I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time.

 June 3. 

Tuesday.

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday, and walked to As- or Hasnebumskit Hill in Paxton the next day.

Said to be the highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett.

Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss Butman (?), Wyman, Conant.

Returned to Boston yesterday.

Conversed with John Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other uses.

He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths.

Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn was the Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa, cow berry, because it was edible and not the Uva-Ursi, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord.

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom and the fresh lighter growth contrasting with the dark green; an abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge berries, as Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit.

Sugar maples about there.

A very extensive view, but the western view not so much wilder as I expected. 

See Barre, about fifteen miles off, and Rutland, etc., etc. Not so much forest as in our neighborhood; high, swelling hills, but less shade for the walker. The hills are green, the soil springier; and it is written that water is more easily obtained on the hill than in the valleys.

Saw a Scotch fir, the pine so valued for tar and naval uses in the north of Europe.

Mr. Chamberlin told me that there was no corporation in Worcester except the banks ( which I suspect may not be literally true ), and hence their freedom and independence. I think it likely there is a gas company to light the streets at least.

John Mactaggart finds the ice thickest not in the largest lakes in Canada, nor in the smallest, where the surrounding forests melt it.

He says that the surveyor of the boundary-line between England and United States on the Columbia River saw pine trees which would require sixteen feet in the blade to a cross-cut saw to do anything with them.

I examined to-day a large swamp white oak in Hubbard's meadow, which was blown down by the same storm which destroyed the lighthouse. At five feet from the ground it was nine and three fourths feet in circumference; the first branch at eleven and a half feet from ground; and it held its size up to twenty-three feet from the ground. Its whole height, measured on the ground, was eighty feet, and its breadth about sixty-six feet.

The roots on one side were turned up with the soil on them, making an object very conspicuous a great distance off, the highest root being eighteen feet from the ground and fourteen feet above centre of trunk. The roots, which were small and thickly interlaced, were from three to nine inches beneath the surface ( in other trees I saw them level with the surface ) and thence extended fifteen to eighteen inches in depth (i. e to this depth they occupied the ground). They were broken off at about eleven feet from the centre of the trunk and were there on an average one inch in diameter, the largest being three inches in diameter.The longest root was broken off at twenty feet from the centre, and was there three quarters of an inch in diameter.

The tree was rotten within. The lower side of the soil (what was originally the lower), which clothed the roots for nine feet from the centre of the tree, was white and clayey to appearance, and a sparrow was sitting on three eggs within the mass. Directly under where the massive trunk had stood, and within a foot of the surface, you could apparently strike in a spade and meet with no obstruction to a free cultivation.

There was no tap root to be seen. The roots were encircled with dark, nubby rings. The tree, which still had a portion of its roots in the ground and held to them by a sliver on the leeward side, was alive and had leaved out, though on many branches the leaves were shrivelled again.

Quercus bicolor of Bigelow, Q. Prinus discolor Mx. f.

June 3, 2016

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time, the swift Camilla on it. It might have been noticed before. You might have seen it now for a week past on grain-fields.

Clover has blossomed.

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus.

Methinks it must be the small andromeda (?), that dull red mass of leaves in the swamp, mixed perchance with the rhodora, with its dry fruit like appendages, as well as the Andromeda paniculata, else called ligustrina, and the clethra.

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland. The earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.

The Phaseolus vulgaris includes several kinds of bush beans, of which those I raised were one.

  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1851

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday[May 31, 1851] See Thoreau's Lectures Before Walden, Lecture 32 (Thoreau read a  version of "Walking or the Wild" to a private audience)

John Downes tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths. See. June 3, 1857 (" I feel the suckers' nests with my paddle, but do not see them on account of the depth of the river"); May 7, 1853 ("The stone heaps have been formed since I was here before, methinks about a month ag . . . i. e., piles several feet in diameter by a foot high have evidently been made (no doubt commonly on the ruins of old ones) within a month. The stones are less than the size of a hen's egg, down to a pebble;")

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill. See May 30, 1857 ("By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond, just before reaching the wall by the brook, I . . .am surprised to find ... the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before. . . .. It is considerably past its prime “). Note: Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort are tsecond-hand, August 22, 1857 and September 22, 1852 ~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,"); May 23, 1853 ("And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season ."); May 30, 1852 (A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); June 9, 1852 ("The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.")

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus. See May 6, 1860 ("indigo-weed shoots six inches high"); July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there.")

