Sunday. An abundance of a viburnum, making thickets in dry woods and ravines and set out about houses, now full of edible fruit like that of V. nudum, and also of leaves. At first I was inclined to call it V. nudum, but beside that it bears an abundance of berries still, long after the V. nudum berries have fallen with us (and they hold on for three or four weeks afterward at least), it grows generally in dry woods and ravines and uplands; the leaf is quite thin, now reddened, of various forms; and the bush is quite thorny (!), in the woods making almost impenetrable thickets in many places, like a thorn bush, and gave me much trouble to cut through in surveying, as did the cat-briar.
I think it must be the V. prunifolium, or black haw. It is quite ornamental, with its abundance of purple fruit, which tastes much like dates. I think I have never seen it in Concord, and perhaps Emerson and others confounded it with V. nudum. It is thorny like a wild apple, but of course much more slender. The privet was a very common shrub, with its black berries. Flowers almost entirely done.
See apparently the seaside goldenrod, lingering still by the Raritan River, and a new aster.
The persimmon (Diospyros Virginiana) quite common. Saw some trees quite full of fruit. There was a little left on the trees when I left, November 24th, but I should think it was in its prime about the end of the first week of November, i. e., what would readily shake off. Before, it was commonly puckery. In any case it furs the mouth just like the choke-cherry. It is not good for much. They would be more edible if it were not for the numerous large seeds, and when you have rejected them there is little but skin left. Yet I was surprised that the fruit was not more generally gathered.
The sassafras was common. Saw and heard a katydid about the 1st of November.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1856
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