Eighty-four berries, size of peas, three to six sided, closely wedged together on peduncles three quarters of an inch long.

August 2. 

Hobblebush August 2, 2019

Heavy, long-continued, but warm rain in the night, raising the river already eight or nine inches and disturbing the meadow haymakers. 

John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries. 

Sundown. — To Nawshawtuct. 

The waxwork berries are yellowing. 

I am not sure but the bunches of the smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned, the crimson contrasting with the green, the green berries showing a velvety crimson cheek. 

Geum Virginianum, white avens (June to August, Gray), still in bloom by the sassafras hedge, south side of hill, looks as if it might be a white cinquefoil, with small hook-prickled burs. Put it in June.

Mulgedium out. 

The green fruit of the carrion-flower forms dense, firm, spherical umbels (?) at the end of stems five or six inches long; umbels two inches in diameter, formed, one of them, of eighty-four berries, size of peas, three to six sided, closely wedged together on peduncles three quarters of an inch long. The whole feels hard and solid in the hand.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1853

The waxwork berries are yellowing. See August 9, 1854 ("Waxwork yellowing.")

The smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned. See July 24, 1852 (“The smooth sumach berries are red.”): July 31,1856 (“The smooth sumach is pretty generally crimson-berried on the Knoll”);  August 1, 1852 ("Sumach berries now generally red."); August 23, 1858("Smooth sumach berries all turned crimson.")

Geum Virginianum, white avens still in bloom with small hook-prickled burs. See  June 28, 1857 (“Geum Virginianum some time, apparently, past its prime ”); July 16, 1856 (“Geum Virginianum, apparently two or three days.”)

Mulgeium out. See July 24, 1859 ("Mulgedium, how long?"); August 7, 1856 ("Mulgedium, perhaps a fortnight. . . .One mulgedium at Corner Spring is at least ten feet high and hollow all the way. "); August 11, 1856 ("Measured a mulgedium, eight feet three inches long and hollow all the way."); August 12, 1856 ("The mulgedium in that swamp is very abundant and a very stately plant, so erect and soldier-like, in large companies, rising above all else, with its very regular long, sharp, elliptic head and bluish-white flowers.")

The green fruit of the carrion-flower forms dense, firm, spherical umbels. See May 27, 1855 ("Carrion-flower a foot high."); June 11, 1859 ("Carrion-flower up a day or two."); June 16, 1858 ("Carrion-flower, how long? Not long."); August 24, 1858 ("Carrion flower fruit is blue; how long?"); September 3, 1856 ("One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster.") ; September 8, 1852 ("Carrion-flower berries ripe for some days").