A book which should be a memorial of October.

November 22

Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.

The drizzling rain of yesterday has not checked the fall of the river. It was raised by the rain of Sunday, the 13th, and began to fall the 20th.

P. M. — Up river by boat.

I think it must be the white lily root I find gnawed by the rats, though the leaves are pellucid. It has large roots with eyes and many smaller rootlets attached, white tinged with a bluish slate-color. The radical leaves appear to have started again.

Turnip freshly in bloom in cultivated fields; knawel still; yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent; but I find no blossom on the Arenaria serpyllifolia.

If there is any one with whom we have a quarrel, it is most likely that that one makes some just demand on us which we disappoint.

I see still, here and there, a few deep-sunk yellow and decayed pads, the bleared, dulled, drowned eyes of summer.

I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color, the intermediate ripeness in its transition from the green to the russet or brown state, outline and copy its color exactly with paint in a book, a book which should be a memorial of October, be entitled October Hues or Autumnal Tints.

I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata and the tint of the scarlet maple.

What a memento such a book would be, beginning with the earliest reddening of the leaves, woodbine and ivy, etc., etc., and the lake of radical leaves, down to the latest oaks! I might get the impression of their veins and outlines in the summer with lampblack, and after color them.

As I was returning down the river toward night, I mistook the creaking of a plow-wheel for a flock of blackbirds passing overhead, but it is too late for them.

The farmers plow considerably this month. No doubt it destroys many grubs in the earth.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1853

Geese went over yesterday, and to-day. See November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

Yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yarrow and Tansy in Autumn

I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata. See October 25, 1858 ("The leaves of the Populus grandidentata, though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. These do not lose their color and wither on the tree . . .but they are fresh and unwilted, full of sap and fair as ever when they are first strewn on the ground. I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing.

May 6. 

To Clamshell by river. 

Our earliest currant out. 

Oat spawn showing little pollywogs (?) in meadow water. 

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing.

Knawel out at Clamshell; how long? 

Cerastium out there under the bank. 

That early white birch there has about done running sap. 

Equisetum sylvaticum a day or two on the ditch bank there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1856

Our earliest currant out. See May 4, 1853 ("The currant in bloom"); May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least."); May 9, 1854 ("Currant in garden, but ours may be a late kind."); May 9, 1855 ("The black currant will not bloom for five or six days.")  

Note: The "earlies currant" and the unqualified word "currant" in Thoreau's lexicon likely  refers to the commonly cultivated Red Currant (Ribes rubrum). The Currant family species in New England includes both currants and gooseberries:   

• Ribes americanum –Wild black currant f/k/a Ribes floridum. See May 8, 1853 ("The Ribes floridum, wild black currant, just begun")
• Ribes aureum – Golden currant 
• Ribes cynosbati –Prickly gooseberry. See  September 8, 1856 (" Prickly gooseberry, with its bur-like fruit") (Brattleboro)
• Ribes glandulosum Skunk currant, fetid currant f/k/a Ribes prostratum. See September 7, 1852 (“Wild currants (Ribes prostratum, with the berry the odor of skunk-cabbage, but a not quite disagreeable wild flavor.")
• Ribes hirtellum –  Hairy stem Gooseberry or Northern Gooseberry 
• Ribes lacustre –Prickly currant, swamp gooseberry, bristly black currant. See June 19, 1856 (at the Natural History rooms)("Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry")
• Ribes missouriense –Missouri gooseberry or Missouri currant. See  May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);
• Ribes nigrum – Black Currant. See May 18, 1856 (“R. W. E.’s black currant (which the wild Ribes floridum is said to be much like), maybe a day.”)
• Ribes rotundifolium –Appalachian gooseberry or round-leaved gooseberry
• Ribes rubrum  – garden red currant or red currant
• Ribes triste –swamp red currant or wild red currant
• Ribes uva-crispa – European gooseberry f/k/a Ribes grossularia

Thoreau recognized 6 kinds of currant: red currant, black currant, wild currant, wild black currant, swamp currant, and Missouri currant; and 2 kinds of gooseberry,  swamp gooseberry and prickly gooseberry. See May 5, 1855 ("Gooseberry, both kinds "); See also, e.g.; July 19, 1858 (Mt. Washington) (" At three miles, or limit of trees . . . Ribes lacustre, prostratum, and floridum(?)") 

