For the first time I perceive this spring
that the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
The scarlet oak asks
a clear sky and the brightness
of late October days –
These bring out its colors.
The scarlet oak –How
finely its leaves out against
the sky with sharp points
How curves and angles
combine in pleasing outline –
the scarlet oak leaf!
February 2. I see Peter Hutchinson cutting down a large red oak on A. Heywood’s hillside, west of the former’s house. He points out to me what he calls the “gray oak” there, with “a thicker bar” than the red. It is the scarlet oak. February 2, 1859
February 8. I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Its stem and lobes and all their bristly points are just as sharply cut there as is the leaf itself, fitting the mould closely and tightly, and, there being a small hole or two in the leaf, the ice stands up through them half an inch high, like so many sharp tacks. Indeed, the leaf is sculptured thus in bas-relief, as it were, as sharply and exactly as it could be done by the most perfect tools in any material. But as time has elapsed since it first began to sink into the ice, the upper part of this mould is enlarged by melting more or less, and often shows the outline of the leaf exaggerated and less sharp and perfect. February 8, 1860
March 22. The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them. March 22, 1859
May 24. Black oak pollen yesterday, at least. Scarlet oak the same, but a little later. The staminate flowers of the first are on long and handsome tassels for three or four inches along the extremities of last year’s shoots, depending five inches (sometimes six) by four in width and quite dense and thick. The scarlet oak tassels are hardly half as long; the leaves, much greener and smoother and now somewhat wilted, emit a sweet odor, which those of the black do not. Both these oaks are apparently more forward at top, where I cannot see them. May 24, 1855
May 30. The young black oak leafets are dark red or reddish, thick and downy; the scarlet oak also are somewhat reddish, thick and downy, or thin and green and little downy, like red oak, but rather more deeply cut; the red oak broad, thin, green and not downy; the white pink-red. May 30, 1857
October 11. I see in many distant places stout twigs (black or scarlet oak) three or four inches long which have been gnawed off by the squirrels, with four to seven acorns on each, and left on the ground. October 11, 1859
October 11. There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. October 11, 1860
October 14. The nearer woods, where chestnuts grow, are a mass of warm, glowing [yellow] . . .but on other sides the red and yellow are intermixed. The red, probably of scarlet oaks on the south of Fair Haven Hill, is very fair. October 14, 1859
October 15. White oaks are rapidly withering, — the outer leaves. The small black oaks, too, are beginning to wither and turn brown. Small red oaks, at least, and small scarlet ones, are apparently in their prime in sprout-lands and young woods. The large leaves of the red oaks are still fresh, of mingled reddish or scarlet, yellow, and green, striking for the size of the leaf, but not so uniformly dark and brilliant as the scarlet. The black oak is yellowish, a half-decayed or brownish yellow, and already becoming brown and crisp, though not so much so as the white. The scarlet is the most brilliant of the oaks, finely fingered, especially noticeable in sprout-lands and young woods. The larger ones are still altogether green, or show a deep cool green in their recesses. If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks; the next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon ?) red, are the white oaks; then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green; and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak. The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. October 15, 1858
October 21. The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look. The red oak is more red. But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses. October 21, 1855
October 22. I see a scarlet oak and even a white one, still almost entirely green! The chestnut oak there is also generally green still, some leaves turned yellow-brown and withering so. October 22, 1857
October 22. 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 . . . Many of the small scarlet ones are withered too, but the larger scarlet appear to be in their prime now . . . 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 . . . Apparently the scarlet oak, large and small (not shrubby), is in prime now, after other oaks are generally withered or withering. October 22, 1858
October 24. The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory . . . Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached While those of other trees are falling around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.” Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen. October 24, 1858
October 25. Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak] (if it can be called brown at all, for it is not faded to brown yet and looks full of life though really withered (i. e. the shrubs) for the most part, excepting here and there leading shoots or spring twigs, which glow as bright a scarlet as ever). There is no red here, but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors, far from spot and decay, and their rustling leaves call the roll for a winter campaign. How different now the rustling of these sere leaves from the soft, fluttering murmur of the same when alive! This sharp rustle warns all to go home now who are not prepared for a winter campaign. The scarlet oak shrubs are as distinct amid the other species as before they had withered, and it is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood. October 25, 1858
October 26. The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. I found the sap was flowing fast in it. White birches, elms, chestnuts, Salix alba (small willows), and white maple are a long time falling. The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later. October 26, 1858
