Why so many asters and goldenrods now?

August 30.

August 30, 2013

The Solidago odora grows abundantly behind the Minott house in Lincoln. I collect a large bundle of it. 


Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first. 

As I go along from the Minott house to the Bidens Brook, I am quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters, now in their prime here. 

Why so many asters and goldenrods now? The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. The stars, too, have shone on it, and the asters are their fruit.

I find at this time in fruit: (1) Polypodium vulgare,(2) Struthiopteris Germanica (ostrich fern), (3) Pteris aquilina (common brake) (have not looked for fruit), (4) Adiantum pedatum (have not looked for fruit), (5) Asplenium Trichomanes (dwarf spleenwort), also (6) A. ebeneum (ebony spleenwort), (7) Dicksonia punctilobula, (8) Dryopteris marginalis (marginal shield fern), (9) Polystichum acrostichoides ( terminal shield fern ) , (10) Onoclea sensibilis (?) (sensitive fern) (think I saw the fruit August 12th at Bittern Cliff), (11) Lygodium palmatum ( probably still in fruit , was when I last saw it), (12) Osmunda spectabilis (flowering fern) (out of fruit), (13) Osmunda cinnamomea (?) (tall osmunda  (also out of fruit). 

Nos. 1, 5, 6, and 8 common at Lee's Cliff. No. 2 behind Trillium Woods.  4 at Miles Swamp.  9 at Brister's Hill. 

maidenhair speenwort growing in sharp cliff-side angles

(March 2022, September 2024)

The dwarf spleenwort grows in the sharp angles of the rocks in the side of Lee's Cliff, its small fronds spreading in curved rays, its matted roots coming away in triangular masses, moulded by the rock. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1853

The dwarf spleenwort [maidenhair spleenwort]grows in the sharp angles of the rocks in the side of Lee's Cliff, its small fronds spreading in curved rays . . . The ebony spleenwort stands upright against the rocks. See July 17, 1857 (“I find to-day, at Bittern Cliff and at Lee's, Asplenium ebeneum (the larger), apparently nearly in prime, and A. Trichomanes, apparently just begun. This very commonly occurs in tufts at the base of the last, like radical leaves to it.”); November 17, 1858 (“As for the evergreen ferns, I see now . . . Asplenium trichomanes. A. ebeneum . . . ”); November 18, 1858 ("I go along under the east side of Lee's Cliff , looking at the evergreen ferns  . . . How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin.")

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort