An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries.

June 25.

Saturday. P.  M.  — To Assabet Bathing Place.

June 25, 2020

Great orange lily beyond stone bridge.

Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds,-one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them.

Both these are now in their prime.

These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first, and I think the sweetest, bush berries.

Somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc. As big as the largest blueberries or peas.

These are the “service-berries” which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use.  La poire of the latter.

They by a little precede the early blueberry (though Holbrook brought two quarts of the last day before yesterday), being now in their prime, while blueberries are but just beginning.

I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise.

I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit.

It is owing to some peculiarity in the season that they bear fruit.

I have picked a quart of them for a pudding. I felt all the while I was picking them, in the low, light, wavy shrubby wood they make, as if I were in a foreign country.

Several old farmers say, “Well, though I have lived seventy years, I never saw nor heard of them.” I think them a delicious berry, and no doubt they require only to be more abundant every year to be appreciated.

I think it must be the purple finch, — with the crimson head and shoulders, — which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens, — one or two to-day. It sits on a bean-pole or fence-picket. It has a little of the martin warble and of the canary bird.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1853


An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries. See June 25, 1854 ("Shad-berry ripe."); see also May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom."). May 17, 1853 (“The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapium, and young berries are plainly forming.”); May 30, 1852 ("The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet. ");  June 15, 1854 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already red dened two thirds over, and are somewhat palatable and soft, — some of them, — not fairly ripe."); July 13, 1852 ("The dark-purple amelanchier are the sweetest berries I have tasted yet.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

It must be the purple finch which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens. See April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); . April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."). May 24, 1855 ("Hear a purple finch sing more than one minute without pause, loud and rich, on an elm over the street."); July 7, 1856 (" The purple finch still sings over the street."); August 25, 1859 ("Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them.") See also August 11, 1858 ('Heard a fine, sprightly, richly warbled strain from a bird perched on the top of a bean-pole. It was at the same time novel yet familiar to me. I soon recognized it for the strain of the purple finch, which I have not heard lately. But though it appeared as large, it seemed a different-colored bird. With my glass, four rods off, I saw it to be a goldfinch. It kept repeating this warble of the purple finch for several minutes. A very surprising note to be heard now, when birds generally are so silent. Have not heard the purple finch of late.') and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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