Low-water plants.

August 1. 

August 1, 2019

6 a.m. — River is at summer level. 

This being Monday morning, the river is probably lower than at any other time in the week. 

Am surprised to see in water opposite between Monroe's and Dodd's the Myriophyllum ambiguum var. natans, amid the Bidens Beckii. It must have been out (under water) a fortnight. A pretty sprig of pectinate leafets above the capillary-leafed and slimy mass. 

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. 

Evidently the above two and lilies, cardinal-flowers, etc., depend on the state of the river in June. After a very wet June I think there is less bloom on them. Some years the first two are not noticed at all. 

We have now got down to the water milfoil and the B. Beckii. These might be called low-water plants. 

The bottom is occasionally — though quite rarely in Concord — of soft shifting sand, ripple-marked, in which the paddle sinks, under four or five feet of water (as below the ash tree hole), and few weeds grow on such a shallow. 

Evidently the hill at Hemlocks would be a flowing sand-hill, if it were not held together by the hemlocks.  

The common cat-tail (about five feet high by rail road, beyond the South Bridge) has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common. Can it, then, be the Typha angustifolia, which is described as smaller and rare? 

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle.

The west edge of the Rock above Island is eleven and a half inches above summer level. Now, at 5 P. M., the river has risen an inch and a half since 6 A. M., though we have not had a drop of rain for three days, and then but a few drops, and it fell three quarters of an inch between yesterday (Sunday) morning and this morning. Is this rise owing to the water let on from various mill-ponds this Monday morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1859

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. See August 2, 1856 ("Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts.")

The common cat-tail has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common See July 31, 1859 ("Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on).")

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle. See August 6, 1858 ("If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast.")

This sixteen miles up river.

July 31. 

7.30 A. M. — Up river. 

C. and I, having left our boat at Rice's Bend last night, walk to it this forenoon on our way to Saxonville. Water three quarters of an inch above summer level. 

It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. As we go along the Corner road, the dense fog for a background relieves pleasantly the outlines of every tree, though only twenty rods off, so that each is seen as a new object, especially that great oak scrag behind Hubbard's, once bent into a fence, now like a double-headed eagle, dark on the white ground. 

We go in the road to Rice's on account of the heavy dew, yet the fine tops of red-top, drooping with dew over the path, with a bluish hue from the dew, — blue with dew, — wet our shoes through. 

The roads are strewn with meadow-hay, which the farmers teamed home last evening (Saturday). 

The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. I notice that they are thickest under the apple trees. Within the woods the mist or dew on them is so very fine that they look smoke-like and dry, yet even there, if you put your finger under them and touch them, you take off the dew and they become invisible. They are revealed by the dew, and perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. 

It is pleasant to walk thus early in the Sunday morning, while the dewy napkins of the cobwebs are visible on the grass, before the dew evaporates and they are concealed. 

Returning home last evening, I heard that exceedingly fine z-ing or creaking of crickets (?), low in the grass in the meadows. You might think it was a confused ringing in your head, it is so fine. Heard it again toward evening. Autumnalish.

On the 26th I saw quails which had been picking dung in a cart-path. Probably their broods are grown. 

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. 

We had left our paddles, sail, etc., under one of Rice's buildings, on some old wagon-bodies. Rice, who called the big bittern "cow-poke, baked-plum- pudding." 

It is worth the while to get at least a dozen miles on your journey before the dew is off. 

Stopped at Weir Hill Bend to cut a pole to sound with, and there came two real country boys to fish. One little fellow of seven or eight who talked like a man of eighty, — an old head, who had been, probably, brought up with old people. He was not willing to take up with my companion's jesting advice to bait the fish by casting in some of his worms, because, he said, "It is too hard work to get them where we live." 

Begin to hear the sharp, brisk dittle-ittle-ittle of the wren amid the grass and reeds, generally invisible. I only hear it between Concord line and Framingham line. 

What a variety of weeds by the riverside now, in the water of the stagnant portions! Not only lilies of three kinds, but heart-leaf, Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea, all (at least except two yellow lilies) in prime. Sium in bloom, too, and Bidens Beckii just begun, and Ranunculus Purshii still. 

The more peculiar features of Concord River are seen in these stagnant, lake-like reaches, where the pads and heart-leaf, pickerel-weed, button-bush, utricularias, black willows, etc., abound. 

Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on). It is seven or eight feet high (its leaves), with leaves flat on one side (only concave at base, the sheathing part) and regularly convex on the other. They are so much taller than any I see elsewhere as to appear a peculiar species. Long out of bloom. They are what you may call the tallest reed of the meadows, unless you rank the arundo with them, but these are hardly so tall. 

The button-bush, which is, perhaps, at the height of its bloom, resounds with bees, etc., perhaps as much as the bass has. It is remarkable that it is these late flowers about which we hear this susurrus. You notice it with your back to them seven or eight rods off. 

