 |
| May 21, 2018 |
P. M. – To Boulder Field.
Horse-chestnut in bloom.
Aetoea spicata var. rubra will bloom, apparently, in four or five days. It is now fifteen inches high.
Lilac in bloom.
Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria (not budded) from the Boulder Field. It has leafed; when?
Also a ranunculus from his land, – which has been out how long?— which is very near to R. repens, but has small flowers, petals less than the calyx, and leaves, methinks, more divided, but I did not see it open. It may be a variety of repens.
His daughter has found in bloom: huckleberry on the 19th; Viola pubescens, 16th; Geranium maculatum, 18th.
I notice that the old indigo-bird path behind Pratt's is for some distance distinctly defined by young birches, three or four feet high, which are now clothed with tender leaves before the young oaks, etc., on each side. They are especially thick in the ruts, while there are but few here and there in the sprout-land generally. I suspect that the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter.
E. Hoar saw Silene Pennsylvanica out in Lincoln to day, in a warm cleft of a rock; also Cerasus pumila between here and Newton.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1858
Birches thick in the ruts, the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. See March 2, 1856 ("Walking up the river by Prichard's, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, . . . A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows. "); May 12, 1858 (“I notice that birches near meadows,. . . grow in more or less parallel lines a foot or two apart, parallel with the shore, apparently the seed having been dropped there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hollows of the snow.”)
No comments:
Post a Comment