For the first time I perceive this spring
that the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
The Rhexia Virginica,
the meadow-beauty,
high-colored, more beautiful
than you remembered.
March 28. Here, where in August the bittern booms in the grass, and mowers march en echelon and whet their scythes and crunch the ripe wool-grass, raised now a' few feet, you scud before the wind in your tight bark and listen to the surge (or sough ?) of the great waves sporting around you, while you hold the steering-oar and your mast bends to the gale and you stow all your ballast to windward. The crisped sound of surging waves that rock you, that ceaseless roll and gambol, and ever and anon break into your boat. Deep lie the seeds of the rhexia now, absorbing wet from the flood, but in a few months this mile-wide lake will have gone to the other side of the globe; and the tender rhexia will lift its head on the drifted hummocks in dense patches, bright and scarlet as a flame, — such succession have we here, — where the wild goose and countless wild ducks have floated and dived above them. So Nature condenses her matter. She is a thousand thick. So many crops the same surface bears. March 28, 1859
July 14. The Rhexia Virginica, the meadow-beauty, high-colored, more beautiful than you remembered. July 14, 1852
July 15. Rhexia near the Rhus copallina, apparently yesterday. July 15, 1854
July 18. The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge. July 18, 1852
July 18. Rhexia, a day or two. July 18, 1853
July 20. The Rhexia Virginica is in bloom. July 20, 1851
July 23. The rhexia is seen afar on the islets, — its brilliant red like a rose. It is fitly called meadow-beauty. Is it not the handsomest and most striking and brilliant flower since roses and lilies began? July 23, 1853
July 23. Rhexia in bloom, how long? July 23, 1859
July 29. Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down. July 29, 1856
August 1. I was surprised to see dense beds of rhexia in full bloom there, apparently on hummocks a rod in diameter left by the ice, or in long ridges mixed with ferns and some Lysimachia lanceolata, arrowhead, etc. They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches, especially in the neighborhood of Copan. It is about the richest color to be seen now. Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow. Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over. We, dwelling and walking on the dry upland, do not suspect their existence. How obvious and gay to those creatures that fly over the meadow! Seen only by birds and mowers. These gay standards otherwise unfurled in vain. August 1, 1856
August 3. I see blackened haycocks on the meadows. Think what the farmer gets with his hay, — what his river-meadow hay consists of, — how much of fern and osier and sweet-gale and Polygonum hydropiperoides and rhexia (I trust the cattle love the scent of it as well as I) and lysimachia, etc., etc., and rue, and sium and cicuta. August 3, 1856
August 5. I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals. August 5, 1852
August 13. Rhexia, very common on those bare places on the river meadows from which the soil has been moved by the ice. August 13, 1852
August 20. The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. August 20, 1851
August 20. The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. August 20, 1852
August 21. The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are:
- The early goldenrods,
- tansy,
- the life-everlastings,
- flea bane (though not for its flower),
- yarrow (rather dry),
- hardhack and meadow-sweet (both getting dry, also mayweed),
- Eupatorium purpureum,
- scabish,
- clethra (really a fine, sweet-scented, and this year particularly fair and fresh, flower, some unexpanded buds at top tinged with red),
- Rhexia Virginica,
- thoroughwort,
- Polygala sanguinea,
August 23. The patches of rhexia or meadow-beauty which have escaped the mowers in the low grounds, where rowen is now coming forward apace, look like a little bright purple on one side of Nature's pallet, giving place to some fresh green which Nature has ground. August 23, 1853
August 23. The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime. August 23, 1858
August 25. There is a large field of rhexia there now almost completely out of bloom, but its scarlet leaves, reddening the ground at a distance, supply the place of flowers. August 25, 1854
August 26. The Poa hirsuta is left on the upper edge of the meadows ( as at J. Hosmer's ), as too thin and poor a grass , beneath the attention of the farmers. How fortunate that it grows in such places and not in the midst of the rank grasses which are cut. With its beautiful fine purple color, its beautiful purple blush, it reminds me and supplies the place of the rhexia now about done. ( Leaving off, though I see some pretty handsome Sept. 4th.) August 26, 1854
August 27. The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks. August 27, 1856
August 28. The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack. August 28, 1859
September 14. The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have petals, little cream pitchers. September 14, 1851
September 28. Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia. September 28, 1858
October 2. The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. October 2, 1856
December 14. We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls and the long sharp red capsules of the small ( ? ) hypericum, etc., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs. December 14, 1852
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)
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 © 2009-2025
