Saturday, September 10, 2022

The Aster Tradescanti sugars the banks.

 



September 10. 


The pontederia and pads have already their fall look by river. It is not the work of frost.

The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees.

It covered the ground to the depth of two feet over large tracts, looking at a little distance somewhat like a smart hoar frost or sleet or sugaring on the weeds.

The banks are sugared with the A. Tradescanti.


H. D.. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1853

The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees. SeeAugust 11, 1854 ("Aster Tradescanti, two or three days in low ground; flowers smaller than A. dumosus, densely racemed, with short peduncles or branchlets, calyx-scales narrower and more pointed."); August 14, 1856 ("Aster tradescanti, apparently a day or two."); August 31, 1853 (Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti?"); September 1, 1853 (""That small aster which I call A. Tradescanti, with crowded racemes, somewhat rolled or cylindrical to appearance, of small white flowers a third of an inch in diameter, with yellow disks turning reddish or purplish, is very pretty by the low roadsides, resounding with the hum of honey-bees; which is commonly despised for its smallness and commonness, — with crowded systems of little suns.");September 1, 1854 (" The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime."); September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink."); September 27, 1856 ("The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the Tradescanti.")

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