Bathing at Flint's pond.

August 31, 2017

August 31.

Monday. P. M. — To Flint's Pond.

An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? 

Our first muskmelon to-day. 

Lycopodium complanatum out, how long? 

I have seen for several days amphicarpaea with perfectly white flowers, in dense clusters. 

At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings. 

Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. I see these at every step for more than a dozen rods and thought they must have been washed up from deeper waters. 

Examining very closely, I trace one long string through the sandy soil to the root of a ground-nut which grew on the edge of the bank, and afterwards see many more, whose tuberous roots lying in the sand are washed bare, the pond being unusually high. 

I could gather quarts of them. I pick up one string floating loose, about eighteen inches long, with as usual a little greenness and vitality at one end, which has thirteen nuts on it about the size of a walnut or smaller. I never saw so many ground-nuts before, and this makes on me the impression of an unusual fertility.

Bathing there, I see a small potamogeton, very common there, wholly immersed and without floating leaves, which rises erect from the sandy bottom in curving rows four or five feet long. On digging I find it to rise from a subterranean shoot which is larger than any part above ground. It may be one I have, whose floating leaves the high water has destroyed or prevented. The leaves of it have small bits of that fresh-water sponge, so strong-scented, on them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1857

Many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. See August 16 1852 (“Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two.”)

An abundance of fine high blackberries . . . now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? See August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich . . .It is glorious to see those great shining high blackberries, now partly ripe . . ."); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins."); August 17, 1853 ("The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have.”); August 22, 1852 ("Is not the high blackberry our finest berry?"); August 23, 1856 ("Now for high blackberries, though the low are gone.” ); August 27, 1857 ("Detected a, to me, new kind of high blackberry on the edge of the cliff beyond Conant's wall . . ."); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); August 31, 1858 (“High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. . . . The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry