Botanizing

August 25.

What the little regular, rounded, light-blue flower in Heywood Brook? Also the small purplish flower growing on the mud in Hubbard's meadow, with one pistil? What the bean vine in the garden?


Checkerberry in bloom. 

Blueeyed grass still. 

Rhus copallina, mountain or dwarf sumach . I now know all of the Rhus genus in Bigelow. We have all but the staghorn in Concord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1851

Checkerberry in bloom...   "Checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). See Checkerberry cum Wintergreen. But HDT calls Chimaphila umbellata,  a/k/a pipsissewa,  “wintergreen.” See July 3, 1852  ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”);  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”) See also November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen  the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”)