Noticing where black willows grow.

August 15. 

P. M. —Down river to Abner Buttrick’s. 

Rain in the night and dog-day weather again, after two clear days. I do not like the name “dog-days.” Can we not have a new name for this season? It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather. 

The front-rank polygonum is apparently in prime, or perhaps not quite. 

Wild oats, apparently in prime. This is quite interesting and handsome, so tall and loose. The lower, spreading and loosely drooping, dangling or blown one side like a flag, staminate branches of its ample panicle are of a lively yellowish green, contrasting with the very distant upright pistillate branches, suggesting a spear with a small flag at the base of its head. It is our wild grain, unharvested.

The black willows are already being imbrowned. It must be the effect of the water, for we have had no drought. 

The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising. The leaves evidently come to maturity or die sooner in water and wet weather. They are redder now than in autumn, and set off the landscape wonderfully. 

The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. 

The swamp white oaks, ash trees, etc., which stand along the shore have horizontal lines and furrows at different heights on their trunks, where the ice of past winters has rubbed against them. 

Might not the potamogeton be called waving weed?

I notice the black willows from my boat’s place to Abner Buttrick’s, to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly. Then there is one clump just below mouth of Mill Brook on male side, one tree at Simmonds’s boat-house, male side, and one by oak on Heywood Shore. The principal are on the sand-bars or points formed along the concave side. Almost the only exceptions to their growing on the concave side exclusively are a few mouths of brooks and edges of swamps, where, apparently, there is an eddy or slow current. 

Similar was my observation on the Assabet as far up as Woodis Park. 

The localities I noticed to-day were: mouth of Mill Brook (and up it); sand-bar along shore just below, opposite; opposite Simmonds’s boat-house; one at boat-house; Hornbeam Cape; Flint’s meadow, along opposite boys’ bath-place; one by oak below bath place on south side; at meadow fence, south side; point of the diving ash; south side opposite bath-place by wall. 

Up Assabet the places were (the 13th): south side above Rock; Willow Swamp; Willow Bay (below Dove Rock); Willow Island; swift place, south side; mouth of Spencer Brook. 

Wars are not yet over. I hear one in the outskirts learning to drum every night; and think you there will be no field for him? He relies on his instincts. He is instinctively meeting a demand.

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


Rain in the night and dog-day weather again. See August 15, 1854 ('A dog-day, comfortably cloudy and cool as well as still")

The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and set off the landscape wonderfully. The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. See August 6, 1854 ("The Great Meadows are for the most part shorn. . . .I see some smaller white maples turned a dull red, — crimsonish, — a slight blush on them. ")

I notice the black willows, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.  See note to August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.