The hickories are budded and show the red anthers.

May 21. 

May 11, 2020

(Avesong)

P. M. — Up Assabet to cress, with Sophia. 

Land on Island.

One of the most beautiful things to me now is the reddish-ash, and, higher, the silvery, canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins, — thousands of little tents pitched in the air for the May training of the flowers, so many little parasols to their tenderer flowers. 

Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter. 

It is still windy weather, and while I hear the bobolink strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [ sic ] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes. 

Yet the water is quite still and smooth by the Hemlocks, and as the weather is warm, it is a soothing sight to see it covered with dust there over the Deep Eddy. 

Landed beyond the grape-vine bower and cleared out the spring of leaves and sticks and mud, and deepened it, making an outlet, and it soon ran clear and cold. 

The cress, which proves to be the rock cress, or herb of St. Barbara, is now luxuriant and in bloom in many places along the river, looking like mustard. 

Found the Ranunculus abortivus, apparently some time in blossom, in the woods opposite to the cress. Put it after the repens. 

There are, apparently, two kinds of thorns close together on Nawshawtuct,-one now and for some days in blossom, both bushes and the largest tree, – which are evidently varieties of the Cratægus coccinea, or scarlet-fruited thorn. The tree one is about eleven feet high by ten feet, and would be taken for an apple tree; is crowded full with white bloom very compact and handsome; the most showy of any native tree in these parts when in bloom. Its thorns are stout. 

But there is another kind, thin, wisp-shaped trees, not yet in bloom, with very long, slender, straight needle-shaped thorns and two or three stipules to each peduncle. As it has the usual petioles, is not the cockspur, but may be a variety of the first-named. 

The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. 

The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds. 

The red maple keys are not half so large now, and are a dull red, of a similar form. 

The hickories are budded and show the red anthers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1853

Canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins. See May 17, 1853 ("The blossoms of the red oak hang down under its young leaves as under a canopy.")

The Deep Eddy. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin.")

The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. See May 21, 1852 ("Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.") See also May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!")

The hickories are budded and show the red anthers. See May 14, 1855 ("Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back."); May 17, 1853 ("How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back!"); May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”); May 26, 1857 ("The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise."); May 29, 1857 (“Those great hickory buds, how much they contained! You see now the large reddish scales turned back at the base of the new twigs. Suddenly the buds burst, and those large pinnate leaves stretched forth in various directions.”)