A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

  

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring.

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

Little mounds or tufts

of yellowish or golden moss –

sunlight on the ground.

February 7, 1858

Mosses on the rocks

look green where snow has melted --

one of the spring signs.

February 18, 1852

Mosses now in fruit

are warmly red in the sun

when seen from one side.

April 25, 1857

March 23, 2021

January 25.  In winter, after middle, we are interested in what is springlike. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees. January 25, 1853

January 29. The green mosses on the rocks are evidently nourished and kept bright by the snows lying on them a part of the year. January 29, 1852

February 7.  Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. February 7, 1858

February 8. It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again. February 8, 1857

February 13.  The first flower of the season . . . The Ictodes fætidus. Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will pass for the blossom. February 13, 1851 

February 18.    The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes. February 18, 1852 

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

February 27. The mosses now are in fruit -- or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.   February 27, 1852

March 2  I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome. March 2, 1860

 March 3.   The mossy bank along the south side of Hosmer's second spring ditch is very interesting. There are many coarse, hair-like masses of that green and brown moss on its edge, hanging over the ditch, alternating with withered-looking cream-colored sphagnum tinged with rose-color, in protuberances, or mammae, a foot across on the perpendicular side of the ditch.  March 3, 1859  

March 4. I find a place on the south side of this rocky hill where the snow is melted and the bare gray rock appears, covered with mosses and lichens and beds of oak leaves in the hollows. The  sun shines with a genial warmth. The snow is melting on the rocks; the water trickles down in shining streams; the mosses look bright; the first awakening of vegetation at the root of the saxifrage. An oasis in the snow.  March 4, 1852

A cold and strong wind,

yet very warm in the sun,

sheltered on these rocks.

March 4, 1855

March 4.   I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up,   and lie just above the surface of the water. They are scattered about in the old decayed trough. (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living, perhaps slightly glaucous, green.     March 4, 1859

March 7.   At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact.  March 7 , 1855 

March 10.   Fine red-stemmed mosses have begun to push and bud on Clamshell bank.   March 10, 1859 

March 22. The phenomena of an average March. . . Vegetation fairly begins, – conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc., — and gradually many early herbaceous plants start . . . willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright . . . alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated. March 22, 1860

March 25. I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water. March 25, 1853

April 2.  See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season. April 2, 1853 

April 2.  There are beds of fresh green moss in the midst of the shallow water.  April 2, 1856 

April 18.  That pretty, now brown-stemmed moss with green oval fruit. April 18, 1856 

April 25. The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.  April 25, 1857 

See also Signs of the Spring:

• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• The spring note of the chickadee
• Buzzing Flies
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Insects and worms come forth and are active
• Ripples made by fishes
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• Walking without Gloves
• The gobbling of turkeys
• The Red-wing Arrives
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• Ducks afar, sailing on the meadow
• Listening for the bluebird
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• A Change in the Air
• Bright blue water
• Greening grasses and sedges
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Hawks of March
• March is famous for its winds
• The anxious peep of the early robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The note of the dark-eyed junco going northward
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The grackle arrives
• Woodpeckers tapping

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A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024