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. We also scare up many times green bitterns, perhaps young, which utter their peculiar note in the Beaver Hole Meadows and this side. 

For refreshment on these voyages, [we] are compelled to drink the warm and muddy-tasted river water out of a clamshell which we keep, — so that it reminds you of a clam soup, — taking many a sup, or else leaning over the side of the boat while the other leans the other way to keep your balance, and often plunging your whole face in at that, when the boat dips or the waves run. 

At about one mile below Saxonville the river winds from amid high hills and commences a great bend called the Ox-Bow. Across the neck of this bend, as I paced, it is scarcely twenty rods, while it must be (as I judged by looking, and was told) a mile or more round. Fisher men and others are accustomed to drag their boats overland here, it being all hard land on this neck. A man by the bridge below had warned us of this cut-off, which he said would save us an hour! 

A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River, — the large black sucker (not the horned one). 

Another said that the water rose five feet above its present level at the bridge on the edge of Framingham, and showed me about the height on the stone. It is an arched stone bridge, built some two years ago. 

About the Sudbury line the river becomes much narrower and generally deeper, as it enters the first large meadows, the Sudbury meadows, and is very winding, — as indeed the Ox-Bow was. It is only some thirty or forty feet wide, yet with firm upright banks a foot or two high, — canal-like. This canal-like reach is the transition from the Assabet to the lake-like or Musketaquid portion. 

At length, off Pelham Pond, it is almost lost in the weeds of the reedy meadow, being still more narrowed and very weedy, with grassy and muddy banks. This meadow, which it enters about the Sudbury line, is a very wild and almost impenetrable one, it is so wet and muddy. It is called the Beaver-Hole Meadows and is a quite peculiar meadow, the chief growth being, not the common sedges, but great bur-reed, five or six feet high and all over it, mixed with flags, Scirpus fluviatilis, and wool-grass, and rank canary grass. Very little of this meadow can be worth cutting, even if the water be low enough.

This great sparganium was now in fruit (and a very little in flower). I was surprised by the sight of the great bur-like fruit, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, the fruit-stems much branched and three or four feet high. It is a bur of sharp-pointed cones; stigmas linear. I can hardly believe that this is the same species that grows in C. It is apparently much earlier than ours. Yet ours may be a feeble growth from its very seeds floated down. Can it be that in this wild and muddy meadow the same plant grows so rankly as to look like a new species? It is decidedly earlier as well as larger than any I find in C. It does not grow in water of the river, but densely, like flags, in the meadow far and wide, five or six feet high, and this, with the Scirpus fluviatilis, etc., makes a very novel sight. 

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. The marsh wrens and the small green bitterns are especially numerous there. Doubtless many rails here. They lurk amid these reeds.

Behind the reeds on the east side, opposite the pond, was a great breadth of pontederia. Zizania there just begun. 

This wren (excepting, perhaps, the red-wing black bird) is the prevailing bird of the Sudbury meadows, yet I do not remember to have heard it in Concord. I get a nest, suspended in a patch of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris) by the river's edge, just below the Sudbury causeway, in the afternoon. It is a large nest (for the bird), six inches high, with the entrance on one side, made of coarse material, apparently withered bulrush and perhaps pipes and sedge, and no particular lining; well woven and not very thick; some two and a half or three feet above water. The bird is shy and lurks amid the reeds. 

We could not now detect any passage into Pelham Pond, which at the nearest, near the head of this reach, came within thirty rods of the river. 

Do not the lake-like reaches incline to run more north and south? 

The potamogetons do not abound anywhere but in shallows, hence in the swifter places. The lake-like reaches are too deep for them. 

Cardinal-flower. Have seen it formerly much earlier. Perhaps the high water in June kept it back. 

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1859

The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. . . . perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. See July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); July 25, 1852 ("This is one of those ambosial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. ")

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. See July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); August 4, 1852 ("I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female."); August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?”); August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here."); ;August 19, 1858 (" Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. See May 29, 1856 ("Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.")

Begin to hear the sharp, brisk dittle-ittle-ittle of the wren amid the grass and reeds, generally invisible. See August 5, 1858 ("The short-billed marsh wren. It was peculiarly brisk and rasping, not at all musical, the rhythm something like shar te dittle ittle ittle ittle ittle, but the last part was drier or less liquid than this implies. It was a small bird, quite dark above and apparently plain ashy white beneath, and held its head up when it sang, and also commonly its tail. It dropped into the deep sedge . . . then reappeared and uttered its brisk notes quite near us, and, flying off, was lost in the sedge again.")

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river. See January 31, 1855 ("I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, . . . It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth."); September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.")

The goldfinch's note

the cool watery twitter

is more prominent. 