October 29. Notwithstanding the few handsome scarlet oaks that may yet be found, and the larches and pitch pines and the few thin-leaved Populus grandidentata, the brightness of the foliage, generally speaking, is past . . . I look north from the causeway at Heywood’s meadow. How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines, their branches (still bright) intimately intermingled with the pine! They have their full effect there. The pine boughs are the green calyx to its petals. Without these pines for contrast the autumnal tints would lose a considerable part of their effect . . .The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles, and those oak sprout-lands where they glowed are now an almost uniform brown red. Or, strictly speaking, they are pale-brown, mottled with dull red where the small scarlet oak stands. October 29, 1858
October 30. Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks. October 30, 1855
October 30. What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered . . . It may account for this to say that the scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November. October 30, 1858
October 31. I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff . . .As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden. October 31, 1858
November 1. If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. You might live to the age of Methusaleh and never find a tithe of them otherwise. November 1, 1858
November 2. Going over the newly cleared pasture on the northeast of Fair Haven Hill, I see that the scarlet oaks are more generally bright than on the 22d ult. Even the little sprouts in the russet pasture and the high tree-tops in the yew wood burn now, when the middle-sized bushes in the sprout-lands have mostly gone out. The large scarlet oak trees and tree-tops in woods, perhaps especially on hills, apparently are late because raised above the influence of the early frosts. Methinks they are as bright, even this dark day, as I ever saw them . . . I do not know but they interest me more than the maples, they are so widely and equally dispersed throughout the forest; they are so hardy, a nobler tree on the whole, lasting into November; our chief November flower, abiding the approach of winter with us, imparting warmth to November prospects. It is remarkable that the latest bright color that is general should be this deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of colors, the ripest fruit of the year, like the cheek of a glossy red ripe apple from the cold Isle of Orleans, which will not be mellow for eating till next spring! When I rise to a hilltop, a thousand of these great oak roses, distributed on every side as far as the horizon! This my unfailing prospect for a fortnight past as surely as I rose to a hilltop! This late forest flower surpasses all that spring or summer could do. Their colors were but rare and dainty specks, which made no impression on a distant eye. Now it is an extended forest or a mountain-side that bursts into bloom, through or along which we may journey from day to day. I admire these roses three or four miles off in the horizon. Comparatively, our gardening is on a petty scale, the gardener still nursing a few asters amid dead weeds, ignorant of the gigantic asters and roses which, as it were, overshadow him and ask for none of his care. Comparatively, it is like a little red paint ground on a teacup and held up against the sunset sky. Why not take more elevated and broader views, walk in the greater garden, not skulk in a little “debauched” nook of it? Consider the beauty of the earth, and not merely of a few impounded herbs? However, you will not see these splendors, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, unless you are prepared to see them. The gardener can see only the gardener’s garden, wherever he goes. The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation . . . The sap is now frequently flowing fast in the scarlet oaks (as I have not observed it in the others), and has a pleasant acorn-like taste. _ Their bright tints, now that most other oaks are withered, are connected with this phenomenon. They are full of sap and life. They flow like a sugar maple in the spring. It has a pleasantly astringent taste, this strong oak wine. November 2, 1858
November 4. If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of the town and look over the forest, you will see, amid the brown of other oaks, which are now withered, and the green of the pines, the bright-red tops or crescents of the scarlet oaks, very equally and thickly distributed on all sides, even to the horizon. Complete trees standing exposed on the edges of the forest, where you have never suspected them, or their tops only in the recesses of the forest surface, or perhaps towering above the surrounding trees, or reflecting a warm rose red from the very edge of the horizon in favorable lights. All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it . . . The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. November 4, 1858 [See also note to Autumnal Tints ("All this you surely will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, ")]
November 9. It is remarkable that the only deciduous trees in the town which now make any show with their living leaves are: (1) scarlet oaks, perhaps only one . . . The scarlet oak by Agricultural Ground (and no doubt generally) is falling fast, and has been for some days, and they have now generally grown dull—before the leaves have lost their color. Other oaks may be said [to] have assumed their true November aspect; i. e., the larger ones are about bare. November 9, 1858
November 9. To Inches’ Woods in Boxboro . . . The large wood is chiefly oak, and that white oak, though black, red, and scarlet oak are also common . . . Beginning at the north end of our walk, the trees which I measured were (all at three feet from ground except when otherwise stated) : a black oak, ten feet [ in ] circumference, trunk tall and of regular form ; scarlet oak, seven feet three inches, by Guggins Brook. November 9, 1860
