast, the oldest and wisest of the company, thus implicitly obeying the lead of the youngest and weakest.

The second lechea radical shoots are one inch long. 

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. Corydalis still fresh. 

Saw apparently two phoebes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1856

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. See October 2, 1853 (“The smooth sumach is but a dull red.”)

The prinos berries are in their prime . . . See September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered.”);  September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,")  

Prinos: Ilex verticillata (Prinos verticillatus) Black Alder. Winterberry. Feverbush.
Common winterberry is a shrub usually from 6 to 8 feet high (sometimes much higher) with grayish bark and smooth twigs. The leaves are from 2 to 3 inches long and about an inch wide. They are usually rather thick and sharply toothed. In autumn the leaves turn black. The flowers which appear from May to July, are small and white, the male clusters consisting of 2 to 10 flowers and the female clusters of only 1 to 3. The bright-red, shining fruits about the size of a pea and each containing about six seeds, are clustered around the stem. Branches and twigs of this plant with their bright-red berries are a familiar sight during the Christmas season when they are much used for decorative purposes.

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. See August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season>")