The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look.

September 28.

September 28, 2014

A considerable part of the last two nights and yesterday, a steady and rather warm rain, such as we have not had for a long time. This morning it is still completely overcast and drizzling a little.

Flocks of small birds — apparently sparrows, bobolinks (or some bird of equal size with a pencilled breast which makes a musical clucking), and piping goldfinches 

— are flitting about like leaves and hopping up on to the bent grass stems in the garden, letting themselves down to the heavy heads, either shaking or picking out a seed or two, then alighting to pick it up.

I am amused to see them hop up on to the slender, drooping grass stems; then slide down, or let themselves down, as it were foot over foot, with great fluttering, till they can pick at the head and release a few seeds; then alight to pick them up. They seem to prefer a coarse grass which grows like a weed in the garden between the potato-hills, also the amaranth.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. They say that this has been a good year to raise turkeys, it has been so dry. So that we shall have something to be thankful for.

Hugh Miller, in his “Old Red Sandstone,” speaking of  “the consistency of style which obtains among the ichthyolites of this formation” and the “microscopic beauty of these ancient fishes,” says: 

“The artist who sculptured the cherry stone consigned it to a cabinet, and placed a microscope beside it; the microscopic beauty of these ancient fish was consigned to the twilight depths of a primeval ocean.

There is a feeling which at times grows upon the painter and the statuary, as if the perception and love of the beautiful had been sublimed into a kind of moral sense.

Art comes to be pursued for its own sake; the exquisite conception in the mind, or the elegant and elaborate model, becomes all in all to the worker, and the dread of criticism or the appetite of praise almost nothing.

And thus, through the influence of a power somewhat akin to conscience, but whose province is not the just and the good, but the fair, the refined, the exquisite, have works prosecuted in solitude, and never intended for the world, been found fraught with loveliness."

The hesitation with which this is said — to say nothing of its simplicity betrays a latent infidelity more fatal far than that of the “Vestiges of Creation,” which in another work this author endeavors to correct.

He describes that as an exception which is in fact the rule.

The supposed want of harmony between “the perception and love of the beautiful” and a delicate moral sense betrays what kind of beauty the writer has been conversant with. He speaks of his work becoming all in all to the worker, his rising above the dread of criticism and the appetite of praise, as if these were the very rare exceptions in a great artist's life, and not the very definition of it.

2 P. M. – To Conantum.

A warm, damp, mistling day, without much wind.

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled, — reminding me of some plants like the milkweed, expanding with maturity and pushing off their downy seeds. They have a singularly soft look.

For a week or ten days I have ceased to look for new flowers or carry my botany in my pocket.

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime.

I see where the squirrels have carried off the ears of corn more than twenty rods from the corn-field into the woods. A little further on, beyond Hubbard's Brook, I saw a gray squirrel with an ear of yellow corn a foot long sitting on the fence, fifteen rods from the field. He dropped the corn, but continued to sit on the rail, where I could hardly see him, it being of the same color with himself, which I have no doubt he was well aware of.

He next took to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal himself behind the stem, hanging perfectly still there till I passed, his fur being exactly the color of the bark. When I struck the tree and tried to frighten him, he knew better than to run to the next tree, there being no continuous row by which he might escape; but he merely fled higher up and put so many leaves between us that it was difficult to discover him.

When I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared entirely, though I kept the best watch I could, and stood close to the foot of the tree.

They are wonderfully cunning.

The Eupatorium purpureum is early killed by frost and stands now all dry and brown by the sides of other herbs like the goldenrod and tansy, which are quite green and in blossom.

The railroads as much as anything appear to have unsettled the farmers. Our young Concord farmers and their young wives, hearing this bustle about them, seeing the world all going by as it were, — some daily to the cities about their business, some to California, — plainly cannot make up their minds to live the quiet, retired, old-fashioned, country-farmer's life. They are impatient if they live more than a mile from a railroad.

While all their neighbors are rushing to the road, there are few who have character or bravery enough to live off the road. He is too well aware what is going on in the world not to wish to take some part in it. I was reminded of this by meeting S. Tuttle in his wagon.

The pontederia, which apparently makes the mass of the weeds by the side of the river, is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it.

The mist is so thin that it is like haze or smoke in the air, imparting a softness to the landscape.

