I think I could write a poem
to be called Concord.
For argument I should have
the River, the Woods,
the Ponds, the Hills, the Fields,
the Swamps and Meadows . . .
Henry Thoreau,
The white cedar swamp –
reddish staminate flowers
ready to open.
Go to new trees
like cedars and firs
and you hear new birds.
April 23. P.M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. Warm and pretty still. Even the riversides are quiet at this hour (3 P.M.) as in summer; the birds are neither seen nor heard. The anthers of the larch are conspicuous, but I see no pollen. White cedar to-morrow. April 23, 1855
April 23, 2025
April 23. P. M. — Up Assabet to white cedars . . . The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. April 23, 1856
April 24. P. M. — Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp. . .The white cedar female blossoms are open. Hear amid the white cedars the fine, clear singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th,very clear and fast. Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds. I have also observed that the early birds are about the early trees, like maples, alders, willows, elms, etc. New plant (Racemed andromeda) flower-budded at Cedar Swamp amid the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, clethra, etc. – upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots. April 24, 1854
April 24. P. M. — To Flint’s Pond . . . I can find no red cedar in bloom, but it will undoubtedly shed pollen to-morrow. It is on the point of it. I am not sure that the white cedar is any earlier. The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich. The next day they shed an abundance of pollen in the house. It is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon. It would be very pleasant to make a collection of these powders, – like dry ground paints. They would be the right kind of chemicals to have. April 24, 1855
April 25. The red cedar has fairly begun to-day; maybe the first yesterday. Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. April 25, 1854
April 26. The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.
April 26. P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp . . .The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. April 26, 1857
April 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp . . . The white cedar now sheds pollen abundantly. Many flowers are effete, though many are not open. Probably it began as much as three days ago. I strike a twig, and its peculiar pinkish pollen fills the air. Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color . . . A pigeon woodpecker alights on a dead cedar top near me. Its cackle, thus near, sounds like eh eh eh eh eh, etc., rapidly and emphatically repeated. Some birch sprouts in the swamp are leafed as much as any shrub or tree. April 29, 1856
May 1. Hear a golden-crested* wren at Cedar Swamp. May 1, 1854
May 4. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. May 4, 1856
May 29. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects. May 29, 1854
June 3. P. M. — To White Cedar Swamp . . .The racemed andromeda (Leucothoe) has been partly killed, — the extremities of the twigs, — so that its racemes are imperfect, the lower parts only green. It is not quite out; probably is later for this injury. The ground of the cedar swamp, where it has been burnt over and sprouts, etc., have sprung up again, is covered with the Marchantia polymorpha. Now shows its starlike or umbrella-shaped fertile flowers and its shield-shaped sterile ones. It is a very rank and wild- looking vegetation, forming the cuticle of the swamp's foundation. June 3, 1857
June 8. P. M. -— To Cedar Swamp . . . I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens?. . . At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. It appeared to have a black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle. June 8, 1856
June 10. We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. . . .What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures. It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s. Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? June 10, 1853
November 3. P. M. — To Annursnack . . . Returning, I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. November 3, 1858
November 14. Went through the white cedar swamp. There are white cedars, larch (now bare), spruce, etc.; cedars two feet through, the only ones I know in Concord. It was here were cut the cedar posts which Alcott put into Emerson's summer-house. They could not be spared even for that. It is a stout tree here, tapering with singular abruptness. Its small flattish leaves, dispersed crosswise and at other or different angles with each other, give it a peculiarly light, fantastic look. Myriads of little ones are springing in the more open parts of the swamp. They are turned a reddish green now. The large trees have a very rough bark, regularly furrowed perpendicularly, and a bright-yellow resin between the furrows. I find that the inner bark makes a good lye. Is this used by the Indians? Methinks these are flower-buds which are formed at the ends of the leafets and will open early in the spring. This swamp must be visited in midsummer. You see great shelf-shaped fungi, handsomely buttressed and perfectly horizontal , on the under side of slanting dead trees, at different stages one above another. November 14, 1853
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps
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 © 2009-2026
According to Thoreau Place Names "Cedar Swamp" is a large swampt hat straddles the notrhern boundary between Concord and Carlisle, with the southern portion in what Thoreau called "Easterbrook Country. See June 10, 1853. A distinct "White Cedar Swamp" likely was a swampy area now a pond about 400 meters due north of the former residence of George M. Barrett on Mill Road right where College Road starts. "Gleason misplaces Cedar Swamp somewhat on his map placing it in a wetland about 500 meters northeast of the pond/ex-swamp.
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-cedar
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