The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe.

August 17. 

P. M. — Walked with Minot Pratt behind his house. 

Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still with red or scarlet calyx-lobes to the seed, roadside this side H. Shattuck's.

Aster miser some time, turned purple. A. longifolius not long.

Hieracium Canadense. 

Pratt describes finding one or two small yellowish plants on the edge of his field under the hill, like a polygala, but twice as large, stiff, and points of the flowers turned down [?]; leaf clover-like, three-foliate. Russell had suggested genista. 

He has in his garden the mountain fringe (Adlumia cirrhosa), which grows in Maine and he thought in the western part of this State. 

Also wood geranium (G. dissectum (Big.)) from Fitzwilliam, though Gray seems to think that the Carolinianum has been mistaken for it. 

Rhus copallina already going to seed by the wall, apparently on what was W. E. C.'s ground. 

Saw again the red huckleberry and the white hardhack. The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe. It is then red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted. I do not perceive any very marked peculiarity in the bush, unless that the recent twigs are red. The last year's a peculiar ochreous color and the red buds in the axils larger. It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 17, 1856

Hieracium Canadense. See July 25, 1856 ("The Hieracium Canadense grows by the road fence in Potter's hydrocotyle field, some seven or eight inches high, in dense tufts!"); August 1, 1854 ("Hieracium Canadense,apparently a day or two."); October 2, 1856 ("Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. "); see also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)


Saw again the red huckleberry. ... The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripeT he red huckleberry is . . .red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted.. . .It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa. See Augusst 4 , 1856 ("and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities");  May 18, 1857 ("The red huckleberry looks more forward — blossom-buds more swollen — than those of common there."); June 7, 1857 ("Pratt has . . . Red huckleberry about same time. It is sticky like the black.") Compare August 2, 1853 ("John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries."); August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”); august 7, 1858 (" find huckleberries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them. These and also other roundish ones near by, and apparently huckleberries generally, are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass it looks like a resin which has exuded."); ,August 8, 1858 (I see [at Ledum  swamp][ especially near the pool, tall and slender huckleberry bushes of a peculiar kind. Some are seven feet high. They are, for the most part, three or four feet high, very slender and drooping, bent like grass to one side. The berries are round and glossy-black, with resinous dots, as usual, and in flattish-topped racemes, sometimes ten or twelve in a raceme, but generally more scattered. Call it, perhaps, the tall swamp huckleberry."")