Sitting by the spruce swamp in Conant's Grove, I am reminded that this is a perfect day to visit the swamps, with its damp, mistling, mildewy air, so solemnly still.  There are the spectre-like black spruces hanging with usnea moss, and in the rear rise the dark green pines and oaks on the hillside, touched here and there with livelier tints where a maple or birch may stand, this so luxuriant vegetation standing heavy, dark, sombre, like mould in a cellar. The peculiar tops of the spruce are seen against this.

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays, who make a great cry about nothing.

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, and the button-bush. The balls of the last appear not half grown this season,-probably on account of the drought, and now they are killed by frost.

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.  They ray out around the dry scape and flower, which still remain, resting on rich uneven beds of a coarse reddish moss, through which the small flowered andromeda puts up, presenting altogether a most rich and luxuriant appearance to the eye. 

Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet. I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher-plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. 

These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these.  Old Josselyn called this "Hollow-leaved Lavender." No other plant, methinks, that we have is so remarkable and singular.

Here was a large hornets' nest, which when I went to take and first knocked on it to see if anybody was at home, out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day, unless because the swamp is warmer. They were all within and not working, however.

I picked up two arrowheads in the field beyond.

What honest, homely, earth-loving, unaspiring houses they used to live in! Take that on Conantum for instance, so low you can put your hand on the eaves behind. There are few whose pride could stoop to enter such a house to-day. And then the broad chimney, built for comfort, not for beauty, with no coping of bricks to catch the eye, no alto or basso relievo.

The mist has now thickened into a fine rain, and I retreat.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1851

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled.  See September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them. ,")  See also September 29, 1857 ("Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves."); October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast."); October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish."); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall.") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The pontederia is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it. See August 22, 1860 ("Now, when the mikania is conspicuous, the bank is past prime, - for lilies are far gone the pontederia is past prime, willows and button-bushes begin to look the worse for the wear thus early"); September 2, 1859 ("The pontederia leaves are now decidedly brown or brownish"); September 5, 1860 ("The pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened"); September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water"); September 17, 1852 ("The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river."); September 18, 1858 ("I see one pontederia spike rising blue above the surface. Elsewhere the dark withered pontederia leaves show themselves, and at a distance look like ducks,  and so help conceal them."); September 26, 1859 ("The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. . . . Many are long since bare. "); October 16, 1859 ("This may not be an annual phenomenon to you.. . ., but it has an important place in my Kalendar. So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia")

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays.                                                 

The red squirrels scold

and the jays scream while you are

clubbing and shaking trees.

October 11, 1852

See also September 21, 1854 ("I hear many jays since the frosts began.”); September 24, 1857 ("A red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality."); September 25, 1851 ("In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native."); September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); September 25, 1857 ("Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels."); October 5, 1857 ("I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel."); December 1, 1857 (" I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, See September 28, 1856 ("How many fruits are scarlet now! — barberries, prinos, etc."); See also August 20, 1854 ("Prinos berries have begun to redden."); August 23, 1853 ("Barberries have begun to redden, and the prinos, — some of the last quite red."); September 2, 1852 ("The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.");September 5, 1858 ("To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening."); September 11, 1859 ("The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red."); September 12, 1851 ("The prinos berries are pretty red."); September 21, 1856 ("Prinos berries."); September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered. "); September 25, 1859 ("Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days"); October 10, 1857 ("To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare");  October 23, 1853 ("The prinos is bare, leaving red berries."); November 2, 1853 ("The prinos berries are almost gone."); November 25, 1858 ("The prinos berries on their light-brown twigs are quite abundant and handsome.") and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”):

The fresh bright scarlet

prinos berries seen in prime

amid fresh green leaves.

October 2, 1856

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.")  See also e.g.  June 12, 1852 ("The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially."); September 11, 1851("We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation?"); November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ); November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day. See September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance."); . October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

September 28.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 28

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Scarlet berry season.

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/HDT510928

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation

October 15. 

P. M. — To Botrychium Swamp. 

A cold northwest wind. 

I see some black oak acorns on the trees still and in some places at least half the shrub oak acorns. The last are handsomer now that they have turned so much darker. 

I go along the east edge of Poplar Hill. This very cold and windy day, now that so many leaves have fallen, I begin to notice the silveriness of willows blown up in the wind, — a November sight. 

