The black willow down.

June 26. 

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The black willow down is now quite conspicuous on the trees, giving them a parti-colored or spotted white and green look, quite interesting, like a fruit. It also rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white as to remind me of a dense mass of hoar-frost crystals.

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

The black willow down is now quite conspicuous. See March 11, 1861 ("The seed of the willow is exceedingly minute, . . .- and is surrounded at base by a tuft of cotton - like hairs about one fourth of an inch long rising around and above it, forming a kind of parachute. These render it the most buoyant of the seeds of any of our trees, and it is borne the furthest horizontally with the least wind. . . . Each of the numerous little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, which form the fertile catkin is closely packed with down and seeds. At maturity these pods open their beaks, which curve back, and gradually discharge their burden like the milkweed."); June 15, 1854 ("Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds."); June 27, 1860 ("To-day it is cool and clear and quite windy, and the black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds, and the river looking more sparkling."); July 9, 1857 ("There is now but little black willow down left on the trees.")