November 17
P. M .-- To Blood's woods.
Sawed off a branch of creeping juniper two inches diameter with fifteen rings.
On one square of nine rods in Blood's wood, which seemed more dense than the average, are thirteen sizable trees. This would give about two hundred and thirty to an acre, but probably there are not more than one hundred and eighty to an acre, take the wood through.
This is but little more than one to a square rod. Yet this is a quite dense wood.
That very solid white oak stump recently sawed in this wood was evidently a seedling, the growth was so extremely slow at first. If I found the case to be the same with the other oaks here, I should feel sure that these were all seedlings and therefore had been preceded by pines or at least some dense evergreens, or possibly birches.
When I find a dense oak wood, whether sprouts or seedlings, I affirm that evergreens once stood [there] and, if man does not prevent, will grow again. This I must believe until I find a dense oak wood planted under itself or in open land.
Minot Pratt's elm is sixteen and a quarter feet circumference at three feet.
These tawny-white oaks are thus by their color and character the lions among trees, or rather, not to compare them with a foreign animal, they are the cougars or panthers – the American lions — among the trees, for nearly such is that of the cougar which walks beneath and amid or springs upon them. There is plainly this harmony between the color of our chief wild beast of the cat kind and our chief tree.
How they do things in West Acton.
As we were walking through West Acton the other afternoon, a few rods only west of the centre, on the main road, the Harvard turnpike, we saw a rock larger than a man could lift, lying in the road, exactly in the wheel-track, and were puzzled to tell how it came there, but supposed it had slipped off a drag, -- yet we noticed that it was peculiarly black.
Returning the same way in the twilight, when we had got within four or five rods of this very spot, looking up, we saw a man in the field, three or four rods on one side of that spot, running off as fast as he could.
By the time he had got out of sight over the hill it occurred to us that he was blasting rocks and had just touched one off; so, at the eleventh hour, we turned about and ran the other way, and when we had gone a few rods, off went two blasts, but fortunately none of the rocks struck us. Some time after we passed we saw the men returning. They looked out for themselves, but for nobody else.
This is the way they do things in West Acton. We now understood that the big stone was blackened by powder.
Silas Hosmer tells me how [they]sold the Heywood lot between the railroad and Fair Haven. They lotted it off in triangles, and, carrying plenty of liquor, they first treated all round, and then proceeded to sell at auction, but the purchasers, excited with liquor, were not aware when the stakes were pointed out that the lots were not as broad in the rear as in front, and the wood standing cost them as much as it should have done delivered at the door.
I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller's thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above, and thus the factories which use it may distribute its seeds by means of the streams which turn their machinery, from one to another. The one who first cultivated the teasel extensively in this town is said to have obtained the seed when it was not to be purchased — the culture being monopolized — by sweeping a wagon which he had loaned to a teasel-raiser.
The growth of very old trees, as appears by calculating the bulk of wood formed, is feebler at last than when in middle age, or say in pitch pine at one hundred and sixty than at forty or fifty, especially when you consider the increased number of leaves, and this, together with the fact that old stumps send up no shoots, shows that trees are not indefinitely long-lived.
I have a section of a chestnut sprout — and not at all a rank one which has 6 rings in the first inch, or 4 rings in five eighths of an inch, but a section of a chestnut seedling has 10 rings in five eighths of an inch.
A section of a white oak sprout, far from rank, has 4 rings in first five eighths of an inch; of a seedling ditto, 16 or 17 in first five eighths of an inch; of a seed ling ditto, 8 in first five eighths of an inch; of a very slow-grown sprout, 6 – in first five eighths of an inch.
Or in the white oaks the proportion is as five to twelve.
The first seedling oak has the rough and tawny light brown bark of an old tree, while the first sprout is quite smooth-barked.
A seedling white birch has 10 rings in first seven eighths of an inch. A sprout white birch has 5 rings in first seven eighths of an inch.
The first has the white bark of an old tree; the second, a smooth and reddish bark.
When a stump is sound to the pith I can commonly tell whether it was a seedling or a sprout by the rapidity of the growth at first. A seedling, it is true, may have died down many times till it is fifteen or twenty years old, and so at last send up a more vigorous shoot than at first, but generally the difference is very marked.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,
November 17, 1860
Sawed off a branch of creeping juniper. See September 4, 1853 ("The creeping juniper berries are now a hoary green but full-grown."); October 19, 1859 ("The dark-blue, or ripe, creeping juniper berries are chiefly on the lower part of the branches,")
To Blood's woods. See November 5, 1860 ("Blood's oak lot may contain about a dozen acres. It consists of red, black, white, and swamp white oaks, and a very little maple. This is quite a dense wood-lot, . . . a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old.")
These tawny-white oaks are thus by their color and character the lions among trees. See November 16, 1860 ("There is . . .a difference between most of the white oaks within Blood's wood and the pasture oaks without, — the former having a very finely divided and comparatively soft tawnyish bark, and the latter a very coarse rugged and dark - colored bark. . . . White oaks within a wood commonly, at Wetherbee's and Blood's woods, have lost the outside rough and rugged bark near the base, like a jacket or vest cast off, revealing that peculiar smooth tawny - white inner garment or shirt.")
The one who first cultivated the teasel extensively in this town is said to have obtained the seed by sweeping a wagon which he had loaned to a teasel-raiser. See September 16, 1856 ("William Monroe is said to have been the first who raised teasels about here. He was very sly about it, and fearful lest he should have competitors. At length he lent his wagon to a neighbor, who discovered some teasel seed on the bottom, which he carefully saved and planted, and so competed with Monroe.")
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