It is very dry now.

August 22. 

Monday. 

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. 

Blue vervain (Verbena hastata)

The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? 

WOOD ASTER AUGUST 20, 2017

Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. 

Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. 

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots close by them, but they are rather feeble and late. 

Riding to the factory, I see the leaves of corn, planted thick for fodder, so rolled by the drought that I mistook one row in grass for some kind of rush or else reed, small and terete. 

At the factory, where they were at work on the dam, they showed large and peculiar insects which they were digging up amid the gravel and water of the dam, nearly two inches long and half an inch wide, with six legs, two large shield-like plates on the forward part of the body, — under which they apparently worked their way through wet sand, — and two large claws, some what lobster-like, forward. The abdomen long, of many rings, and fringed with a kind of bristles on each side. 

The other day, as I was going by Messer's, I was struck with the pure whiteness of a tall and slender buttonwood before his house. The southwest side of it for some fifty or more feet upward, as far as the outer bark had recently scaled off, was as white, as distinct and bright a white, as if it had been painted, and when I put my finger on it, a white matter, like paint not quite dry, came off copiously, so that I even suspected it was paint. When I scaled off a piece of bark, the freshly exposed surface was brown. This white matter had a strong fungus-like scent, and this color is apparently acquired after a little exposure to the air. Nearly half the tree was thus uninterruptedly white as if it had been rounded and planed and then painted. No birch presents so uniformly white a surface. 

It is very dry now, but I perceive that the great star-shaped leaves of the castor bean plants in Mr. Rice's garden at twilight are quite cold to the touch, and quite shining and wet with moisture wherever I touch them. Many leaves of other plants, as cucumbers, feel quite dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1859

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. See August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.");August 23, 1851 ("The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.")


The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? See August 3, 1858 ("Savory-leaved aster."); September 18, 1856 ("Diplopappus linariifolius in prime.")

Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. See August 9, 1856 ("What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks.. It has eight to twelve white rays, smaller than those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly."); August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp.");  September 1, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past."); September 6, 1856 ("For the first time distinguish the Aster cordifolius, a prevailing one in B[rattleboro] and but just beginning to flower"); September 9, 1856 [at Brattleboro] ("High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus as well as corymbosus.");September 22, 1858 [from Salem to Cape Ann on foot] ("saw A. corymbosus, which is a handsome white wood aster"); September 24, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, still fresh though probably past prime."); October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common. ")

Aster corymbosus . now known as Eurybia divaricata , commonly known as the white wood aster, can be found in dry open woods as well as along wood-edges and clearings. Its flower heads have yellow centers and white rays that are arranged in flat-topped corymbiform arrays (growing in such a fashion that the outermost are borne on longer pedicels than the inner, bringing all flowers up to a common level. to flattish top superficially resembling an umbel,). It flowers in the late summer through fall. Other distinguishing characteristics include its serpentine stems and sharply serrated narrow heart-shaped leaves. ~Wikipedia


Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. See September 9, 1857 ("How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me!"); September 16, 1857 ("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped.");September 24, 1857 ("The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them.")

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots. See March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")