November 10. The brilliancy of the scarlet oak being generally dulled, the season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. . . .Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak. I could hear them break them off. They then flew to a suitable limb and, placing the acorn under one foot, hammered away at it busily, looking round from time to time to see if any foe was approaching, and soon reached the meat and nibbled at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they held it very firmly with their claws. (Their hammering made a sound like the woodpecker’s.) Nevertheless it some times dropped to the ground before they had done with it . . . So many objects are white or light, preparing us for winter. By the 10th of November we conclude with the scarlet oak dulled (and the colors of October generally faded), with a few golden spangles on the white birches and on a lingering Populus tremuliformis. November 10, 1858
November 11. TThe scarlet oak leaf! What a graceful and pleasing outline! a combination of graceful curves and angles. These deep bays in the leaf are agreeable to us as the thought of deep and smooth and secure havens to the mariner. But both your love of repose and your spirit of adventure are addressed, for both bays and head lands are represented, — sharp-pointed rocky capes and rounded bays with smooth strands. To the sailor’s eye it is a much indented shore, and in his casual glance he thinks that if he doubles its sharp capes he will find a haven in its deep rounded bays. If I were a drawing master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully. It is a shore to the aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats. November 11, 1858
November 21. Probably the bulk of the scarlet oak leaves are fallen. November 21, 1858
November 27. I find scarlet oak acorns like this
in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base, and Emerson represents but one form of the fruit. The leaf of this was not very deeply cut, was broad for its length. November 27, 1858
December 9. As I stand on the railroad against Heywood's meadow, the sun now getting low in the west, the leaves of the young oaks in Emerson's sprout-land on the side of the hill make a very agreeable thick, rug-like stuff for the eye to rest on. The white oak leaves are a very pale brown, but the scarlet oaks are quite red now in the sun. Near at hand they are conspicuously ruddy in any light, the scarlet oaks . . . This slight difference of shading makes a very pleasing variety on this densely covered hillside, like a rich embroidered stuff. One species does not stand by itself, but they are dispersed and intimately mingled. December 9, 1856
December 11. The terminal shoots of the small scarlet oaks are still distinctly red, though withered . . . The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now. So has the largest black oak which I see. Others of both, and all, kinds are bare. December 11, 1858
December 13. There is a fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak between Muhlenbergii Brook and the Assabet River watering-place, in the open land. It is about thirty- five feet high and spreads twenty-five, perfectly regular. It is very full of leaves, excepting a crescent of bare twigs at the summit about three feet wide in the middle. The leaves have a little redness in them. December 13, 1856
December 21. The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides. They still spread their ruddy fingers to the breeze. After the shrub and swamp white, they are perhaps the best preserved of any I describe. December 21, 1856
January 19. I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak. Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. January 19, 1859
February 8. I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Its stem and lobes and all their bristly points are just as sharply cut there as is the leaf itself, fitting the mould closely and tightly, and, there being a small hole or two in the leaf, the ice stands up through them half an inch high, like so many sharp tacks. Indeed, the leaf is sculptured thus in bas-relief, as it were, as sharply and exactly as it could be done by the most perfect tools in any material. But as time has elapsed since it first began to sink into the ice, the upper part of this mould is enlarged by melting more or less, and often shows the outline of the leaf exaggerated and less sharp and perfect. February 8, 1860
March 22. The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them. March 22, 1859
May 24. Black oak pollen yesterday, at least. Scarlet oak the same, but a little later. The staminate flowers of the first are on long and handsome tassels for three or four inches along the extremities of last year’s shoots, depending five inches (sometimes six) by four in width and quite dense and thick. The scarlet oak tassels are hardly half as long; the leaves, much greener and smoother and now somewhat wilted, emit a sweet odor, which those of the black do not. Both these oaks are apparently more forward at top, where I cannot see them. May 24, 1855
May 30. The young black oak leafets are dark red or reddish, thick and downy; the scarlet oak also are somewhat reddish, thick and downy, or thin and green and little downy, like red oak, but rather more deeply cut; the red oak broad, thin, green and not downy; the white pink-red. May 30, 1857
October 11. I see in many distant places stout twigs (black or scarlet oak) three or four inches long which have been gnawed off by the squirrels, with four to seven acorns on each, and left on the ground. October 11, 1859
October 11. There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. October 11, 1860
October 14. The nearer woods, where chestnuts grow, are a mass of warm, glowing [yellow] . . .but on other sides the red and yellow are intermixed. The red, probably of scarlet oaks on the south of Fair Haven Hill, is very fair. October 14, 1859
October 15. White oaks are rapidly withering, — the outer leaves. The small black oaks, too, are beginning to wither and turn brown. Small red oaks, at least, and small scarlet ones, are apparently in their prime in sprout-lands and young woods. The large leaves of the red oaks are still fresh, of mingled reddish or scarlet, yellow, and green, striking for the size of the leaf, but not so uniformly dark and brilliant as the scarlet. The black oak is yellowish, a half-decayed or brownish yellow, and already becoming brown and crisp, though not so much so as the white. The scarlet is the most brilliant of the oaks, finely fingered, especially noticeable in sprout-lands and young woods. The larger ones are still altogether green, or show a deep cool green in their recesses. If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks; the next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon ?) red, are the white oaks; then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green; and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak. The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. October 15, 1858
