Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more . . .

May 29. 
P. M. —— Ride to Painted-Cup Meadow. 

Dragon mouth
 (Arethusa bulbosa) orchid

Two Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.

Golden senecio there, a day or two, at least. White clover. Ranunculus repens (sepals not recurved and leaves a spotted look), apparently a day. Geum rivale, well out. Common crataegus, apparently some days. Juniperus communis, a day or two at least, probably more. 

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. 

A cuckoo’s note, loud and hollow, from a wood-side.

Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. 

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. 

Saw sanicle well flower-budded. Cherry-birds on the apple trees. Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1856

Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two. . . . See May 28, 1853 ("The bulbous arethusa out a day or two — probably yesterday. Though in a measure prepared for it, still its beauty surprised me; it is by far the highest and richest color yet. Its intense color in the midst of the green meadow made it look twice as large as reality; it looks very foreign in the midst of our plants - its richly speckled, curled, and bearded lip."); May 29, 1858 ("Arethusa bulbosa, well out."); May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); June 1, 1855 (“Arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.“); June 10, 1854 (“The fragrance of the arethusa is like that of the lady's-slipper, or pleasanter.”)

Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. . . . See May 5, 1853  ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, . . .  but I have not been able to find any yet.”)  See also June 6, 1858 ("Edith Emerson has found, in the field (Merriam’s) just south of the Beck Stow pine grove, Lepidium campestre"); August 9, 1858 ("Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there.”); July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia, which she saw very abundantly in bloom on the Blue Hills.”); September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday; was (some of it) withered then, says Edith Emerson.”)

Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more. See April 24, 1854 ("Go to new trees. . . and you hear new birds. "); July 2, 1857 (“Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.”); July 31, 1859 ("Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found.")

Dusk. We go out after the rain to find the Lady's slipper.  The woods are dripping wet, the hemlocks' bright new growth just beginning to show. Along the cliff edge three Lady's slippers bloom.  The hermit thrush sings. 

Lady-slippers bloom

in the damp evening woods as

the hermit thrush sings.

May 29, 2016

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