Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.
How ever unexpected are these later flowers!
You thought that Nature had about wound up her affairs. You had seen what she could do this year, and had not noticed a few weeds by the roadside, or mistook them for the remains of summer flowers now hastening to their fall; you thought you knew every twig and leaf by the roadside, and no thing more was to be looked for there; and now, to your surprise, these ditches are crowded with millions of little stars. They suddenly spring up and face you, with their legions on each side the way, as if they had lain in ambuscade there. The flowering of the ditches.
Call them travellers' thoughts, numerous though small, worth a penny at least, which, sown in spring and summer, in the fall spring up unobserved at first, successively dusted and washed, mingled with nettles and beggar-ticks as a highway harvest. A starry meteoric shower, a milky way, in the flowery kingdom in whose aisles we travel.
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster Novae-Angliae or spectabilis here and there, to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way.
The gardener with all his assiduity does not raise such a variety, nor so many successive crops on the same space, as Nature in the very roadside ditches. There they have stood, begrimed with dust and the wash of the road so long, and made acquaintance with passing sheep and cattle and swine, gathering a trivial experience, and now at last the fall rains have come to wash off some of that dust, and even they exhibit these dense flowery panicles as the result of all that experience, as pure for an hour as if they grew by some wild brook-side. Successor to Mayweed & Co.
Is not mayweed, by the way, the flower furthest advanced into the road rut or mid-channel, like the kalmiana lily in the river? The mid- channel, where the stream of travel flows deep and strong, unless it is far up the stream toward its fountainhead, no flower invades. Mayweed! what a misnomer! Call it rut-weed rather.
Goodyera pubescens apparently just done.
Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.
I see the fruit and flowers of Polygonum Careyi affected with smut like corn.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1856
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster . . . to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way. See August 30, 1856 "The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing.")
Fringed gentian well out . See September 14, 1855 ("To Hubbard's Close . . . I see no fringed gentian yet.") See also October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian
 |
| cheered by the sight of Aster Novae-Angliae i bethink myself reminded that a poet has passed this way |
You thought that Nature had about wound up her affairs. You had seen what she could do this year, and had not noticed a few weeds by the roadside, or mistook them for the remains of summer flowers now hastening to their fall; you thought you knew every twig and leaf by the roadside, and no thing more was to be looked for there; and now, to your surprise, these ditches are crowded with millions of little stars. They suddenly spring up and face you, with their legions on each side the way, as if they had lain in ambuscade there. The flowering of the ditches.
Call them travellers' thoughts, numerous though small, worth a penny at least, which, sown in spring and summer, in the fall spring up unobserved at first, successively dusted and washed, mingled with nettles and beggar-ticks as a highway harvest. A starry meteoric shower, a milky way, in the flowery kingdom in whose aisles we travel.
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster Novae-Angliae or spectabilis here and there, to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way.
The gardener with all his assiduity does not raise such a variety, nor so many successive crops on the same space, as Nature in the very roadside ditches. There they have stood, begrimed with dust and the wash of the road so long, and made acquaintance with passing sheep and cattle and swine, gathering a trivial experience, and now at last the fall rains have come to wash off some of that dust, and even they exhibit these dense flowery panicles as the result of all that experience, as pure for an hour as if they grew by some wild brook-side. Successor to Mayweed & Co.
Is not mayweed, by the way, the flower furthest advanced into the road rut or mid-channel, like the kalmiana lily in the river? The mid- channel, where the stream of travel flows deep and strong, unless it is far up the stream toward its fountainhead, no flower invades. Mayweed! what a misnomer! Call it rut-weed rather.
Goodyera pubescens apparently just done.
Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.
I see the fruit and flowers of Polygonum Careyi affected with smut like corn.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1856
Now for the Aster Tradescanti . . . swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink. See August 31, 1853 (Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti?"); September 1, 1853 (""That small aster which I call A. Tradescanti, with crowded racemes, somewhat rolled or cylindrical to appearance, of small white flowers a third of an inch in diameter, with yellow disks turning reddish or purplish, is very pretty by the low roadsides, resounding with the hum of honey-bees."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime."); September 10, 1853 ("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Aster Tradescanti
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster . . . to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way. See August 30, 1856 "The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing.")
Goodyera pubescens apparently just done. See August 20, 1856 (“The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime.”); August 27, 1856( "Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, the lower half or more turning brown, but the beautifully reticulated leaves which pave the moist shady hillside about its base are the chief attraction.") See Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Rattlesnake-Plantain
Fringed gentian well out . See September 14, 1855 ("To Hubbard's Close . . . I see no fringed gentian yet.") See also October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian
Ditches now crowded –
how ever unexpected
these later flowers!
Cheered by this aster
let the traveller bethink
himself – elevate
and expand his thoughts –
a poet-philosopher
has passed this way.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cheered by the sight of
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-560914
