On the hill where Billington climbed a tree.

May 24.

The cooing of a dove reminded me of an owl this morning. 

Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch, three and a half by five inches, and as many buds, there being six plants close together; on the hill where Billington climbed a tree. 

A calabash at Pilgrim Hall nearly two feet high, in the form of a jar, showed what these fruits were made for. Nature's jars and vases. 

Holbrook says the Bufo Americanus is the most common in America and is our representative of the Bufo communis of Europe; speaks of its trill; deposits its spawn in pools. 

Found in College Yard Trifolium procumbens, or yellow clover. 

Concord. — Celandine in blossom, and horse-chest nut.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1852


Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch. See May 20, 1853 ("Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top") See also May 10, 1858 ("How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses. [I]t spreads so perfectly open with its face turned upward that you get its whole expression."); May 17, 1853 ("The V. pedata there presents the greatest array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are so raised above their leaves, and so close together, that they make a more indelible impression of blue on the eye; it is almost dazzling. . . .The effect and intensity is very much increased by the numbers.")

Found in College Yard Trifolium procumbens, or yellow clover. See May 30, 1856 ("Yellow clover abundantly out, though the heads are small yet. Are they quite open?"); September 21, 1858 ("Saw, in Salem, . . . Trifolium procumbens, still abundant"). [Trifolium procumbens is now called Trifolium campestre, commonly known as hop trefoil, field clover and low hop clover, is a species of clover  growing in dry, sandy grassland habitats, fields, woodland margins, roadsides, wastelands and cultivated land. The species name campestre means "of the fields".]

Celandine in blossom. See May 24, 1855 ("Celandine pollen."); See also May 14, 1858 ("Celandine by cemetery. "); May 16, 1853 ("Celandine is out a day or more"); May 18, 1854 ("Celandine yesterday.");

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021