Are there no works written in the language of the flowers?

February 6

The artificial system has been very properly called the dictionary, and the natural method, the grammar, of the science of botany, by botanists themselves. But are we to have nothing but grammars and dictionaries in this literature? 

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? I asked a learned and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time the courteous guardian of a public library, to direct me to those works which contained the more particular popular account, or biography, of particular flowers, from which the botanies I had met with appeared to draw sparingly, - for I trusted that each flower had had many lovers and faithful describers in past times, but he informed me that I had read all; that no one was acquainted with them, they were only catalogued like his books. 

3 P. M. Round by C. Miles's place.

It is still thawy. A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing.

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly.  Methinks I would have lichens on some of my rails.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1852

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? See February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.");  December 16, 1859 ("To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal. His admirable though quaint descriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not according to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. He brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves."); September 22, 1860 (" I rarely read a sentence in a new botany which reminds me of flowers or living plants. The early botanists, like Gerard, were prompted and compelled to describe their plants, but most nowadays only measure them, as it were.The former is affected by what he sees and so inspired to portray it; the latter merely fills out a schedule prepared for him. . . very few indeed write as if they had seen the thing they pretend to describe.")

A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing. See  November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist..."); April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."); January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 7, 1856  ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); February 7, 1859 ("Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture.")

February  6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022