Coral-root by Brister's Spring

August 20. 

August 20, 2018

That large galium still abundant and in blossom, filling crevices. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza, I think, for it has twenty-four flowers, and its germ is not roundish oval, and its lip is three-lobed), by Brister's Spring. Found by R. W. E., August 12; also Goodyera pubescens found at same date. 

The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. 

I find raspberries still. 

An aster with a smooth leaf narrowed below, somewhat like A. amplexicaulis (or patens (Gray) ?). Is it var. phlogifolius? 

Is that smooth, handsome-stemmed goldenrod in Brown's Sleepy Hollow meadow Solidago serotina? 

Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1852


The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza) found by R. W. E., August 12. See August 13, 1852 ("I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.). See also August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.") and  note to August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long") [spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculate) -- a saprophytic orchid]


Goodyera pubescens found at same date. See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)


The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. See August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.") See also note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")


Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. See August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? ");  September 12, 1851("in Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill. . . the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals")September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, [T]he first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.");   September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,now abundant by riverside.")