Low-water plants.

August 1. 

August 1, 2019

6 a.m. — River is at summer level. 

This being Monday morning, the river is probably lower than at any other time in the week. 

Am surprised to see in water opposite between Monroe's and Dodd's the Myriophyllum ambiguum var. natans, amid the Bidens Beckii. It must have been out (under water) a fortnight. A pretty sprig of pectinate leafets above the capillary-leafed and slimy mass. 

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. 

Evidently the above two and lilies, cardinal-flowers, etc., depend on the state of the river in June. After a very wet June I think there is less bloom on them. Some years the first two are not noticed at all. 

We have now got down to the water milfoil and the B. Beckii. These might be called low-water plants. 

The bottom is occasionally — though quite rarely in Concord — of soft shifting sand, ripple-marked, in which the paddle sinks, under four or five feet of water (as below the ash tree hole), and few weeds grow on such a shallow. 

Evidently the hill at Hemlocks would be a flowing sand-hill, if it were not held together by the hemlocks.  

The common cat-tail (about five feet high by rail road, beyond the South Bridge) has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common. Can it, then, be the Typha angustifolia, which is described as smaller and rare? 

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle.

The west edge of the Rock above Island is eleven and a half inches above summer level. Now, at 5 P. M., the river has risen an inch and a half since 6 A. M., though we have not had a drop of rain for three days, and then but a few drops, and it fell three quarters of an inch between yesterday (Sunday) morning and this morning. Is this rise owing to the water let on from various mill-ponds this Monday morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1859

The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. See August 2, 1856 ("Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts.")

The common cat-tail has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday has, and yet it is much larger than the common See July 31, 1859 ("Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on).")

I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney's, and repeatedly snapping up some insects, perhaps a devil's-needle. See August 6, 1858 ("If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast.")