A season for small evergreens.

December 7. 

Wednesday. P. M. — To Trillium Woods and Hubbard's Close. 

In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, in this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, surmounted by the effete spikes, some with a spiral or screw-like arrangement of the fan-like leaves, some spreading and drooping. It is like looking down on evergreen trees. 

And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green, with its curving fingers; also the pretty little fingers of the cylindrical L. clavatum, or club-moss, zig zagging amid the dry leaves; not to mention the spreading openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. 

Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit. Not to mention the still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit; gold-thread; Pyrola secunda, with drooping curled-back leaves, and other pyrolas; and, by the brooks, brooklime (?) (I mean such as at Cliff Brook and at brook in E. Hubbard's Swamp).[Golden saxifrage]

There is the mountain laurel, too.

The terminal shield fern is quite fresh and green, and a common thin fern, though fallen. 

I observe the beds of greenish cladonia lichens. 

Saw a wood tortoise stirring in the now open brook in Hubbard's Swamp. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 7, 1853

In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor. See October 29, 1858 (“With the fall of the white pine, etc., the Pyrola umbellata and the lycopodiums, and even evergreen ferns, suddenly emerge as from obscurity. If these plants are to be evergreen, how much they require this brown and withered carpet to be spread under them for effect. Now, too, the light is let in to show them.”); November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”);  November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season.") ;  November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); November 27, 1853 ("I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green. Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now");

The still green Mitchella repens [partridge-berry] and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit; gold-thread; Pyrola secunda, with drooping curled-back leaves, and other pyrolas. See March 4, 1854 ("In Hubbard's maple swamp I see the evergreen leaves of the gold-thread as well as the mitchella and large pyrola."); March 7, 1855 ("The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone.”); April 24, 1852 (“Gold-thread, an evergreen, still bright in the swamps.”); May 17, 1857 (“Gold-thread is abundantly out at Trillium Woods.”); July 2, 1859 ("Mitchella repens is abundantly out."); July 3, 1859 ("The Mitchella repens, so abundant now in the north west part of Hubbard's Grove, emits a strong astringent cherry-like scent as I walk over it, now that it is so abundantly in bloom, which is agreeable to me, — spotting the ground with its downy-looking white flowers.”); October 15, 1859 (“The little leaves of the mitchella, with a whitish midrib and veins, lying generally flat on the mossy ground, perhaps about the base of a tree, with their bright-scarlet twin berries sprinkled over them, may properly be said to checker the ground. Now, particularly, they are noticed amid the fallen leaves. ”);  November 16, 1850 (“The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries ?”); November 27, 1853 ("Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now.”); December 3, 1853 ("The still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit");;December 23, 1855 (“At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, . . . checkerberry, wintergreen, . . .”)

Note “checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). See Checkerberry cum Wintergreen. What HDT calls “wintergreen” is Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa.

The terminal shield fern is quite fresh and green, See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum.. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”); November 2, 1857 (“The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums now have their day; now is the flower of their age, and their greenness is appreciated. They are much the clearest and most liquid green in the woods”); November 5, 1857 ("The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green.”).


Saw a wood tortoise stirring in the now open brook in Hubbard's Swamp. See December 7, 1852 (“ In a ditch near by, under ice half an inch thick, I saw a painted tortoise moving about.”)