A cold
northwest wind.
Now, on my
return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or
landscape.
I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill:
- dandelion,
- field horse-tail,
- Antennaria plantaginifolia,
- sweet-gale,
- epigæa,
- Populus grandidentata,
- Salix tristis,
- Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th),
- Potentilla Canadensis,
- comptonia,
- Thalictrum anemonoides,
- Anemone nemorosa,
- V. blanda,
- P. balsamifera,
- Aquilegia Canadensis,
- Hedyotiscærulea,
- andromeda,
- Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
- Salix alba,
- benzoin,
- Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.
Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun:
- Viola pedata,
- Ostrya Virginica,
- V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).
And Rumex
Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.
The
expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.
Other conspicuous green leaves are
- the gooseberry,
- currant,
- elder,
- the willows just beginning,
- and alder,
- and apple trees
- and high blackberry,
- amelanchier,
- meadow-sweet,
- beside many herbaceous plants.
Drosera (round
leaved) leaves now.
Sedge-grass (early
sedge) very abundant still.
The
Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.
These things
observed on way To Cliffs.
The oak
leaves on the plain are fallen.
The colors are now:
- light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels);
- landscape russet and greenish,
- spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands,
- with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and
- dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.
It is
greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong,
invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.
It is like
the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.
A phoebe's
nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined
with grass and edged with hypnum.
Channing has
seen a robin's nest and eggs.
I hear a
black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.
The shrub
oaks are well budded.
The young
ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.
Oaks and
hickory buds just ready to open.
How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now!
The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot
on banks.
The skunk-cabbage
leaves green the warm, springy meads.
Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.
Columbine
Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.
The
columbines have been out some days.
How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves!
The barn swallow is about.
Have we the Viola lanceolata? [Yes. Vide Hubbard's]
Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit?
Channing says he has heard the wood thrush,
brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.
This and
last page for birds which I find come in the interval.
Did I not
see the oven-bird yesterday?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1853
I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here. See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")
Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand"); May 5, 1859 ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen"); May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata "); May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets
Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird
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