In Painted-Cup Meadow.

May 28 

Rainy. To Painted-Cup Meadow. 

Potentilla argentea, maybe several days. 

Trifolium pratense.

A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest about ten or twelve rods southwest of house-leek rock, between two rocks which are several rods apart northwest and southeast; four eggs. The nest of coarse grass stubble, lined with fine grass, and is two thirds at least covered by a jutting sod. Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small ground bird’s egg, rather broad at one end, pretty fresh.

A cricket creaks. 

Hypoxis erecta, maybe a day or two. 

Thalictrum dioicum [early meadow-rue]abundantly out, apparently in prime, male and female, some effete, perhaps a week, near wall in Painted-Cup Meadow, fifteen to eighteen inches high. I think it was a mass of young Thalictrum Cornuti leaves which had that rank, dog-like scent.

Painted-cup pollen a good while ago. 

Saw, under an apple tree, nearly half a pint of some white grub with a light reddish head, like a small potato-worm, one inch long, and part of a snake-skin, making the greater part of the faeces of some animal, — chiefly the grubs, — a formless soft mass. Skunk?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1856

May 28, 2026

Painted-Cup Meadow. See May 29, 1856 ("What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that  meadow! Painted Cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”) June 3, 1853 (“A large meadow full of [painted-cup], and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.”);

Trifolium pratense. See May 28, 1854 ("Red clover at Clamshell, a day or two.”) 

A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . . Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown. See April 22, 1856 ("The seringo . . . with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,_and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che | ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard."); June 26, 1856 ("Saw, apparently, the F. Savanna near their nests (my seringo note), restlessly flitting about me from rock to rock within a rod. Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast . . . Audubon says that the eggs of the Savannah sparrow “are of a pale bluish color, softly mottled with purplish brown,”. . . apparently my seringo’s egg of  May 28th.”); See also Guide to Thoreau’s Birds ("Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow . . .  the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds.")

 A cricket creaks. See  May 22, 1854 ("First observe the creak of crickets . . . Their strain is unvaried as Truth. Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets.");  May 24, 1857 ("Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain"); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer"); May 27, 1859 (" A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now."); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring

Hypoxis erecta, maybe a day or two. See  June 15, 1851 ("The Hypoxis erecta, yellow Bethlehem-star, where there is a thick, wiry grass in open path; should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks."); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Bethlehem-star

Thalictrum dioicum abundantly out, apparently in prime, male and female, some effete. See May 15, 1858 ("Thalictrum dioicum abundant, apparently in prime; how long? It is a very interesting, graceful, and delicate plant, especially the sterile, with its pretty, commonly purple, petal-like sepals, and its conspicuous long yellow anthers in little bare clusters (?), trembling over the meadow.")

I think it was a mass of young Thalictrum Cornuti leaves which had that rank, dog-like scent. See May 29, 1856 ("To return to Painted-Cup Meadow, I do not perceive the rank odor of Thalictrum Cornuti expanding leaves to-day. How more than fugacious it is! Evidently this odor is emitted only at particular times.")

Painted-cup pollen a good while ago. See May 8, 1853 ("Surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom . . .the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet, not excepting the columbine . . . It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal . . . It is a flaming leaf. The very leaf has flowered; not the ripe tints of autumn, but the rose in the cheek of infancy; a more positive flowering."); May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow.”) June 3, 1853 ("The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow, – Painted-Cup Meadow. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet. . . might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it") [Scarlet painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) is an annual herb that is hemiparasitic . . . formerly found in several New England states, but is now apparently restricted to Connecticut, where only a small handful of populations remain. GoBotany]

The faeces of some animal. . . Skunk? See  January 24, 1860 ("The droppings of a skunk left on a rock, perhaps at the beginning of winter, were full of grasshoppers' legs.");  March 28, 1855 (" I see where a skunk (apparently) has been probing the sod. . . I dig up there a frozen and dead white grub, the large potato grub; this I think he was after.");   April 15, 1856 ("Near the water are many recent skunk probings, as if a drove of pigs had passed along last night, death to many beetles and grubs."); May 4, 1855 ("See where a skunk has probed last night, and large black dung with apparently large ants’ heads and earth or sand and stubble or insects’ wings in it; probably had been probing a large ants’ hill") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Skunk

May 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

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 ©  2009-2026