Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy.

October 30

October 30, 2018

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy. 

The buttonwoods are in the midst of their fall. Some are bare. They-are late among the trees of the street. 

I see that Prichard’s mountain-ash (European) has lately put forth new leaves when all the old have fallen, and they are four or five inches long! But the American has not started. It knows better. 

Beware how you meddle with a buttonwood stump. I remember when one undertook to dig a large one up that he might set a front-yard post on the spot, but I forget how much it cost, or how many weeks one man was about it before it was all cut up and removed. It would have been better to set the post in it. One man who has just cut down a buttonwood had it disposed of, all but eight feet of the butt, when a neighbor offered him five cents for it, and though it contained a cord of wood, he, as he says, “took him up mighty quick,” for if a man’s time were of value he could not afford to be splitting it. 

In Rees’s Cyclopaedia, under the head of the Fall of the Leaf, mention is made of the leaves at this season “changing their healthy green color to more or less of a yellow, sometimes a reddish hue.” And after speaking of the remarkable brilliancy of the American forests, he says that some European plants allied to the brilliant American ones assume bright hues in the fall.

What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered, corresponding to those which those of more truly deciduous trees have when freshly fallen, and not merely the tints of their maturity, as in the maple, etc. 

It may account for this to say that the scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November, and large red and black and swamp white oaks, especially the two last (or excepting some of the first), are not commonly so interesting in the maturity of their leaves as before or after.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1858

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy. See October 30, 1853 ("What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry. You may say the fall has ended. . . . The autumnal tints are gone.")

I see that Prichard’s mountain-ash (European) has lately put forth new leaves. See June 25, 1857 ("Most of the mountain-ash trees on the street are the European, as Prichard's, ")

What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered, and not merely the tints of their maturity. See Autumnal Tints ("Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits.")

The scarlet oak withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November. See October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks.")

I see that scarlet

oak leaves have still some brightness;

the latest of the oaks.

October 30, 1855

Scarlet oaks wither

slowly and retain brightness

to mid-November.

October 30, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

Large red and black and swamp white oaks are not commonly so interesting in the maturity of their leaves as before or after. See October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs."); November 3, 1852 ("[November] is the month of withered oak leaves.")