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus). . .earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now"); June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup")

Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.  See March 4, 1854 (" In the meadow beyond I see everywhere the green and reddish radical leaves of the golden senecio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me back or forward to an incredible season. Who would believe that under the snow and ice lie still — or in midwinter — some green leaves which, bruised, yield the same odor that they do when their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June? Nothing so realizes the summer to me now."); March 10 1853 ("the fragrance of the senecio, which is decidedly evergreen, which I have bruised, is very permanent and brings round the year again. It is a memorable sweet meadowy fragrance."); August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio.")

No dark pines in the horizon.

January 24. 

In Worcester. 

From 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., walked about six miles north west into Holden with Blake, returning by Stonehouse Hill.

 A very cold day. 

Less forest near Worcester than in Concord, and that hardwood. No dark pines in the horizon. 

The evergreen laurel is a common underwood, contrasting agreeably with the snow. Large, broad backed hills. 

De Quincey's “Historical and Critical Essays” I have not read (2 vols.). 

Saw a red squirrel out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1854

In Worcester, walked about six miles north west into Holden with Blake. See Letters to Blake, January 21, 1854 ("I think to come and see you next week, on Monday, if nothing hinders. I have just returned from court at Cambridge, whither I was called as a witness, having surveyed a water-privilege, about which there is a dispute, since you were here.")

No dark pines in the horizon. See  August 15, 1853 ("It is a pleasure to look at the washed woods far away. You see every feature of the white pine grove with distinctness, — the stems of the trees, then the dark shade, then their fresh sunlit outsides.");  December 3, 1856 (“The pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.”); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it"); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.");January 19, 1859 ("It occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon.")

By cars in evening to Allyn's Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

October 24. 

Friday. 12 m. — Set out for Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, N. J. 

Spent the afternoon in Worcester. 

By cars in evening to Allyn's Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1856

Steamer Commonwealth to New York. See letter to Sophia, ("to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage"); see also October 25, 1856. ("Saw, at Barnum's Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the Hudson many years ago. . . Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 p. m., October 25th.")

There are very few persons who do see much of nature.

February 22

Go to Worcester to lecture in a parlor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1859

See February 22, 1852 ("Went to Plymouth to lecture or preach all day.")

On January 1, 1859 Thoreau had written Blake, "My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how readable (i.e., by me to others) it will be.” Letters to Blake 105.

On February 22 Thoreau delivered his Autumnal Tints lecture in Worcester in Blake's parlors located either at Lake School at one Warren block on Pearl Street, or in Blakes's house at 3 Bowdoin Street. While reading the section of the lecture dealing with Scarlet Oak leaves, Thoreau displayed a very "large & handsome one" on a white ground, which was said did him "great service with the audience." See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden. 293 

Afterwords HDT says he was criticized for assuming his audience had not seen so much of the autumnal tints as they had. "But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, — that there are very few persons who do see much of nature."  February 26, 1859  Probably a reference to one of the themes of his lecture, "The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth".  See note to November 4, 1858 ("You will see, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it")

A lightning trench

May 23. 

In Worcester. 

5 A. M.  Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. 

Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. 

Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste? 

A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all directions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood-pile. Also one. or two large limbs were thrown to a distance. 

But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water's edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of gravelly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.

I counted in all nine places within eight or ten rods along the water's edge, or six or eight rods from the tree, where it had made a short furrow in the ground; and in some cases there were slight furrows here and there between these and the tree, as if the lightning had diverged in rays from the base of the tree, perhaps (?) at first along the roots to the pond.

Did it pass through the ground when it did not break the surface? The bark was not so much stripped off as I have seen, but the wood was finely splintered.

H. d. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

Eighteen-inch chestnut 

struck by lightning – only a 

splinter left standing.

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

Before man was here to behold them, the sun was reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.

May 22. 

Saturday. Ed. Emerson brings me the egg of a hawk, dirty bluish-white, just found, with three other eggs not much developed, in a nest on the ground. Probably a hen-harrier's. 

P. M. — By cars to Worcester, on way to New York.

We have had much rainy weather for about a week, and it has just cleared up. I notice, as I glide along, that the sun coming out shines brightly on smooth waters, ponds, and flooded meadows raised by the rain, and is reflected from the new lily pads, which most now first generally notice, spread out on the surface, the foul weather having prevented our observing their growth. Something like this annually occurs. 

After this May storm the sun bursts forth and is reflected brightly in some placid hour from the new leaves of the lily spread out on the surface in the ponds and pools raised [by] the rain, and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer. 

So was it also in a former geological age, when water and water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. The sun was then reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1858

Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer. See May 22, 1857 ("When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. "); May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”);May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")


Water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. See April 28, 1852 ("This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world's creation. Such were the first localities afforded for plants, water-bottoms, bare rocks, and scantily clad lands, and land recently bared of water.Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented."); February 11, 1854 ("For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created!")

