Botanizing Lynn

April 26. 

April 26, 2019

Start for Lynn. Rice says that he saw a large mud turtle in the river about three weeks ago, and has seen two or three more since. Thinks they come out about the first of April. 

He saw a woodchuck the 17th; says he heard a toad on the 23d. 

P. M. — Walked with C. M. Tracy in the rain in the western part of Lynn, near Dungeon Rock. This is the last of the rains (spring rains !) which invariably followed an east wind. Crossed a stream of stones ten or more rods wide, reaching from top of Pine Hill to Salem. 

Saw many discolor-like willows on hills (rocky hills), but apparently passing into S. humilis; yet no eriocephala, or distinct form from discolor. Also one S. rostrata. 

Tracy thought his neighborhood's a depauperated flora, being on the porphyry. Is a marked difference between the vegetation of the porphyry and the sienite. 

Got the Cerastium arvense from T.'s garden; said to be abundant on Nahant and to have flowers big as a five-cent-piece; very like a dianthus, — the leaf. 

Also got the Nasturtium officinale, or common brook cress, from Lynn, and set it in Depot Field Brook. Neither of these in bloom. His variety Virginica of Cardamine grows on dry ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 26, 1859

Rice says that he saw a large mud turtle in the river . . . Thinks they come out about the first of April. See  April 26, 1857 ("Father says he saw a boy with a snapping turtle yesterday.") See also

 April 1, 1858   ("At Hemlock Brook, a dozen or more rods from the river, I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year. "):  April 24, 1856 ("Warren Miles at his new mill tells me that he found a mud turtle of middling size in his brook there last Monday, or the 21st .");  April 25, 1856 ("Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill . . . He said they could come down through his mill without hurt. ")

Is a marked difference between the vegetation of the porphyry and the sienite. See January 14, 1858 (“Rode . . . into the northwest part of Lynn, to the Danvers line. After a mile or two, we passed beyond the line of the porphyry into the sienite. The sienite is more rounded. Saw some furrows in sienite. On a ledge of sienite in the woods, the rocky woods near Danvers line, saw many boulders of sienite”)

Got the Nasturtium officinale, or common brook cress, from Lynn, and set it in Depot Field Brook.See July 21, 1856 (“The brook cress might be called river cress, for it is very abundant rising above the surface in all the shallower parts of the river.”)