I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau,
April 18, 1852
Do not the flowers of August and September
generally resemble suns and stars?
So many asters
such bewildering beauty
and variety!
July 26. I mark again, about this time when the first asters open . . . This the afternoon of the year. July 26, 1853
July 28. Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. July 28, 1852
August 1. Diplopappus cornifolius (how long?) at Conant Orchard Grove. August 1, 1855
August 1. Diplopappus umbellatus at Peter's wall. August 1, 1856
August 3. Diplopappus cornifolius, some time. August 3, 1856
August 3. Savory-leaved aster. August 3, 1858
August 4 The yellow Bethlehem-star still, and the yellow gerardia, and a bluish "savory-leaved aster." August 4, 1851
August 5. Aster dumosus, apparently a day or two, with its large conspicuous flower-buds at the end of the branchlets and linear-spatulate involucral scales. August 5, 1856
August 9. What I have called Aster corymbosus [white wood aster] out a day, above Hemlocks. It has eight to twelve white rays, smaller than those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly. August 9, 1856
August 10. Aster dumosus and pennyroyal out; how long? August 10, 1856
August 11. Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp. August 11, 1852
August 11. 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 11, 1854
August 11. Aster puniceus a day or more. August 11, 1856
August 12. The common asters now are the patens, dumosus, Radula, and Diplopappus umbellatus. August 12, 1854
August 12. The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look. August 12, 1856
August 14. Aster tradescanti, apparently a day or two. August 14, 1856
August 16. Diplopappus linariifolius, apparently several days. August 16, 1856
August 17. Aster miser some time, turned purple. A. longifolius not long. August 17, 1856
August 20. An aster with a smooth leaf narrowed below, somewhat like A. amplexicaulis (or patens (Gray) ?). Is it var. phlogifolius? August 20, 1852
August 21. Some of the Hubbard aster are still left, against the upper Hubbard Wood by the shore, which the mowers omitted. August 21, 1854
August 21. The commonest asters now are,
- 1st, the Radula;
- 2d, dumosus;
- 3d, patens;
- 4th, say puniceus;
- 5th, cordtfolius;
- 6th, macrophyllus; (these two a good while);
- 7th, say Tradescanti;
- 8th, miser;
- 9th, longifolius ; (these three quite rare yet);
- 10th, probably acuminatus, some time (not seen);
- 11th, undulatus;
- 12th, loevis; (these two scarcely to be seen yet).
N. B. Water so high I have not seen early meadow aster lately. August 21, 1856
August 22. The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th August 22, 1859
August 24. The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters, and johnswort, — though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign. August 24, 1851
August 24. The asters and diplopappi are about in this order:
- (1) Radula,
- (2) D. cornifolius (?),
- (3) A. corymbosus,
- (4) patens,
- (5) lævis,
- (6) dumosus (?),
- (7) miser,
- (8) macrophyllus,
- (9) D. umbellatus,
- (10) A. acuminatus,
- (11) puniceus.
The patens (4), of various forms, some lilac, is the prevailing blue or bluish one now, middle sized and very abundant on dry hillsides and by wood paths; the lævis next. The 1st, or Radula, is not abundant. (These three are all the distinctly blue ones yet.) The dumosus is the prevailing white one, very abundant; miser mixed with it. D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so .But D. cornifolius, A. corymbosus, macrophyllus, and acuminatus are confined to particular localities. Dumosus and patens (and perhaps lævis, not common enough) are the prevailing asters now. August 24, 1853
August 24. Aster puniceus and Diplopappus umbellatus, how long? August 24, 1859
August 25. Passing over Tuttle’s farm . . . fire-weeds (senecio), thoroughwort, Eupatorium purpureum, and giant asters, etc., suggest a vigor in the soil. August 25, 1853
August 26. Sail across to Bee Tree Hill. This hillside, laid bare two years ago and partly last winter, is almost covered with the Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. As I looked down from the hilltop over the sprout-land, its rounded grayish tops amid the bushes I mistook for gray, lichen-clad rocks, such was its profusion and harmony with the scenery, like hoary rocky hilltops amid bushes. There were acres of it, densely planted. . . . I thought I was looking down on gray, lichen-clad rocky summits on which a few bushes thinly grew. These rocks were asters, single ones a foot over, many prostrate, and making a gray impression. August 26, 1856
August 26. Aster loevis, how long? August 26, 1858
August 27. Aster undulatus. August 27, 1853
August 28. The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers, such as have risen above the stubble in shorn fields since it was cut, whose tops have commonly been clipped by the scythe or the cow; or the late flowers, as asters and goldenrods, which grow in neglected fields and along ditches and hedgerows. August 28, 1859
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| August 28, 2014 |
August 30. As I go along from the Minott house to the Bidens Brook, I am quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters, now in their prime here. Why so many asters and goldenrods now? The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. The stars, too, have shone on it, and the asters are their fruit. August 30, 1853
August 30. The Aster puniceusis hardly yet in prime; its great umbel-shaped tops not yet fully out. Its leaves are pretty generally whitened with mildew and unsightly. August 30, 1856
August 30. The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous- ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now:
- Solidagos, especially large three-ribbed, nemoralis, tall rough, etc.
- Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus
- Tansy
- Helianthuses, as Helianthus decapetalus, divaricatus, annum, etc. . . .
August 31. The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think . . . The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing one, i. e. goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head, with the great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus [Tall flat-top white aster] rising above it. There are also intermixed Solidago stricta, erechthites (fire-weed), Aster puniceus and longifolius, . . .etc., etc. There has been no such rank flowering up to this. . . .Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begun to be conspicuous. A low aster by Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow like a Radula, but with narrower leaves and more numerous, and scales without herbaceous tips. August 31, 1853
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Asters in August
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
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