The effect of the frost of the 17th.

August 23.

August 23, 2019

P. M. — To Laurel Glen to see the effect of the frost of the 17th (and perhaps 18th). 

As for autumnal tints, the Smilacina racemosa is yellowed, spotted brown in streaks, and half withered; also two-leaved Solomon's-seal is partly yellowed and withered. 

Birches have been much yellowed for some time; also young wild cherry and hazel, and some horse- chestnuts and larches on the street. 

The scarlet lower leaves of the choke-berry and some brakes are the handsomest autumnal tints which I see to-day. 

At Laurel Glen, these plants were touched by frost, in the lowest places, viz., 

• the very small white oaks and hickories; 
• dogsbane very generally; 
• ferns generally, — especially Aspidium Thelypteris (?), the revolute one at bottom of hollow, — including some brakes; 
• some little chinquapin oaks and chestnuts; 
• some small thorns and blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans shoots); 
• aspen, large and tender leaves and shoots; 
• even red maple; 
• many hazel shoots; 
• geraniums;
• indigo-weed; 
• lespedeza (the many-headed) and 
• desmodium (one of the erect ones); 
• a very little of the lowest locust leaves. 

These were very small plants and low, and commonly the most recent and tender growth. The bitten part, often the whole, was dry and shrivelled brown or darker. 

In the river meadows the blue-eyed grass was very generally cut off and is now conspicuously black, — I find but one in bloom, — also small flowering ferns. 

The cranberries (not vines) are extensively frost-bitten and spoiled. 

In Moore's Swamp the potatoes were extensively killed, the greenest or tenderest vines. One says that the driest part suffered the most. They had not nearly got ripe. 

One man had his squash vines killed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1859