The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, the temperature being -6°

February 12. 

February 12, 2017

7.30 a. m. — 

The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. Perhaps they were revived last week, when the thermometer stood at 52 and 53. 

To Worcester. 

I observe that the Nashua in Lancaster has already fallen about three feet, as appears by the ice on the trees, walls, banks, etc., though the main stream of the Concord has not begun to fall at all. (It is hardly fallen perceptibly when I return on the 14th. Am not sure it has.) The former is apparently mostly open, the latter all closed. 

When I skated on the 11th I saw several pretty large open spaces on the meadow, notwithstanding that the boys had begun to skate on the meadow the 10th and it had been steadily growing colder, and the ice was on the 11th from two and a half to three inches thick generally. These open spaces were evidently owing to the strong wind of the night before, and which was then blowing, but I neglected to observe what peculiarity there was in the locality. Perhaps it was very shallow with an uneven bottom.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, February 12, 1857

The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again. . . See February 11, 1857 (“I found another caterpillar on the ice.  . . .”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

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

A Passage to New York

The Commonwealth

October 24.

I spent the afternoon of Friday*(it seems some months ago) in Worcester, but failed to see Blake, he having "gone to the horse-race" in Boston; to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester and lecture on my return. 

I called on  Brown and Higginson; in the evening came by way of Norwich to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home.

H. D. Thoreau, to Sophia, *[October 24, 1856]

Looked at rare plants at the Natural History Rooms

June 19 

[Worcester] Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. 

Among which noticed:

• Ranunculus Purshii varieties a and b with no difference apparent, unless in upper leaves being more or less divided.

• Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry, with a loose raceme such as I have not seen, from White Mountains. 

• A circaea, or enchanter’s-nightshade, with a very large raceme and with longer branchlets than I have seen, methinks. 

• Calla palustris, very different from the Peliandra Virginia. 

• Cerastium arvense, with linear leaves, quite new to me. 

• Smilacina stellata, from Dr. Harris, very different from the racemosa, being simple. 

• Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather broader-leafed than mine from Maine. 

• Barbarea sativa, from Cambridge, apparently like my B. vulgaris. 

Is the Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets peculiar, there in Worcester?  I saw several in woods. 

On way to Concord see mountain laurel out in Lancaster. Had seen none out in Worcester.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1856

June 19.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823- 1911) was educated at Harvard where he developed interests in botany and entomology. From 1840-1841, Higginson was corresponding secretary and entomological curator of the Harvard Natural History Society; he was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and of the Cambridge Entomological Club. He shared HDT’s antislavery views and in 1856 had just moved to Worcester, where he joined gatherings at Blake's house to read the letters that HDT wrote to Blake throughout the 1850’s. Mapping Thoreau Country.

Looked at a collection of the rarer plants. See September 21, 1856 (" I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable [you] to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.");  June 9, 1857( "I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others.")

Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry. Thoreau recognized  2 kinds of gooseberry,  swamp gooseberry and prickly gooseberry. See April 30, 1852 ("At Saw Mill Run the swamp gooseberry is partly leaved out. This . . . methinks is the earliest shrub or tree that shows leaves."; May 5, 1855 ("Gooseberry, both kinds "). SSeptember 8, 1856 (" Prickly gooseberry, with its bur-like fruit") 

Calla palustris. See June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime . . . from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed."); June 24, 1857 ("The Calla palustris, out of bloom,."); July 2, 1857 ("Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.")

Ledum latifolium:  Rhododendron groenlandicum (Bog Labrador-tea) a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. GoBotany. See July 25, 1857 (“Here [at Kimeo], . . .Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), out of bloom."); February 4, 1858 ("To C. Miles Swamp. Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole . . . I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord. It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.")

Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets. See July 7, 1855 (Cape Cod) ("What that smilacina-like plant very common in the shrubbery,?"); June 19, 1857  (Cape Cod) ("The Smilacina racemosa was just out of bloom on the bank. They call it the "wood lily" there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, False Solomon's Sea

On way to Concord see mountain laurel out in Lancaster. Had seen none out in Worcester. See June 3, 1851 ("In Worcester near the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom") See also June 10, 1853 ("The mountain laurel will begin to bloom to-morrow."); June 12, 1854 ("Mountain laurel at [Walden]pond."); June 28, 1858 ("Mountain laurel on east side of the rocky Boulder Field wood is apparently in prime ");  July 3, 1853 ("Mountain laurel lingers in the woods still.") 

Mountain laurel seen

on way back to Concord  – none 

seen out in Worcester.