Eternal summer arrrives

July 5.

I know a man who never speaks of the sexual relation but jestingly, though it is a subject to be approached only with reverence and affection. What can be the character of that man's love? It is ever the subject of a stale jest, though his health or his dinner can be seriously considered. The glory of the world is seen only by a chaste mind. To whomsoever this fact is not an awful but beautiful mystery, there are no flowers in nature.

The progress of the season is indescribable. 

It is growing warm again, but the warmth is different from that we have had. We lie in the shade of locust trees. Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging. I am reminded of berrying. I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves. Cherry-birds alight on a neighboring tree. The warmth is something more normal and steady, ripening fruits. It begins to be such weather as when people go a-huckle-berrying.

Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1852

Cherry-birds alight on a neighboring tree. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-bird (cedar waxwing)

Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity.. See January 9, 1853 (" I thought of those summery hours when time is tinged with eternity . . .”); July 16, 1851 ("It is an air this afternoon that makes you indifferent to all things, - perfect summer. . . You know not heat nor cold. What season of the year is this?") See also August 6, 1852 (" Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.")

The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa.  See July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

 July 5. I know a man who never speaks of the sexual relation but jestingly, though it is a subject to be approached only with reverence and affection. What can be the character of that man's love ? It is ever the subject of a stale jest, though his health or his dinner can be seriously considered. The glory of the world is seen only by a chaste mind. To whomsoever this fact is not an awful but beautiful mystery, there are no flowers in nature. White lilies continue to open in the house in the morning and shut in the night for five or six days, un til their stamens have shed their pollen and they turn rusty and begin to decay, and the beauty of the flower is gone, and its vitality, so that it no longer expands with the light.

How perfect an invention is glass ! There is a fitness in glass windows which reflect the sun morning and evening, windows, the doorways of light, thus reflecting the rays of that luminary with a splendor only second to itself. This invention one would say was anticipated in the arrangement of things. The sun rises with a salute and leaves the world with a farewell to our windows. To have, instead of opaque shutters or dull horn or paper, a material like solidified air, which reflects the sun thus brightly! It is inseparable from our civilization and enlightenment. It is encouraging that this intelligence and brilliancy or splendor should be long to the dwellings of men, and not to the cliffs and micaceous rocks and lakes exclusively.

P. M. — To Second Division Brook. The Typha latifolia, or reed-mace, sheds an abundance of sulphur-like pollen into the hand now. Its tall and handsome swords are seen waving above the bushes in low grounds now. What I suppose the Vaccinium fuscatum, or black blueberry, is now ripe here and there, quite small. Heard the Mating or lowing of a calf. Sat in the shade of the locusts in front of J. Hosmer's cottage and heard a locust z-ing on them, but could not find him. This cottage and the landscape, seen through the frame made by the " Railroad Crossing " sign, as you approach it along the winding bushy road, is a pleasing sight. It is picturesque.

There is a meadow on the Assabet just above Derby's Bridge, — it may contain an acre, — bounded on one side by the river, on the other by alders and a hill, completely covered with small hummocks which have lodged on it in the winter, covering it like the mounds in a graveyard at pretty regular intervals. Their edges are rounded like [the] latter, and they and the paths between are covered with a firm , short greensward , with here and there hardhacks springing out of them , so that they make excellent seats , especially in the shade of an elm that grows there . They are completely united with the meadow , forming little oblong hillocks from one to ten feet long , flat as a mole to the sward . I am inclined to call it the elfin burial - ground , or per- chance it might be called the Indian burial - ground . It is a remarkably firm - swarded meadow , and convenient to walk on . And these hummocks have an important effect in elevating it . It suggests at once a burial - ground of the aborigines , where perchance lie the earthly re- mains of the rude forefathers of the race . I love to ponder the natural history thus written on the banks of the stream , for every higher freshet and intenser frost is recorded by it . The stream keeps a faithful and a true journal of every event in its experience , what- ever race may settle on its banks ; and it purls past this natural graveyard with a storied murmur , and no doubt it could find endless employment for an old mortality in renewing its epitaphs . 

The progress of the season is indescribable. It is growing warm again, but the warmth is different from that we have had. We lie in the shade of locust trees. Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging. I am reminded of berrying. I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves. Cherry-birds alight on a neighboring tree. The warmth is something more normal and steady, ripening fruits. Campanula aparinoides, slender bell- flower. The Cicuta maculata, American hemlock. It begins to be such weather as when people go a-huckle berrying.

 Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity. The earth is dry. Perhaps the sound of the locust expresses the season as well as anything. The farmers say the abundance of the grass depends on wet in June. I might make a separate season of those days when the locust is heard. That is our torrid zone. This dryness and heat are necessary for the maturing of fruits.