The hickories at Poplar Hill (and elsewhere, as far as I perceive) are all past prime now and most half-withered or bare, very different from last year. In warmer autumns, if I remember rightly, they last several weeks later than this in some localities, one succeeding an other with its splendid glow, an evidence of the genial-ness of the season. In cool and moist places, in a genial year, some are preserved green after others have changed, and by their later change and glow they prolong the season of autumnal tints very agreeably. 

This is a cold fall. 

The larches in A. Heywood's swamp, though a yellower green than the white pines, are not yet sharply distinguished from them by their form, as they will be. 

The oaks generally are very fair now at a distance. 

Standing on this hilltop this cold and blustering day, when dark and slate-colored clouds are flitting over the sky, the beauty of the scenery is enhanced by the contrast in the short intervals of sunshine. The whole surface of the country, both young woodlands and full- grown forests, whether they clothe sides of hills or their lit tops are seen over a ridge, — the birch phalanxes and huckleberry flocks [?], etc., — even to the horizon, is like a rug of many brilliant colors, with the towns in the more open and tawny spaces. 

The beauty or effect of the scene is enhanced, if, standing here, you see far in the horizon the red regiments of oaks alternately lit up by the sun and dimmed by the passing shadow of a cloud. As the shadows of these cold clouds flit across the landscape, the red banners of distant forests are lit up or disappear like the colors of a thousand regiments. 

Pratt says that he planted a ground-nut in his garden in good soil, but they grew no bigger than a bean. He did not know but it would take more than one year, even if he planted the tuber. 

The yellow birches are generally bare. 

Juniperus repens leaves have fallen, perhaps with red cedar.

The ash trees I see to-day are quite bare, apparently several or some days. 

The little leaves of the mitchella, with a whitish midrib and veins, lying generally flat on the mossy ground, perhaps about the base of a tree, with their bright-scarlet twin berries sprinkled over them, may properly be said to checker the ground. Now, particularly, they are noticed amid the fallen leaves. 

The bayberry leaves have fallen, and all the berries are gone. I suppose the birds have eaten them. 

Mountain laurel leaves are fallen. 

The yellow birches are bare, revealing the fruit (the short, thick brown catkins) now ripe and ready to scale off. How full the trees are! About as thick as the leaves were. 

The fever-bush is for the most part bare, and I see no berries. 

Rhus radicans too is bare. 

The maidenhair is for the most part withered. It is not evergreen, then. 

The mountain sumach which I see is bare, and some smooth ditto. 

That appears to be Aspidium cristatum which I find evergreen in swamps, but no fertile fronds now. It is broader and denser than the plate of the English one. It cannot be a described variety of spinulosum, for it is only once pinnate. 

I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches, and that they are the birds I saw on them a week or two ago, — apparently, or probably, after the birch lice. 

See a Fringilla hyemalis. 

The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody. Shall not the voice of man express as much content as the note of a bird?  

Botrychium Lunaria has shed pollen, how long? 

The little larches in midst of Gowing's Swamp already changed, before others elsewhere. 

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We hear of cow-commons and ministerial lots, but we want men-commons and lay lots, inalienable forever. Let us keep the New World new, preserve all the advantages of living in the country.

There is meadow and pasture and wood-lot for the town's poor. Why not a forest and huckleberry-field for the town's rich? All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field. 

If any owners of these tracts are about to leave the world without natural heirs who need or deserve to be specially remembered, they will do wisely to abandon their possession to all, and not will them to some individual who perhaps has enough already. As some give to Harvard College or another institution, why might not another give a forest or huckleberry-field to Concord? A town is an institution which deserves to be remembered. 

We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our school-house is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our fine schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last. 

The Kalmia glauca, now falling, is quite a brilliant scarlet. In this case you have the fresh liquid-green leaves of this year above the brilliant scarlet ones of last year. Most other evergreens exhibit only a contrast of green with yellow or yellowish. 

The balm-of-Gileads by Mrs. Ripley's bare. Those beyond Barrett's Bridge green and full of leaves. 

The spruce leaves have fallen, — how long? — and its seeds are falling. Larch seeds falling. 

Celtis berries ripe, how long? 

Solanum Dulcamara berries linger over water but mostly are shrivelled. 

