A black snake at home in the trees.

May 28. 

Saturday. P. M. — To Cliffs. 

Some Salix rostrata seed begins to fly. 

Low blackberry in bloom on railroad bank. 

Also S. Torreyana seed, just begun to fly. S. pedicellaris long out of bloom there. 

At the extreme east side of Trillium Wood, come upon a black snake, which at first keeps still prudently, thinking I may not see him, — in the grass in open land, — then glides to the edge of the wood and darts swiftly up into the top of some slender shrubs there — Viburnum dentatum and alder — and lies stretched out, eying me, in horizontal loops eight feet high. The biggest shrub was not over one inch thick at the ground. At first I thought its neck was its chief member, — as if it drew itself up by it, — but again I thought that it rather (when I watched it ascending) extended its neck and a great part of its body upward, while the lower extremity was more or less coiled and rigid on the twigs from a point d'appui. Thus it lifted itself quickly to higher forks. When it moved along more horizontally, it extended its neck far, and placed it successively between the slender forks. 

This snake, some four feet long, rested there at length twelve feet high, on twigs, not one so big as a pipe-stem, in the top of a shad-bush; yet this one's tail was broken off where a third of an inch thick, and it could not cling with that. It was quick as thought in its motions there, and perfectly at home in the trees, so far was it from making the impression of a snake in an awkward position. 

Cinnamon fern pollen [sic]. 

Lady's-slipper pollen. These grow under pines even in swamps, as at Ledum Swamp. 

The lint from leaves sticks to your clothes now. 

Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. 

Methinks every tree and shrub is started, or more, now, but the Vaccinium dumosum, which has not burst.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1859

Some Salix rostrata seed begins to fly. See June 6, 1856 ("That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered.")

This snake, some four feet long, perfectly at home in the trees. See May 16, 2018 ("It surprised me very much to see it cross from tree to tree exactly like a squirrel, where there appeared little or no support for such a body."); May 30, 1855 ("See a small black snake run along securely through thin bushes (alders and willows) three or four feet from the ground, passing intervals of two feet easily,—very readily and gracefully, —ascending or descending")

The Vaccinium dumosum. See  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.”); July 2, 1857 (“The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. . . . not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom.”); August 8, 1858 (“the Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella . . . the only inedible species of  Vaccinieoe that I know in this town”)

May 28. SeeA 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 ©  2009-2021