Oat spawn showing little pollywogs. See May 4, 1858 (“What I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems,  etc . . . is not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylvaltica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color . . . Iss it not that of the R. fontinalis?”);  May 8, 1858 (“I see a great deal of the oat spawn . . . It is over the coarse, weedy (pontederia and yellow lily stubble)”); May 11, 1855 (“See oat-seed spawn — a mass as big as fist —- on bottom; of brown jelly composed of smaller globules, each with a fish-like tadpole, color of a seed.”);  May 13, 1858 ("The large globular masses of oat spawn, often on the very top of the old pontederia stems and also on the shooting Equisetum limosum, of the same color with the weeds and bottom, look like a seedy fruit which is divested of its rind."); May 13, 1857 ("A large bunch of oat spawn in meadow water.“)

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing. See May 5, 1855) ("The trees and shrubs which I observe . . . in the order of their intensity and generalness: Gooseberry, both kinds  . . . Red currant, and probably black . . .  Some mountain-ash . . . Some horse-chestnut")

Knawel out at Clamshell; how long?  See May 5, 1860 ("Knawel some time."); May 6, 1853 ("Common knawel, apparently for some time") [Scleranthus annuus (German knotweed)]

Cerastium out there under the bank. See  May 13, 1860 ("At Clamshell. one cerastium flower quite done and dry."); See also  May 22, 1856 ("A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) ( like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect ), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the"); May 31, 1856 ("That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d, which probably opened about that time, is now out of bloom.")

That early white birch there has about done running sap. See April 23, 1856 ("The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall, and a few small bees, flies, etc., are attracted by it.");  April 26, 1856 ("The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. "); April 27, 1856 ("The white birch which I tapped in V. palmata Swamp still runs; and the holes are full of, and the base of the tree covered with, a singular sour-tasted, rather hard-crusted white (not pink) froth, and a great many of those flat beetles (?), lightning-bug-like, and flies, etc.  are sucking it."); May 13, 1856 ("Where my sap has dried on the white birch bark it has now turned a bright light red. What a variety of colors it assumes!")

Equisetum sylvaticum  [Wood horsetail or Woodland horsetail] a day or two on the ditch bank there. See   May 6, 1853 ("Equisetum sylvaticum in front of Hosmer's Gorge. ");  May 6, 1855 ("Equisetum sylvaticum, probably yesterday or day before.”);  See also April 28, 1858 ("At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. Strawberries are abundantly out.); May 10, 1857 (“This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum.”)

A mizzling rain from the east drives me home from my walk.

November 6.

November 6, 2015

A mizzling rain from the east drives me home from my walk. 

The knawel in the sand on the railroad causeway grows in dense green tufts like the hudsonia, six or eight inches in diameter and one or two high. It is still in bloom. 

The gooseberry leaves at the end of the currant row, being wet, are a still more brilliant scarlet. 

A great many rainy or mizzling days the last fortnight, yet not much rain. 

Pennyroyal has a long time stood withered and dark, blackish brown, in the fields, yet scented. 

I can hardly resist the inclination to collect driftwood, to collect a great load of various kinds, which will sink my boat low in the water, and paddle or sail slowly home with it. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1855

A mizzling rain from the east drives me home from my walk. Compare November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather.")

Pennyroyal has a long time stood withered and dark, blackish brown, in the fields, yet scented. See October 23, 1852 ("The pennyroyal stands brown and sere, though fragrant still, on the shelves of the Cliff."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

I can hardly resist the inclination to collect driftwood. See September 24, 1855 ("It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus. . . .I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. Each has its history, of which I am reminded when I come to burn it, and under what circumstances I found it."); September 25, 1857 ("Brought home my first boat-load of wood.")

The gooseberry leaves 

being wet are a still more 

brilliant scarlet.