To some woods southwest of Worcester

June 15. 

Mrs. Brown reads a letter from John Downs in Philadelphia to Mr. Brown, in which he remembers his early youth in Shrewsbury and the pout accompanied by her young. 

A Miss Martha Le Barron describes to me a phosphorescence on the beach at night in Narragansett Bay. They wrote their names with some minute creatures on the sand. 

7:45 AM June 15, 2026

P. M. — To some woods southwest of Worcester. 

The moist bass bark just stripped from a sapling smells very like a cucumber. All three of us were struck by it. 

A night-flowering cereus opens three or four times at a Mrs. Newton’s while I am there. Once it opened at about 9 P. M., and closed and drooped and came to an end like a wet rag wrung out, at daylight. Transient as my mushroom. Was about a foot in diameter, but an ordinary stem, like the turkey’s feet. 

Diervilla well out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1856

A Miss Martha Le Barron describes to me a phosphorescence on the beach at night in Narragansett Bay. They wrote their names with some minute creatures on the sand."}; See The Maine Woods ((July 24, 1857) (" Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see."); September 16, 1857 (“Watson gave me three glow-worms which he found by the roadside in Lincoln last night. They exhibit a greenish light, only under the caudal extremity, and intermittingly, or at will.")

June 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 15

Moist bass bark just stripped 

from a sapling smells very

like a cucumber.

Walk to Hermitage Woods

June 14. [Worcester, Mass]

Walk to Hermitage Woods with Sophia and aunts. 

Uvularia perfoliata very common there; now out of bloom. 

Rhamnus cathartica, common buckthorn, naturalized in those woods, now going out of bloom. It is dioecious, twelve feet high, north side. 

Maple-leaved viburnum out a day or more there apparently. 

Mallows abundantly out in street.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1856

Hermitage Woods with Sophia. See June 12, 1856, ("Sophia has sent me, in a letter from Worcester, part of an orchis in bloom from the Hermitage Wood, so called, northeast of the town.")

Uvularia perfoliata very common there; now out of bloom. See June 3, 1851 ("Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill.") ; May 30, 1857  (" By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond . . . am surprised to find it the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

Rhamnus cathartica, common buckthorn, naturalized in those woods. See GoBotany ("A popular choice for hedgerows, boundaries, and wildlife cover following its introduction to North American in the late 1700's. Now regarded as an invasive species. The cathartic nature of its fruits causes birds to rapidly digest, process, and disperse the seeds over broad areas.")

Maple-leaved viburnum out a day or more. See June 12, 1853 ("Maple-leaved viburnum well out at Laurel Glen."); June 12, 1854 ("Perhaps . . . the maple-leaved viburnum are as early as the V. nudum and V. dentatum, only more rare."); June 14, 1851 ("The Viburnum dentatum, very regularly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes called arrow-wood.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Viburnums

Mallows abundantly out in street. See June 14, 1854 ("See Common mallows well out; how long? ")

The common iris in meadow in Acton.

June 13

Friday. To Worcester.

See the common iris in meadow in Acton. 

June 16, 2026

Brown shows me from his window the word “guano” written on the grass in a field near the hospital, say three quarters of a mile distant. It was one of the lions of Worcester last year, and I can now read some of the letters distinctly, so permanent are the effects of the guano. The letters may be two or more rods long, and the green is darker and more luxuriant. (On the side of a hill.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1856

The common iris in meadow in Acton.  See June 10, 1855 ("Iris versicolor, also a day or two."); June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long? ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)

Brown. Theophilus (Theo) Brown (12 September 1811- 25 January 1879)) See Walden Woods Project (Referred to as the “literary tailor,” Theo. Brown . . .was a member of the local lyceum executive committee who, along with his friend H.G.O. Blake, brought Transcendentalist lecturers to Worcester . . . During an 1856 trip to Worcester, Thoreau spent four nights with the Browns and had his photograph taken at Benjamin Maxham’s Daguerrean Palace.")

Guano. See The Nineteenth Century Guano Trade and The Wealth of the Land

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  June 13

Brown shows me from his 

window the word “guano” 

written on the grass.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The common iris in meadow in Acton

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560613

Clear and cold and windy.

January 25.

A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens . Drives in the morning. Said he succeeded by keeping his arm and wrist well covered. He had a large hand, one of his fingers as big as three of mine. 

But  this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1854

A very cold day . . . the coldest spell of weather this winter. See January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°"); Compare January 25, 1853("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees."); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also January 25, 1860 (""The finest winter day is a cold but clear and glittering one . . . Also warm and melting days in winter are inspiring, though less characteristic.)