October 21. The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look. The red oak is more red. But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses. October 21, 1855
October 22. I see a scarlet oak and even a white one, still almost entirely green! The chestnut oak there is also generally green still, some leaves turned yellow-brown and withering so. October 22, 1857
October 22. 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 . . . Many of the small scarlet ones are withered too, but the larger scarlet appear to be in their prime now . . . 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 . . . Apparently the scarlet oak, large and small (not shrubby), is in prime now, after other oaks are generally withered or withering. October 22, 1858
October 24. The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory . . . Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached While those of other trees are falling around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.” Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen. October 24, 1858
October 25. Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak] (if it can be called brown at all, for it is not faded to brown yet and looks full of life though really withered (i. e. the shrubs) for the most part, excepting here and there leading shoots or spring twigs, which glow as bright a scarlet as ever). There is no red here, but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors, far from spot and decay, and their rustling leaves call the roll for a winter campaign. How different now the rustling of these sere leaves from the soft, fluttering murmur of the same when alive! This sharp rustle warns all to go home now who are not prepared for a winter campaign. The scarlet oak shrubs are as distinct amid the other species as before they had withered, and it is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood. October 25, 1858
October 26. The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. I found the sap was flowing fast in it. White birches, elms, chestnuts, Salix alba (small willows), and white maple are a long time falling. The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later. October 26, 1858
October 29. Notwithstanding the few handsome scarlet oaks that may yet be found, and the larches and pitch pines and the few thin-leaved Populus grandidentata, the brightness of the foliage, generally speaking, is past . . . I look north from the causeway at Heywood’s meadow. How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines, their branches (still bright) intimately intermingled with the pine! They have their full effect there. The pine boughs are the green calyx to its petals. Without these pines for contrast the autumnal tints would lose a considerable part of their effect . . .The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles, and those oak sprout-lands where they glowed are now an almost uniform brown red. Or, strictly speaking, they are pale-brown, mottled with dull red where the small scarlet oak stands. October 29, 1858
October 30. Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks. October 30, 1855
October 30. What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered . . . It may account for this to say that the scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November. October 30, 1858
October 31. I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff . . .As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden. October 31, 1858
November 1. If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. You might live to the age of Methusaleh and never find a tithe of them otherwise. November 1, 1858
November 2. Going over the newly cleared pasture on the northeast of Fair Haven Hill, I see that the scarlet oaks are more generally bright than on the 22d ult. Even the little sprouts in the russet pasture and the high tree-tops in the yew wood burn now, when the middle-sized bushes in the sprout-lands have mostly gone out. The large scarlet oak trees and tree-tops in woods, perhaps especially on hills, apparently are late because raised above the influence of the early frosts. Methinks they are as bright, even this dark day, as I ever saw them . . . I do not know but they interest me more than the maples, they are so widely and equally dispersed throughout the forest; they are so hardy, a nobler tree on the whole, lasting into November; our chief November flower, abiding the approach of winter with us, imparting warmth to November prospects. It is remarkable that the latest bright color that is general should be this deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of colors, the ripest fruit of the year, like the cheek of a glossy red ripe apple from the cold Isle of Orleans, which will not be mellow for eating till next spring! When I rise to a hilltop, a thousand of these great oak roses, distributed on every side as far as the horizon! This my unfailing prospect for a fortnight past as surely as I rose to a hilltop! This late forest flower surpasses all that spring or summer could do. Their colors were but rare and dainty specks, which made no impression on a distant eye. Now it is an extended forest or a mountain-side that bursts into bloom, through or along which we may journey from day to day. I admire these roses three or four miles off in the horizon. Comparatively, our gardening is on a petty scale, the gardener still nursing a few asters amid dead weeds, ignorant of the gigantic asters and roses which, as it were, overshadow him and ask for none of his care. Comparatively, it is like a little red paint ground on a teacup and held up against the sunset sky. Why not take more elevated and broader views, walk in the greater garden, not skulk in a little “debauched” nook of it? Consider the beauty of the earth, and not merely of a few impounded herbs? However, you will not see these splendors, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, unless you are prepared to see them. The gardener can see only the gardener’s garden, wherever he goes. The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation . . . The sap is now frequently flowing fast in the scarlet oaks (as I have not observed it in the others), and has a pleasant acorn-like taste. _ Their bright tints, now that most other oaks are withered, are connected with this phenomenon. They are full of sap and life. They flow like a sugar maple in the spring. It has a pleasantly astringent taste, this strong oak wine. November 2, 1858
