Botanizing the grasses and sedges

August 25. 

It has been cool and especially windy from the northwest since the 19th, inclusive, but is stiller now.

The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare. 

P. M. — To Lupine Hill and beyond. 

I see a mouse on the dry hillside this side of Clamshell. 

It is evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp. It endeavors to escape down the hill to the meadow, and at first glides along in a sort of path (?), methinks. It glides close to the ground under the stubble and tries to conceal itself. 

I gather from Nut Meadow Brook, not far below the road, a potamogeton (perhaps P. Clayton heterophylus of Gray), which Russell said was the one by road at Jenny Dugan’s). It is still out. Has handsome broad, grassy immersed leaves and somewhat elliptic floating ones. 

I distinguish these plants this afternoon: 

• Cyperus filiculmis (mariscoides, or tuberous cyperus of Bigelow) in arid, sandy pastures, with globular green heads and slender, commonly slanting culms, five to twelve inches long. It is perhaps getting stale. 

• The prevalent grass in John Hosmer’s meadow I take to be cut-grass? [no] Long since done, and the leaves now commonly purplish, reflecting that color in the sun from a distance. 

• The Paspalum setaceum (ciliatifolium), my saw-grass, which I have seen for some time, commonly cut off by the mowers, apparently in prime or past. 

• Eragrostis pectinacea (Poa hirsuta), hair spear-grass, perhaps not quite so bright as heretofore. Money-Diggers’ Hollow has the most of it. Say a week in prime. 

• Fimbrystilis capillaris (Scirpus capillaris), that little scirpus turning yellowish in sandy soil, as our garden and Lupine Hill sand. Some time in prime. 

• Cyperus strigosus under Clamshell Hill, that yellowish fuzzy headed plant, five to twelve inches high, now apparently in prime. Also in Mrs. Hoar’s garden. 

• Also Cyperus phymatodes, very much like last, in Mrs. Hoar’s garden, which has little tubers at a distance from the base; apparently in prime. 

• Cyperus dentatus (?), with flat spikelets, under Solidago rigida Bank, apparently in prime; also Pout’s Nest, with round fascicles of leaves amid spikes. 

• Juncus scirpoides (?)[Is it not paradoxes? Vide Aug. 30] (polycephalus, many-headed of Bigelow), at Alder Ditch and in Great Meadows, etc., perhaps some time. 

• Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, Solidago rigida Bank, a slender grass three to seven feet high on dry soil, apparently in prime with digitate purple spikes, all over hillside behind Caesar’s. 

• Setaria glauca, glaucous panic grass, bottle grass, sometimes called fox-tail, tawny yellow, going to seed, Mrs. Hoar’s garden. 

• Setaria viridis, green bottle grass, in garden, some going to seed, but later than the last. These two I have called millet grass. 

• Aristida dichotomy  poverty grass, slender, curving, purplish, in tufts on sterile soil, looking White fuzzy as it goes to seed; apparently in prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1858

The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare. See August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”)