Canoe birch is now at least half fallen or more, apparently with the small white; looks in color like an aspen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1859

The hickories at Poplar Hill (and elsewhere, as far as I perceive) are all past prime now and most half-withered or bare, very different from last year. See October 15, 1858 ("Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods.") See also October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing."); October 22, 1857 ("The hickory leaves, now after they have fallen, are often if not oftenest a dark rich yellow, very conspicuous upon the brown leaves of the forest floor, seeming to have more life in them than those leaves which are brown."); October 4, 1858 ("The hickories on the northwest side of this hill are in the prime of their color, of a rich orange; some intimately mixed with green, handsomer than those that are wholly changed.")

The oaks generally are very fair now at a distance. See October 15, 1858 ("The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before.")

The chickadees sing as if at home. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody. See note to October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.")

The balm-of-Gileads by Mrs. Ripley's bare. Those beyond Barrett's Bridge green and full of leaves. See October 15,1858 ("The balm-of-Gileads are half bare. ")

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

In the horizon 

the red regiments of oaks  

lit up by the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Each town should have a park

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt591015

I

The lower limbs of the spruce slanted downward more generally than those of the fir.

July 11. 

Sunday. Mizzling weather. 

Were visited by three men from Glen House, who thought it was well named “ Tucker’s Ravine,” because it tuckered a man out to get to it! 

It rained hard all Sunday night, wetting us but little, however. One of the slender spruce trees by our camp, which we cut down, though it looked young and thrifty, being twenty-eight feet high and only six and a half inches in diameter, had about eighty rings, and the firs were at least as old. 

Wentworth said that he had five hundred acres, and would sell the whole with buildings for $2000. 

He knew a dead log on the fire to be spruce, and not fir, because the stubs of the lower part slanted downward, and also by its “straight rift.” He called a rotten cane “dozy.” After some observation I concluded that it was true that the base of the lower limbs of the spruce slanted downward more generally than those of the fir.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1858

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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

The nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath.

February 12. 

 the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

Colder than yesterday morning; perhaps the coldest of the winter. 

P. M. — To Ledum Pond. 

Those small holes in the ground, – musquash, mice, etc., – thickly beset with crystals of frost, remind me of the invisible vapor issuing thence which may be called Earth’s breath, though you might think it were the breath of a mouse. 

In cold weather you see not only men's beards and the hair about the muzzles of oxen whitened with their frozen breath, but countless holes in the banks, which are the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. Instead of a regular, free, and open growth, you have a multitude of slender branches crowded together, putting out from the summit or side of the stem and shooting up nearly perpendicularly, with dense, fine, wiry branchlets and fine needles, which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. 

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1858

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. See February 4, 1858 ("There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. ")

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.See February 4, 1858  ("The A. Polifoliais very abundant about the pond-hole."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... ")

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

Another new plant anticipated. Naming Ledum Swamp.

February 4. 

P. M. – 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, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc. 

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. 

The ledum bears a general resemblance to the water andromeda, with its dark reddish-purplish, or rather mulberry, leaves, reflexed; but nearer it is distinguished by its coarseness, the perfect tent form of its upper leaves, and the large, conspicuous terminal roundish (strictly oval) red buds, nearly as big as the swamp pink's, but rounded. The woolly stem for a couple of inches beneath the bud is frequently bare and conspicuously club-shaped. The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. The seed-vessels (which open at the base first) still hold on. 

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. When I showed it to a teamster, he was sure that he had seen it often in the woods, but the sight of the woolly under side staggered him. 

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. 

I brought some home and had a cup of tea made, which, in spite of a slight piny or turpentine flavor, I thought unexpectedly good. 

An abundance of nesaea on the east edge of the pond-hole (call it Ledum Pond-hole); and is that a lysimachia mingled with it?

The ledum does not grow amid the maples, nor, indeed, does the A. Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, nor even the water andromeda abundantly. It bears no more shade than that of the spruce trees, which do not prevail over the above-named shrubbery. 

As usual with the finding of new plants, 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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 4, 1858

Discover the Ledum latiforium ....The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. See July 25, 1857 (“Here [at Kimeo], among others, were the . . . Oxalis Acetosella, still occasionally in flower; Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), out of bloom; Kalmia glauca, etc., etc., close to the track. ”); August 24, 1857 (“We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike [at Natick] to find the ledum, but did not succeed. ”); June 19, 1856 (“Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed ...Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather 'broader—leafed than mine from Maine.”)  ~~ Recently reclassified from the genus Ledum, labrador-tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) is a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg. It is recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. This shrub is named Labrador-tea because its aromatic leaves were commonly brewed as a tea by northern native Americans. Moose browse the leaves and twigs. ~ Go Botany

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. See February 12, 1858 ("There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”). See also July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom.): February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore.)

