I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures
completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
How earnestly and rapidly
each creature, each flower,
is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!
Here at this season
a golden blaze salutes me
from a thousand suns.
Bidens in the sun –
the flower and ornament
of the riverside.
September 14, 1854
June 16. By and by the bidens (marigold) will stand in the river, as now the ranunculus. The summer's fervor will have sunk into it. June 16, 1852
August 20. Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. August 20, 1852
August 20. P. M. - To Great Meadows. Bidens connata (?) by pond-hole beyond Agricultural Ground; no rays yet at least. August 20, 1853
August 23.The great bidens is only partially out, by the side of the brook that comes out of Deacon Farrar's Swamp and runs under the causeway east of the Corner Bridge. The flowers are all turned toward the westering sun and are two to two and a half or more inches in diameter, like sun flowers, hieroglyphics of the seasons, only to be read by the priests of Nature. I go there as to one of autumn's favorite haunts. Most poems, like the fruits, are sweetest toward the blossom end. August 23, 1853
August 24. Bidens chrysanthemoides, of a small size and earlier, by Turnpike, now in prime there. August 24, 1853
August 28. At Tarbell's andromeda swamp. A probable Bidens connata or small chrysanthemoides. August 28, 1856
August 30. As I went along from the Minott house to the Bidens Brook , I was quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters , now in their prime there , . . . The bidens has not yet reached its greatest profusion .August 30, 1853
August 30. Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? August 30, 1856
August 30. P. M. — Up Assabet. The river began to fall perhaps yesterday, after rising perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches. It is now about one foot higher than before the rain of the 25th. A rise of one foot only from low water gives an appearance of fullness to the stream . . .The river is fuller, with more current; a cooler wind blows; the reddish Panicum agrostoides stands cool along the banks; the great yellow flowers of the Bidens chrysanthemoides are drowned, and now I do not see to the bottom as I paddle along. August 30, 1859
August 30. Now is the season of rank weeds, as Polygonum Careyi, tall rough goldenrod, Ambrosia elatior, primrose, erechthites (some of this seven feet high), Bidens frondosa (also five feet high). August 30, 1859
August 31. The great Bidens chrysanthemoides , now in blossom , like a sunflower , two inches in diameter , is for the most part far under water , blossoms and all . I see its drowned flowers far beneath the surface. August 31, 1852
August 31. A To Moore's Swamp. Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. August 31, 1853
September 1. There is no Bidens cernua, if that is it, by the Turnpike. It was apparently killed by the recent high water. September 1, 1856
September 5. What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime, and the great bidens. September 5, 1860
September 7.To Spencer Brook, a place for hawks. Bidens chrysanthemoides there; how long? September 7, 1857
September 9. Bidens cernua, how long? Septenber 9, 1858
September 11. Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays ) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick.
Bidens connata (?), without rays, in Hubbard's Meadow . . . How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua. September 11, 1852
September 12. In Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill; also the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals. September 12, 1851
- Bidens frondosa – devil's beggarticks, devil's pitchfork
- Bidens connata – purplestem beggartick
- Bidens cernua – nodding beggarticks, nodding bur-marigold
September 12. The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, the first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds. September 12, 1859
September 13. The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn. It yellows along the brook. The earth wears different colors or liveries at different seasons. At this season, a golden blaze salutes me here from a thousand suns. How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons, so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable. In the moment, in the eon, time ever advances with this rapidity. Clear the track ! The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay. September 13, 1852
September 13. The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. It grows but sparingly near the village, but those few never fail to make their appearance at last. The yellow lily's is a cool yellow in comparison, but in this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn. September 13, 1859
September 14. The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). Full of the sun. It needs a name. September 14, 1854
September 14. Half a dozen Bidens chrysanthemoides in river, not long. September 14, 1858
September 15. What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed. September 15, 1856
September 18. On account of freshet I have seen no Bidens Beckii nor chrysanthemoides. September 18, 1856
September 19. Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside. September 19, 1851
September 19. The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. September 19, 1852
September 24 Still the great bidens blooms by the causeway side beyond the bridge. September 24, 1851
September 29. I can hardly clamber along the grape cliff now with out getting my clothes covered with desmodium ticks, — there especially the rotundifolium and paniculatum. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother's breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlime, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us. These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds and burs steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were with an imbricated scaly coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off at some convenient place; and so they got just what they wanted, deposited in another place. How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! September 29, 1856
October 2. The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus — as a magnet discovers the steel filings in a heap of ashes — than if I used my eyes alone. October 2, 1852
October 8. The Bidens cernuum is quite common and fresh yet in Everett's meadow by Turnpike. October 8, 1856
October 9. Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed. October 9, 1852
October 12. The seeds of the bidens, — without florets, — or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft. October 12, 1851
October 20. Now in low grounds the different species of bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes. These bidents, tridents, quadridents are shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes. October 20, 1858
October 23. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. They are as thick on my clothes as the teeth of a comb. October 23, 1853
November 9. Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. A late three ribbed goldenrod, with large serratures in middle of the narrow leaves, ten or twelve rays. Potentilla argentea. November 9, 1852.
November 23. Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc., etc. November 23, 1852
January 13. I see in low grounds numerous heads of bidens, with their seeds still. January 13, 1860
See also:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Great Bidens
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-bidens
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