Wednesday. P. M. – To the Hill for white pine cones.
Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left.
The cones are now all flowing with pitch, and my hands are soon so covered with it that I cannot easily cast down the cones where I would, they stick to my hands so. I cannot touch the basket, but carry it on my arm; nor can I pick up my coat, which I have taken off, unless with my teeth, or else I kick it up and catch it on my arm.
Thus I go from tree to tree, from time to time rubbing my hands in brooks and mud-holes, in the hope of finding something that will remove pitch like grease, but in vain. It is the stickiest work I ever did. I do not see how the squirrels that gnaw them off and then open them scale by scale keep their paws and whiskers clean. They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of.
How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me!
Some are already brown and dry and partly open, but these commonly have hollow seeds and are worm-eaten.
The cones collected in my chamber have a strong spirituous scent, almost rummy, or like a molasses hogshead, agreeable to some. They are far more effectually protected than the chestnut by its bur.
Going into the low sprout-land north of the Sam Wheeler orchard, where is a potato-field in new ground, I see the effects of the frost of the last two or three nights. The ferns and tall erechthites showing its pappus are drooping and blackened or imbrowned on all sides, also Eupatorium pubescens, tender young Rhus glabra, etc., and the air is full of the rank, sour smell of freshly withering vegetation. It is a great change produced in one frosty night. What a sudden period put to the reign of summer!
On my way home, caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road, where it was rather slugish, as usual. Saw another in the road a week or two ago. The whole length was eight inches; tail alone, one and four fifths. The plates about one hundred and nineteen; scales forty and upward. It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, and perhaps this is the same with Storer's occipito-maculatus.
C. brings me a small red hypopitys. It has a faint sweet, earthy, perhaps checkerberry, scent, like that sweet mildewy fragrance of the earth in spring.
Aunts have just had their house shingled, and amid the rubbish I see sheets of the paper birch bark, which have lain on the roof so long. The common use of this formerly shows that it must have been abundant here.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1857
They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. See April 8, 1857 ("If you got your hands pitched in pine woods, you had only to rub a parcel of these berries between your hands to start the pitch off.")
I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit . . .all flowing with pitch . . . See October 15, 1855 (“Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”); November 4, 1855 (" I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September.”); October 8, 1856 (“At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, . . . all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them. The tip of each scale is covered with fresh flowing pitch.”); September 16, 1857 ("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped."); September 18, 1859 "There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open. . . . the winged seeds have fallen or are ready to fall. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!”); September 18, 1860 ("White pine cones (a small crop), and all open that I see.”).
Caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road,. . . Saw another in the road a week or two ago. . . .There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, and perhaps this is the same with Storer's occipito-maculatus.[The northern redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata)] See October 11, 1856 (“ It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long,. . .I count some one hundred and twenty-seven plates. It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back. ”)
I see the effects of the frost of the last two or three nights. . . What a sudden period put to the reign of summer! See ; September 23, 1854 ("Many plants fall with the first frosts. This is the crisis when many kinds conclude their summer.”); August 27, 1853 (" September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts.”)
C. brings me a small red hypopitys [pine-sap]. See June 29, 1853 (“American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech- drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe.”); July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson . . .[s]ays she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.”); August 14, 1856 (“Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed.”).
Note. The stems of "hairy pine-sap"(Hypopitys lanuginosa ) are often pink or red, distinguishing it from yellow pine-sap, which has light brown to yellow stems. However, the red, yellow (and other “species”) are often lumped together as Monotropa hypopitys, described generally as a saprophytic, red, pink, lavender, or yellow plant with several vase-like, nodding flowers on a downy, scaly stem; stem and flowers colored alike, with autumn-flowering plants being red color, and early-flowering plants yellow. Like Indian-pipe, pine-saps are mycotrophs, receiving nutrients via fungal mycelia rather than through photosynthesis. ~ GoBotany, Wildflower.org
Caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road,. . . Saw another in the road a week or two ago. . . .There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, and perhaps this is the same with Storer's occipito-maculatus.[The northern redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata)] See October 11, 1856 (“ It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long,. . .I count some one hundred and twenty-seven plates. It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back. ”)
I see the effects of the frost of the last two or three nights. . . What a sudden period put to the reign of summer! See ; September 23, 1854 ("Many plants fall with the first frosts. This is the crisis when many kinds conclude their summer.”); August 27, 1853 (" September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts.”)
C. brings me a small red hypopitys [pine-sap]. See June 29, 1853 (“American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech- drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe.”); July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson . . .[s]ays she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.”); August 14, 1856 (“Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed.”).
Note. The stems of "hairy pine-sap"(Hypopitys lanuginosa ) are often pink or red, distinguishing it from yellow pine-sap, which has light brown to yellow stems. However, the red, yellow (and other “species”) are often lumped together as Monotropa hypopitys, described generally as a saprophytic, red, pink, lavender, or yellow plant with several vase-like, nodding flowers on a downy, scaly stem; stem and flowers colored alike, with autumn-flowering plants being red color, and early-flowering plants yellow. Like Indian-pipe, pine-saps are mycotrophs, receiving nutrients via fungal mycelia rather than through photosynthesis. ~ GoBotany, Wildflower.org
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