The Hunter's Azalea.

May 31.

I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.  

Sophia brought home a single flower without twig or leaf from Mrs. Brooks's last evening. Mrs. Brooks. I find, has a large twig in a vase of water, still pretty fresh, which she says George Melvin gave to her son George. I called at his office. He says that Melvin came in to Mr. Gourgas's office, where he and others were sitting Saturday evening, with his arms full and gave each a sprig, but he doesn't know where he got it. 

Somebody, I heard, had seen it at Captain Jarvis's; so I went there. I found that they had some still pretty fresh in the house. Melvin gave it to them Saturday night, but they did not know where he got it. 

A young man working at Stedman Buttrick's said it was a secret; there was only one bush in the town; Melvin knew of it and Stedman knew; when asked, Melvin said he got it in the swamp, or from a bush, etc. The young man thought it grew on the Island across the river on the Wheeler farm. 

I went on to Melvin's house, though I did not expect to find him at home at this hour, so early in the afternoon.  At length I saw his dog by the door, and knew he was at home. He was sitting in the shade, bareheaded, at his back door. He had a large pailful of the azalea recently plucked and in the shade behind his house, which he said he was going to carry to town at evening. He had also a sprig set out. 

He had been out all the forenoon and said he had got seven pickerel, -perhaps ten. Apparently he had been drinking and was just getting over it. At first he was a little shy about telling me where the azalea grew, but I saw that I should get it out of him. He dilly-dallied a little; called to his neighbor Farmer, whom he called "Razor," to know if he could tell me where that flower grew. He called it, by the way, the "red honeysuckle." This was to prolong the time and make the most of his secret.

I felt pretty sure the plant was to be found on Wheeler's land beyond the river, as the young man had said, for I had remembered how some weeks before this, when I went up the Assabet after the yellow rocket, I saw Melvin, who had just crossed with his dog, and when I landed to pluck the rocket he appeared out of the woods, said he was after a fish-pole, and asked me the name of my flower. Didn't think it was very handsome, - "not so handsome as the honeysuckle, is it?" And now I knew it was his "red honeysuckle," and not the columbine, he meant.

Well, I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know. But he thought I couldn't possibly find it by his directions. I told him he'd better tell me and have the glory of it, for I should surely find it if he didn't; I'd got a clue to it, and shouldn't give it up. I should go over the river for it. I could smell it a good way, you know. 

He thought I could smell it half a mile, and he wondered that I hadn't stumbled on it, or Channing. Channing, he said, came close by it once, when it was in flower.  He thought he'd surely find it then; but he didn't, and he said nothing to him.

He told me he found it about ten years ago, and he went to it every year. It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." ....

 In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm. A man in Cambridge, he said, had recently written to Mr. Monroe about it, but he didn't know why. All he knew about the brook was that he had seen it dry and then again, after a week of dry weather in which no rain fell, it would be full again, and either the writer or Monroe said there were only two such brooks in all North America. One of its sources — he thought the principal one — was in his land. We all went to it. It was in a meadow, — rather a dry one, once a swamp. He said it never ceased to flow at the head now, since he dug it out, and never froze there. He ran a pole down eight or nine feet into the mud to show me the depth. He had minnows there in a large deep pool, and cast an insect into the water, which they presently rose to and swallowed. Fifteen years ago he dug it out nine feet deep and found spruce logs as big as his leg, which the beavers had gnawed, with the marks of their teeth very distinct upon them ; but they soon crumbled away on coming to the air. Melvin, meanwhile, was telling me of a pair of geese he had seen which were breeding in the Bedford Swamp. He had seen them within a day. Last year he got a large brood (11?) of black ducks there.


We went on down the brook, - Melvin and I and his dog, - and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew,

 -it was a little past its prime, perhaps, -and showed me how near Channing came . (" You won't tell him what I said; will You? " said he.)  I offered to pay for his trouble, but he wouldn't take anything. had just as lief I'd know as not. He thought it came out last Wednesday, on the 25th.

 Azalea nudiflora, -purple azalea, pinxter-flower,... It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink,...With a broader, somewhat downy pale-green leaf. Growing in the shade of large wood, like the laurel. The flowers, being in naked umbels, are so much the more conspicuous. ... It must be an undescribed variety -a viscous one-of A. nudiflora.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1853


Old election time  See note to May 31, 1854 (Old Election Day.) and May 27, 1857("I hear the sound of fife and drum the other side of the village, and am reminded that it is May Training.")

It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." .... Azalea nudiflora,-- purple azalea, pinxter-flower . See May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime.”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1856 ("To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.");; May 26, 1857 ("Pink azalea in garden"); May 24, 1858 ("The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out[ in New York)”); May 19, 1859 (“Our Azalea nudiflora flowers.”); May 27, 1859 (“Azalea nudiflora blooms generally.”); May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”)

The sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink. See June 18, 1853 ("The first day I began . . . at night [to] sleep with both windows open; say, when the swamp-pink opens"); June 19, 1852 ("We found the swamp pink in blossom a most cool refreshing fragrance to travellers in hot weather. I should place this with if not before the mayflower. Its flowers just opened have caught but few insects "); June 23, 1852 ("The sweet fragrance of swamp pinks fills all the swamps."); June 23, 1853 ("I every year, as to-day, observe the sweet, refreshing fragrance of the swamp-pink, when threading the woods and swamps in hot weather. It is positively cool. Now in its prime"). See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink

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