Three large yellow birch, measured.

September 2. 

Wednesday. P. M. – To Yellow Birches. 

September 2, 2017

Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference. The first branch is at two feet seven inches. The tree spreads about eighteen feet. The height is about seventeen feet.

A yellow birch some rods north was, at three feet from ground, four feet plus in circumference. A second, northeast of it, was, at four feet, five feet five inches in circumference. It branched at eight feet, the branches extending north two and a third rods, but south only one and a half. Was some fifty or sixty feet high. 

The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was, at three feet from the ground on the inside or at the ground on the outside, just below the branches, ten feet nine inches in circumference. It divides to three branches at ground on the upper side, and these almost immediately to three more, so low and horizontal that you can easily step into it. It extends two rods east and one west, the ends of the branches coming down to height of head all round, nearly. It is about two thirds as high as wide, or thirty-three feet high. Looking from the west, of an irregular diamond shape resting on the ground. The roots inclose some cellar stones. 

All these birches were measured at the smallest place between the ground and branches. Large yellow birches branch low and form a dense broom-like head of many long tapering branches. 

In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood, I see a Rhus radicans running up a buttonwood which is some forty feet high. It first makes a complete circle about it horizontally at the ground, then goes winding up it in a serpentine manner on the southwest (?) side, thirty feet at least, or as far as I could see, beginning to put out a few twigs at seven or eight feet. It is a vine one and a half and two inches wide, somewhat flattened, clinging close and flat to the tree by innumerable brown fibres which invest itself and adhere to the bark on each side in a thick web. You can hardly tell if it is alive or dead without looking upward. 

Remembering that it was poisonous to some to handle, it had altogether a venomous look. It made me think of a venomous beast of prey which had sprung upon the tree and had it in its clutches, as the glutton is said to cling to the deer while it sucks its blood. It had fastened on it, as a leopard or panther on a deer and there was no escape. It was not married to the buttonwood, as the vine to the poplar. I saw a still larger one the other day in Natick on an elm. 

Some bass trees blossomed sparingly after all, for I see some fruit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1857

The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was. . . ten feet nine inches in circumference. See May 18, 1857 (“There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp.”)

In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood . . .See July 10, 1857 ("He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom, about the bass in Fever-bush Swamp.”)

Some bass trees blossomed sparingly after all, for I see some fruit. See July 9, 1857 (“ I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum. ”); June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”)  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

September 2, 2017