How cheering it is to behold a full spring bursting forth directly from the earth, like this of Tarbell's, from clean gravel, copiously, in a thin sheet; for it descends at once, where you see no opening, cool from the caverns of the earth, and making a consider able stream. Such springs, in the sale of lands, are not valued for as much as they are worth. I lie almost flat, resting my hands on what offers, to drink at this water where it bubbles, at the very udders of Nature, for man is never weaned from her breast while this life lasts. How many times in a single walk does he stoop for a draught!

We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections. It is a factory of soil, depositing sediment.

How many virtues have cattle in the fields! They do not make a noise at your approach, like dogs ; they rarely low, but are quiet as nature, — merely look up at you. In the Ministerial Swamp there is a great deal of the naked viburnum rising above the dwarf andromeda. The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, is remarkably handsome in the grass in low grounds, by contrast — its four or five open purple flowers — with the surrounding green. It makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa, with a slight fragrance, methinks. It is very much indebted to its situation, no doubt, in low ground, where it contrasts with the dark- green grass. All color, with only a grass-like leaf be low; flowers eminently. If it grew on dry and barren hilltops, or in woods above the dead leaves, it would lose half its attractions. Buttercups have now almost disappeared, as well as clover. Some of the earliest roses are ceasing, but others remain. I see many devil's-needles zigzagging along the Second Division Brook, some green, some blue, both with black and perhaps velvety wings. They are confined to the brook. How lavishly they are painted ! How cheap was the paint! How free the fancy of their creator! I caught a handful of small water-bugs, fifteen or twenty, about as large as apple seeds. Some country people call them apple seeds, it is said, from their scent. I perceived a strong scent, but I am not sure it was like apples. I should rather think they were so called from their shape.

Some birds are poets and sing all summer. They are the true singers. Any man can write verses during the love season. 

I am reminded of this while we rest in the shade on the Major Heywood road and listen to a wood thrush, now just before sunset. We are most interested in those birds who sing for the love of the music and not of their mates; who meditate their strains, and amuse themselves with singing; the birds, the strains, of deeper sentiment; not bobolinks, that lose their plumage, their bright colors, and their song so early.

The robin, the red-eye, the veery, the wood thrush, etc., etc.

The wood thrush's is no opera music; it is not so much the composition as the strain, the tone, — cool bars of melody from the atmosphere of everlasting morning or evening. It is the quality of the song, not the sequence. In the peawai's note there is some sultriness, but in the thrush's, though heard at noon, there is the liquid coolness of things that are just drawn from the bottom of springs. 

The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. Here is a bird in whose strain the story is told, though Nature waited for the science of aesthetics to discover it to man. Whenever a man hears it, he is young, and Nature is in her spring. Wherever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him.

Most other birds sing from the level of my ordinary cheerful hours — a carol; but this bird never fails to speak to me out of an ether purer than that I breathe, of immortal beauty and vigor. He deepens the significance of all things seen in the light of his strain. He sings to make men take higher and truer views of things. He sings to amend their institutions; to relieve the slave on the plantation and the prisoner in his dungeon, the slave in the house of luxury and the prisoner of his own low thoughts.

How fitting to have every day in a vase of water on your table the wild-flowers of the season which are just blossoming! Can any house [be] said to be furnished without them ? Shall we be so forward to pluck the fruits of Nature and neglect her flowers ? These are surely her finest influences. So may the season suggest the fine thoughts it is fitted to suggest. Shall we say, " A penny for your thoughts," before we have looked into the face of Nature ? Let me know what picture she is painting, what poetry she is writing, what ode composing, now.

I hear my hooting owl now just before sunset. You can fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if Nature meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her quire the dying moans of a human being, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousness. It reminds of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. One answers from far woods in a strain made really sweet by distance. Some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley. I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to imitate it. Yet for the most part it is a sweet and melodious strain to me.1

Some fields are quite yellow with johnswort now, — a pleasing motley hue, which looks autumnal. What is that small chickweed-like plant on Clamshell Hill, now out of bloom ?

The sun has set. We are in Dennis's field. The dew is falling fast. Some fine clouds, which have just escaped being condensed in dew, hang on the skirts of day and make the attraction in our western sky, — that part of day's gross atmosphere which has escaped the clutches of the night and is not enough condensed to fall to earth, — soon to be gilded by his parting rays. They are remarkably finely divided clouds, a very fine mackerel sky, or, rather, as if one had sprinkled that part of the sky with a brush, the outline of the whole being that of several large sprigs of fan coral. C, as usual, calls it a Mediterranean sky. They grow darker and darker, and now are reddened, while dark-blue bars of clouds of wholly different character lie along the northwest horizon.

The Asclepias Cornuti (Syriaca) and the A. incarnata (pulchra) (this hardly out). Considerable fog to night.

The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush