Each humblest plant has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint

October 22. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

A thickly overcast yet thick and hazy day. 

October 22, 2018

I see a Lombardy poplar or two yellowing at last; many leaves clear and handsome yellow. They thus, like the balm-of-Gilead and aspens, show their relation to the willows. Horse-chestnuts are yellow and apparently in prime. I see locusts are generally yellow but thinly leaved, and those at extremities. 

Going by Farrar’s field bought of John Reynolds, I examined those singular barren spots produced by putting on too much meadow mud of a certain quality. In some places the sod was entirely gone; there was no grass and only a small sandy desert with the yellowish Fimbristylis capillaris and sorrel on it. In most places this sand was quite thickly covered with sarothra, now withered and making a dark show at a distance, and sorrel, which had not risen from the surface. These are both sour-juiced plants. It was surprising how completely the grass had been killed.

I see the small narrow leaves of the Aster dumosus and also the yet finer ones of the Diplopappus linariifolius in wood-paths, turned a clear light-yellow. The sagittate leaves of the Viola ovata, too, now flat in the path, and the prettily divided leaves or fingers of the V. pedata, with purple petioles (also fallen flatter than usual ?), are both turned a clear handsome light-yellow. Also the V. cucullata is turned yellow. These are far more conspicuous now than ever before, contrasted with the green grass; so that you do not recognize them at first on account of their very conspicuousness or brightness of color. 

Many other small plants have changed now, whose color we do not notice in the midst of the general changing. Even the Lycopodium complanatum (evergreen) is turned a light yellow (a part of it) in its season, like the pines (or evergreen trees).  

I go up the hill from the spring. Oaks (except the scarlet), especially the small oaks, are generally withered or withering, yet most would not suspect it at a little distance, they have so much color yet. Yet, this year at least, they must have been withered more by heat than frost, for we have had very hot weather and little if any frost since the oaks generally changed. Many of the small scarlet ones are withered too, but the larger scarlet appear to be in their prime now. Some large white, black, and red are still pretty fresh.

It is very agreeable to observe now from an eminence the different tints of red and brown in an oak sprout land or young woodland, the brownish predominating. The chocolate is one. Some will tell you that they prefer these more sober colors which the landscape wears at present to the bright ones it exhibited a few days ago, as some prefer the sweet brown crust to the yellow inside. It is interesting to observe how gradually but steadily the woods advance through deeper and deeper shades of brown to their fall. You can tell the young white oak in the midst of the sprout-land by its light brown color, almost like that of the russet fields seen beyond, also the scarlet by its brighter red, but the pines are now the brightest of them all. 

Apple orchards throughout the village, or on lower and rich ground, are quite green, but on this drier Fair Haven Hill all the apple trees are yellow, with a sprinkling of green and occasionally a tinge of scarlet, i. e. are russet. 

I can see the red of young oaks as far as the horizon on some sides. 

I think that the yellows, as birches, etc., are the most distinct this very thick and cloudy day in which there is no sun, but when the sun shines the reds are lit up more and glow. 

The oaks stand browned and crisped (amid the pines), their bright colors for the most part burnt out, like a loaf that is baked, and suggest an equal wholesomeness. The whole tree is now not only ripe but, as it were, a fruit perfectly cooked by the sun. That same sun which called forth its leaves in the spring has now, aided by the frost, sealed up their fountains for the year and withered them. The order has gone forth for them to rest. As each tree casts its leaves it stands careless and free, like a horse freed from his harness, or like one who has done his year’s work and now stands unnoticed, but with concentrated strength and contentment, ready to brave the blasts of winter without a murmur. 

You get very near wood ducks with a boat nowadays. 

I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree, though I had not expected it, — large oaks do not turn so completely,—and now is for the most part burnt out for want of fuel, i. e. excepting the scarlet ones. The brown and chocolate colors prevail there. 

That birch swamp under the Cliff is very interesting. The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. At this distance their bare slender stems are very distinct, dense, and parallel, apparently on a somewhat smoky ground (caused by the bare twigs), and this pretty thicket of dense parallel stems is crowned or surmounted by little cones or crescents of golden spangles. 

Hear a cuckoo and grackles. 

The birches have been steadily changing and falling for a long, long time. The lowermost leaves turn golden and fall first; so their autumn change is like a fire which has steadily burned up higher and higher, consuming the fuel below, till now it has nearly reached their tops. These are quite distinct from the reddish misty maze below, fit if they are young trees, or the fine and close parallel white stems if they are larger. Nevertheless the topmost leaves at the extremities of the leaves [sic] are still green.

I am surprised to find on the top of the Cliff, near the dead white pine, some small staghorn sumachs. (Mother says she found them on the hill behind Charles Davis’s!) These are now at the height of their change,‘ as is ours in the yard, turned an orange scarlet, not so dark as the smooth, which is now apparently fallen. But ours, being in a shady and cool place, is probably later than the average, for I see that one at Flood’s cottage has fallen. I guess that they may have been at height generally some ten days ago.

Near by, the Aralia hispida, turned a very clear dark red.

I see Heavy Haynes fishing in his old gray boat, sinking the stern deep. It is remarkable that, of the four fishermen who most frequent this river, — Melvin, Goodwin, and the two Hayneses, — the last three have all been fishermen of the sea, have visited the Grand Banks, and are well acquainted with Cape Cod. These fishermen who sit thus alone from morning till night must be greater philosophers than the shoemakers. 

You can still pluck a variegated and handsome nosegay on the top of the Cliff. I see a mullein freshly out, very handsome Aster undulatus, and an abundance of the little blue snapdragon, and some Polygonum Persicaria, etc., etc. 

The black shrub oak on the hillside below the bear berry fast falling and some quite bare. Some chinquapin there not fallen. Notice a chestnut quite bare. The leaves of the hickory are a very rich yellow, though they may be quite withered and fallen, but they become brown. Looking to Conantum, the huckleberries are apparently fallen.  

The fields are now perhaps truly and most generally russet, especially where the blackberry and other small reddish plants are seen through the fine bleached grass and stubble, —-like a golden russet apple. This occurs to me, going along the side of the Well Meadow Field.

Apparently the scarlet oak, large and small (not shrubby), is in prime now, after other oaks are generally withered or withering. The clumps of Salix tristis, half yellow, spotted with dark-brown or blackish and half withered and turned dark ash-colored, are rather interesting. The S. humilis has similar dark spots. ’ 

Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets; and little wasp (?) nests, one and a half inches wide,on huckleberry (?) and sweet-fern (?).

White pines have for the most part fallen. All the underwood is hung with their brown fallen needles, giving to the woods an untidy appearance. _

C. tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass. Were they not meadow-hens?  Rice says he saw one within a week. Have they not lingered to feed in our meadows the late warm and pleasant nights?

The haze is still very thick, though it is comparatively cool weather, and if there were no moon to-night, I think it would be very dark. Do not the darkest nights occur about this time, when there is a haze produced by the Indian-summer days, succeeded by a moonless night?

These bright leaves are not the exception but the rule, for I believe that all leaves, even grasses, etc., etc., — Panicum clandestinum, — and mosses, as sphagnum, under favorable circumstances acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints, though it may be rare and unobserved, as many a plant is at all seasons. And if you undertake to make a complete list of the bright tints, your list will be as long as a catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.

Think how much the eyes of painters, both artisans and artists, and of the manufacturers of cloth and paper, and the paper-stainers, etc., are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer’s envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of the leaves of a single tree sometimes. If you want a different shade or tint of a particular color, you have only to look further within or without the tree, or the wood. The eye might thus be taught to distinguish color and appreciate a difference of tint or shade.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1858


It is interesting to observe how gradually but steadily the woods advance through deeper and deeper shades of brown to their fall. See October 22, 1857 ("Large oaks are already generally brown. Reddish brown is the prevailing color of deciduous woods")

The birches are now but thinly clad its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now surmounted by little cones or crescents of golden spangles.  See October 22, 1855; ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines"); October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.')

On the top of the Cliff I see a mullein freshly out, very handsome Aster undulatus, and an abundance of the little blue snapdragon. See October 22, 1851 ("the Canada snapdragon still blooms bluely by the roadside."); October 11, 1856 ("Here on the Cliffs are fresh poke flowers and small snapdragon and corydalis."); October 22, 1859 ("In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together.")

Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets. See October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone");

White pines have for the most part fallen. See October 22, 1851 ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.")