The bog cranberry on the dinner table

August 5. 

Wednesday. 

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. T. did not know it was anything unusual, but bought it at such a rate per bushel of Mr. Such-a-one, who brought it to market. They call it the "bog cranberry." I did not perceive that it differed from the common, unless that it was rather more skinny. 

T. has four rude pictures which belonged to Reuben Brown, on which is printed, "A. Doolittle sculpt," and these titles : — 
"Plate I. The Battle of Lexington April 19, 1775.” 
"Plate II. A View of the Town of Concord.” 
"Plate III. The Engagement at the North Bridge in Concord.” 
"Plate IV. A View of the South Part of Lexington.” 

Plate II is like that at Mr. Brooks's. In Plate III (you look westward) what appears to be the old Buttrick house has the upper story projecting over the lower. The French (Hoar's) house appears on the left. Another house is seen on the right of Buttrick's (?), perhaps Jarvis's. There is a wall on the south or town side of the road, where the British stood, and a large upright tree on the south side there, at the Bridge. 

P. M. — Rode to Old Fort Hill at the bend of the Penobscot some three miles above Bangor, to look for the site of the Indian town, — perhaps the ancient Negas? [Willis puts it on the Kenduskeag.] Found several arrowheads and two little dark and crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, like black earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1857

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . .“); August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021