Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

October 7

Went to Plymouth to lecture and survey Watson's grounds. Returned the 15th.

The Decodon verticillatus (swamp loosestrife) very abundant, forming isles in the pond on Town Brook on Watson's farm, now turned (methinks it was) a somewhat orange (?) scarlet.

Measured a buckthorn on land of N. Russell & Co., bounding on Watson, close by the ruins of the cotton-factory, in five places from the ground to the first branching, or as high as my head. The diameters were 4 feet 8 inches, 4-6, 4-3, 4-2, 4-6. It was full of fruit now quite ripe, which Watson plants. The birds eat it.

Saw a small goldenrod in the woods with four very broad rays, a new kind to me

Saw also the English oak; leaf much like our white oak, but acorns large and long, with a long peduncle, and the bark of these young trees, twenty or twenty-five feet high, quite smooth.

Saw moon-seed, a climbing vine.

Also the leaf of the ginkgo tree, of pine-needles run together.

Spooner's garden a wilderness of fruit trees.

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1854

Went to Plymouth to lecture.   On Sunday, October 8, 1854  Thoreau gave his lecture "Moonlight" to a small audience of friends, among them Bronson Alcott. James Spooner, Marston Watson and his wife Mary Russell Watson.  See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden 259-255.  See also Night and Moonlight

A tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge.

August 22.

Saturday. 

Channing has brought me from Plymouth and Watson Drosera filiformis, just out of bloom, from Great South Pond, Solidago tenuifolia in bloom, Sabbatia chloroides, and Coreopsis rosea. 

Edward Hoar shows me Lobelia Kalmii, which he gathered in flower in Hopkinton about the 18th of July. (I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot); staphylea (in fruit) from Northampton, plucked within a week or so (Bigelow says it grows in Weston); also the leaves of a tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge, quite unlike our tupelo. Is it not the Celtis crassifolia? 

He says he found the Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road, he thinks within Concord bounds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1857

I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot. See August 1, 1857 ("Lobelia Kalmii, . . .on bare rocks just below the falls.")

The Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road.  Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort  are two that are second-hand, August 22, 1857,  and  September 22, 1852 (noting Sophia finds this in Concord with no date or locale given,)~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

Looking at the birds' eggs in the Natural History Rooms in Boston./ botanizing Cape Cod

June 12. 

June 12, 2017

Friday. 8.30 a. m. — Set out for CAPE COD. 

Eggs. — 

     At Natural History Rooms. — 


The egg found on ground in R. W. E.'s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink's, for that is about as big as a bay-wing's but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches. 

The egg of the Turdus solitarius is lettered "Swamp Robin." Is this what they so call at New Bedford? 

The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. 

The yellow-shouldered sparrow's egg is size of Maryland yellow-throat's, white with brown spots, sometimes in a ring at the larger end. 

The Savannah sparrow's is about the same size, dirty-white with thick brown blotches. 

I find that the egg Farmer gave me for the "chicklisee's " is enough like the yellow-throat's to be it. Can he be thinking of the note, whittichee ? Or is it the yellow-shouldered sparrow's egg? 

The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green. 

Some edible swallows' (?) nests, on a stick, side by side, shallow and small and shaped like oyster-shells, light-colored, but yet placed somewhat like the chimney swallows'. 

Among the frogs in alcohol I notice the Scaphiopus solitarius, Cambridge!! 

Michaux says that mocker-nuts are of various sizes and forms, some round, some oblong. So I have found them. He also says that "the red-flowering maple [Acer rubrum]  is the earliest tree whose bloom announces the return of Spring." This is a mistake, the white maple being much earlier. 

I have not found the white spruce yet. 

P. M. — At Watson's, Plymouth. 

W. has several varieties of the English hawthorn (oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and sin gle, and very handsome now. 

His English oak is almost entirely out of bloom, though I got some flowers. The biggest, which was set out in '49, is about thirty feet high, and, as I measured, just twenty inches in circumference at four inches from the ground. A very rapid growth. 

I obtained there specimens of the plum-leaved willow, come well ditto, — because it comes on fast, — and Salix rosmarinifolia. Only some lingering bloom with the last. 

He has the foreign Betula alba (much like our populifolia), its bark loosened up like our papyracea, but not so white; and what was sent him for popvlifolia, much like our red birch, the bark much like that of alba loosened up, but more reddish, the limbs red, leaves like a balm-of-Gilead somewhat, large (vide press). The papyracea leaves are unusually wedge-shaped at base, methinks. 

The moosewood is chiefly fruiting, but some still in bloom. 

Cornus sanguinea, in its prime. Its bark is bright-red and greenish. That of C. sericea (not well named) is dark-purplish. The Oriental is later to bloom than ours or else smaller-fruited. 

The American mountain-ash not yet out (Cheney's in Concord, a day or two, June 25th). Nuttall says its leaves are at last very smooth. 

I have hitherto observed the Pyrus aucuparia, or European, at Prichard's, Whiting's, etc. 

W. has the Crataegus prunifolius, with its thorns (vide herbarium); Castanea vesca, Spanish chestnut, of which ours is made a variety merely; Populus monilifera, as he calls it, and another very like it.

Bayberry well out. Senecio vulgaris a common weed, apparently in prime. 

Honkenya and beach pea well out on Plymouth beach. 

W. has a very flourishing and large white maple of his setting, and they stand in Plymouth streets also, very pretty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1857

The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. . . . The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green. See  May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”); Also see  note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.")

W[atson] has several varieties of the English hawthorn (oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and sin gle, and very handsome now. See June 12, 1855  ("A hawthorn grows near by, just out of bloom, twelve feet high — Crataegus Oxyacantha.")