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. See August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, See November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp .. where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”); February 12, 1858 ("About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. . . , which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath."); June 13, 1858 ("I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch."); August 8, 1858 ("The peculiar plants of [Ledum] swamp are, then, as I remember, these nine: spruce, Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, Ledum latifolium, Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Platanthera blephari glottis, Scheuchzeria palustris, Eriophorum 'vaginatum.");' September 6, 1858 ("That swamp is a singularly wild place, without any natural outlet. I hear of a marsh hawk’s nest there this summer. I see great spiders there of an uncommon kind, whose webs —the main supporting line — stretch six feet in the clear from spruce to spruce, as high as my head, with a dense web of the usual form some fifteen inches in diameter beneath."); October 23, 1858 ("The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that. . . he had found three growths of spruce, one above another, there.")

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. See  July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnaeus's account. I now find it in abundance.”); January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”);  September 2, 1856 (“It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.”); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.”); and note to July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 4

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

I called them “a moccasin-print.”

November 24.

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing. 

The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond, considering the main portion north of the isthmus, is surrounded, except at the isthmus, by dry hills, twenty-five to forty feet high perhaps, covered with young oaks. Its interior, or far the greater part of the whole, is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it. 

Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, except, of course, at the isthmus, and part of the way, just within the edge of the andromeda, mixed with it, a second inner border of gray bushes, chiefly, I suppose, blueberry, etc., with a few small birches, maples, pines, etc. As I remember, it lies somewhat thus: — 


The southerly continuation of this and the other two ponds are much more wet, — have open water and less andromeda, much more sedge in proportion. Why does the sedge grow thus around the andromeda in a regular ring next the hill? I think it is because it is more wet there. It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. Why should it be more wet there? I do not know, unless the springs are at the base of the hills. The sedge can evidently bear more water than the andromeda, and the andromeda than the blueberry bushes, etc. Perhaps the sedge prepares the ground for the andromeda some times, furnishing a base and support for it. I see the latter, as it were, making its way out thinly into the sedge here and there. Perhaps the sedge once covered the whole or greater part. 

The sphagnum, apparently, having some slight solid core to grow around, like an andromeda or blueberry stem, builds itself up a foot or more and may make a soil for noble plants thus. On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. Probably it occurs very far off, or high, thinly, but here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp. 

According to this, then, you have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp. Spruce and larch appear to flourish very well at the same time with the andromeda. 

Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. 

Perhaps the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca prefer stagnant water. 

These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.” 

The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes. Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes. 

Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. In that fervid and excitable season we only get the impulse which is to carry us onward in our future career. Ideals are then exhibited to us distinctly which all our lives after we may aim at but not attain. The mere vision is little compared with the steady corresponding‘ endeavor thitherward. It would be vain for us to be looking ever into promised lands toward which in the meanwhile we were not steadily and earnestly travelling, whether the way led over a mountain-top or through a dusky valley. In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. To suppose that this is equivalent to having travelled the road, or obeyed the impulse faithfully throughout a lifetime, is absurd. We are shown fair scenes in order that we may be tempted to inhabit them, and not simply tell what we have seen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1857

It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. See January 24, 1855 (“But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.”)

Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. See November 24, 1852 ("At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red . Now it has not turned from brown."): See also  April 19 1852  ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world..”); January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”). See also note to May 5, 1855 (“I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green.”); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) Also The Andromeda Phenomenon

The Fringilla hyemalis . . .go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes.See November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)

Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. . . .In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. . . .See January 17, 1852 ("It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. I. . .  It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.”)

The very sharp and regular dark tops of the fir trees

July 26. 

Sunday. 

I distinguish more plainly than formerly the very sharp and regular dark tops of the fir trees, shaped like the points of bodkins. These give a peculiarly dark and sombre look to the forest. The spruce-top has a more ragged outline. . . . 

Here are many raspberries on the site of an old logging-camp, but not yet ripe. . . . 

In the meanwhile I observe the plants on the shore: white and black spruce, Hypericum ellipticum, Smilax herbacea, sium, and a strange-looking polygonum. . . . 