November 4. If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of the town and look over the forest, you will see, amid the brown of other oaks, which are now withered, and the green of the pines, the bright-red tops or crescents of the scarlet oaks, very equally and thickly distributed on all sides, even to the horizon. Complete trees standing exposed on the edges of the forest, where you have never suspected them, or their tops only in the recesses of the forest surface, or perhaps towering above the surrounding trees, or reflecting a warm rose red from the very edge of the horizon in favorable lights. All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it . . . The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. November 4, 1858 [See also note to Autumnal Tints ("All this you surely will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, ")]
November 9. It is remarkable that the only deciduous trees in the town which now make any show with their living leaves are: (1) scarlet oaks, perhaps only one . . . The scarlet oak by Agricultural Ground (and no doubt generally) is falling fast, and has been for some days, and they have now generally grown dull—before the leaves have lost their color. Other oaks may be said [to] have assumed their true November aspect; i. e., the larger ones are about bare. November 9, 1858
November 9. To Inches’ Woods in Boxboro . . . The large wood is chiefly oak, and that white oak, though black, red, and scarlet oak are also common . . . Beginning at the north end of our walk, the trees which I measured were (all at three feet from ground except when otherwise stated) : a black oak, ten feet [ in ] circumference, trunk tall and of regular form ; scarlet oak, seven feet three inches, by Guggins Brook. November 9, 1860
November 10. The brilliancy of the scarlet oak being generally dulled, the season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. . . .Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak. I could hear them break them off. They then flew to a suitable limb and, placing the acorn under one foot, hammered away at it busily, looking round from time to time to see if any foe was approaching, and soon reached the meat and nibbled at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they held it very firmly with their claws. (Their hammering made a sound like the woodpecker’s.) Nevertheless it some times dropped to the ground before they had done with it . . . So many objects are white or light, preparing us for winter. By the 10th of November we conclude with the scarlet oak dulled (and the colors of October generally faded), with a few golden spangles on the white birches and on a lingering Populus tremuliformis. November 10, 1858
November 11. TThe scarlet oak leaf! What a graceful and pleasing outline! a combination of graceful curves and angles. These deep bays in the leaf are agreeable to us as the thought of deep and smooth and secure havens to the mariner. But both your love of repose and your spirit of adventure are addressed, for both bays and head lands are represented, — sharp-pointed rocky capes and rounded bays with smooth strands. To the sailor’s eye it is a much indented shore, and in his casual glance he thinks that if he doubles its sharp capes he will find a haven in its deep rounded bays. If I were a drawing master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully. It is a shore to the aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats. November 11, 1858
November 21. Probably the bulk of the scarlet oak leaves are fallen. November 21, 1858
November 27. I find scarlet oak acorns like this
in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base, and Emerson represents but one form of the fruit. The leaf of this was not very deeply cut, was broad for its length. November 27, 1858
December 9. As I stand on the railroad against Heywood's meadow, the sun now getting low in the west, the leaves of the young oaks in Emerson's sprout-land on the side of the hill make a very agreeable thick, rug-like stuff for the eye to rest on. The white oak leaves are a very pale brown, but the scarlet oaks are quite red now in the sun. Near at hand they are conspicuously ruddy in any light, the scarlet oaks . . . This slight difference of shading makes a very pleasing variety on this densely covered hillside, like a rich embroidered stuff. One species does not stand by itself, but they are dispersed and intimately mingled. December 9, 1856
December 11. The terminal shoots of the small scarlet oaks are still distinctly red, though withered . . . The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now. So has the largest black oak which I see. Others of both, and all, kinds are bare. December 11, 1858
December 13. There is a fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak between Muhlenbergii Brook and the Assabet River watering-place, in the open land. It is about thirty- five feet high and spreads twenty-five, perfectly regular. It is very full of leaves, excepting a crescent of bare twigs at the summit about three feet wide in the middle. The leaves have a little redness in them. December 13, 1856
December 21. The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides. They still spread their ruddy fingers to the breeze. After the shrub and swamp white, they are perhaps the best preserved of any I describe. December 21, 1856
January 19. I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak. Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. January 19, 1859
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak
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 © 2009-2023
