The Osmunda regalis, growing in very handsome hollow circles.

June 15. 

June 15, 2018

Rains steadily again, and we have had no clear weather since the 11th. 

The river is remarkably high, far higher than before, this year, and is rising. I can paddle into and all about the willowy meadow southwest of Island. I had, indeed, anticipated this on account of the remarkable lowness of the river in the spring. 

That coarse grass in the Island meadow which grows in full circles, as on the Great Meadows, is wool-grass, though but little blooms. Some is now fairly in bloom and it has the dark bracts of what I observed on the Great Meadows. The peculiarly circular form of the patches, sometimes their projecting edges being the arcs of circles, is very obvious now that the lower and different grass around is under water. Many plants have a similar habit of growth. 

The Osmunda regalis, growing in very handsome hollow circles, or sometimes only crescents or arcs of circles, is now generally a peculiarly tender green, — its delicate fronds, – but some has begun to go to seed and look brown. Hollow circles, one or two feet to a rod in diameter. 

These two are more obvious when, as now, all the rest of the meadow is covered with water. 

That large grass, five feet high, of the river brink is now just begun. Can it be blue-joint, or Calamagrostis Canadensis? [Probably phalaris.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1858

That coarse grass in the Island meadow which grows in full circles, as on the Great Meadows, is wool-grass, sometimes their projecting edges being the arcs of circles.  June 27, 1857 ("southwest of Egg Rock, the coarse sedge [wool-grass] — I think the same with that in the Great Meadows — evidently grows in patches with a rounded outline; i.e., its edge is a succession of blunt, rounded capes, with a very distinct outline amid the other kinds of grass and weeds.")

The Osmunda regalis, growing in very handsome hollow circles, or sometimes only crescents or arcs of circles, is now generally a peculiarly tender green. See July 5, 1860 ("I notice of late the Osmunda regalis fully grown, fresh and handsome.")