As we sit on the bank, two canoes, containing men, women, and children, probably from Chesuncook, return down the stream. We suppose that they had been a-berrying this Sunday morning. . . . 

The canoe implies a long antiquity in which its manufacture has been gradually perfected. It will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts. . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1857

See The Maine Woods ("Sunday, July 26. The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was the first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine. . . . We soon passed the island where I had camped four years before, and I recognized the very spot. . . .As we were pushing away again, a white-headed eagle sailed over our heads. . . . We carried a part of the baggage about Pine Stream Falls, while the Indian went down in the canoe.. . .There were magnificent great purple fringed orchises on this carry and the neighboring shores. I measured the largest canoe birch which I saw in this journey near the end of the carry. It was 14| feet in circumference. . . About noon we turned northward, up a broad kind of estuary, and at its northeast corner found the Caucomgomoc River, and after going about a mile from the lake, reached the Umbazookskus,. . .Rambling about the woods at this camp, I noticed that they consisted chiefly of firs, black spruce, and some white, red maple, canoe birch, and, along the river, the hoary alder (Alnus incana). I name them in the order of their abundance.. . .The Clintonia borealis, with ripe berries, was very abundant, and perfectly at home there.")

Canoe manufacture will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts.See September 22, 1853 ("It took him a fortnight or three weeks to complete a canoe after he had got the materials ready. I was much struck by the method of this work, and the process deserves to be minutely described"); July 25, 1857 ("Here was a canoe on the stocks, in an earlier stage of its manufacture than I had seen before")

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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

The navel of the universe

May 31. 

Gowing's Swamp
August 23, 1854

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp and to Pinus resinosa.

In the ditches in Moore's Swamp on the new Bedford road, the myriads of pollywogs, now three quarters of an inch long, crowding close to the edge, make a continuous black edging to the pool a foot wide. I see where thousands have been left high and dry and are now trodden into the sand, yet preserving their forms, spotting it with black. The water looks too full of yellowish sediment to support them. 

That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb. Methinks every swamp tends to have or suggests such an interior tender spot. The sphagnous crust that surrounds the pool is pliant and quaking, like the skin or muscles of the abdomen; you seem to be slumping into the very bowels of the swamp. 

Some seem to have been here to collect sphagnum, either for wells, or to wrap plants in. 

There grow the white spruce and the larch. The spruce cones, though now erect, at length turn down. The sterile flowers on lower twigs around stand up now three quarters of an inch long, open and reddish-brown. 

Andromeda Polifolia, much past its prime. 

I detect no hairy huckleberry. 

The Vaccinium Oxycoccus is almost in bloom! and has grown three inches; is much in advance of the common. 

The Pinus resinosa not yet out; will be apparently with the rigida. It has no fertile flowers or cones. The sterile flower-buds are dark-purple, while those of the rigida there are light-green. The largest tree is about ten inches in diameter. It is distinguished, at a distance even, by its lighter-colored and smoother or flatter bark. It is also very straight and perpendicular, with its branches in regular whorls, and its needles are very long. 

Rhodora now in its prime. 

I see in open land a hollow circle of Lycopodium dendroideum, ten feet in diameter; some of the inner portion is dead. This too, then, like the flowering fern, grows or spreads in circles. 

Also the cinnamon fern grows in circles. 

See an ants' nest, just begun, which covers the grass with sand for more than ten feet in one direction and seven in the other and is thickly pierced with holes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1857


In the ditches in Moore's Swamp on the new Bedford road, the myriads of pollywogs, now three quarters of an inch long . . . See note to May 19, 1857 ("See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp.")

That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp . . . See  August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds."); August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.")

Andromeda Polifolia, much past its prime. See May 24, 1855 ("Andromeda Polifolia now in prime. . . . "); May 24, 1854 ("Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime. . .A timid botanist would never pluck it."); February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. . . . in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.”)

Note HDT first discoverd Andromeda Polifolia on July 14, 1853 at Beck Stow’s Swamp (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. “) On February 17, 1854 he first records finding it at Gowing’s Swamp. On November 15,1857 he finds ‘plenty 'at Miles swamp [Ledum Swamp]. See Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

The sterile flowers on lower twigs around stand up now three quarters of an inch long, open and reddish-brown. See May 25, 1857 ("The white spruce cones are cylindrical and have an entire firm edge to the scales, and the needles are longer."); June 10, 1855 (" The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.")")

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

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