Pickerel in a ditch.

May 11. 

May 11, 2018

P. M. – Wishing to get one of the little brook (?) pickerel, of Hubbard's ditches, in the arethusa meadow, I took a line in my pocket, and, baiting with a worm and cutting a pole there, I caught two directly. 

The biggest was nine inches long and thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line. Both have the vertical dark or black line beneath the eyes and appearing, with the pupil and a mark above, to pass through it. Noticed the same in the reticulatus the other day. 

The head, i. e. to the rear of the gills, just one fourth the whole length. From the front of the eye to the end of the lower jaw about one ninth the whole length. In the largest specimen the lower jaw projects one eleventh of an inch beyond the upper. I put the small one, six or seven inches long, in spirits.

Opening the larger, I found that it was a female, and that the ova were few and small as yet!! I also found that apparently its last food was another pickerel two thirds as big as itself, the tail end not yet digested. So it appears that you may dig a ditch in the river meadow, for the sake of peat, and though it have no other connection with brook or river except that it is occasionally overflowed, though only twenty or thirty feet long by three or four wide and one to three deep, you may have pickerel in it nine inches long, at least, and these live in part by devouring one another. 

Surely it cannot be many pickerel that the bigger ones find to devour there. You might think they would have more sympathy with their fellow-prisoners. This ditch, or these ditches—for I caught one in two ditches— have not been overflowed or connected with the brook or river since the spring of '57, I think, – certainly not any of them since last fall. 

Yet you may find a few sizable pickerel in such narrow quarters. I have seen them several together in much smaller and shallower ditches there, and they will bury themselves in the mud at your approach. Yet, opening one, you may perchance discover that he has just swallowed his sole surviving companion! 

You can easily distinguish the transverse bars a rod off, when the fish is in the water. 

Melvin says they get to weigh about two pounds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1858

Wishing to get one of the little brook (?) pickerel, of Hubbard's ditches. See April 18, 1858 ("I saw in those ditches many small pickerel, landlocked, which appeared to be transversely barred! They bury themselves in the mud at my approach.")

Melvin says they get to weigh about two pounds. See April 21, 1858 ("Melvin says that those short-nosed brook pickerel are caught in the river also, but rarely weigh more than two pounds.")

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

New fungi within a week

July 30

I find the new rudbeckia in five distinct and distant parts of the town this year, - beyond almshouse, Arethusa Meadow, Sam. Wheeler meadow, Abel Hosmer meadow, and J. Hosmer meadow.

July 30, 2025

There are some of what I will call the clustered low blackberries on the sand just beyond the Dugan Desert. There are commonly a few larger grains in dense clusters on very short peduncles and flat on the sand, clammy with a cool subacid taste.

July 30, 2014

I have seen a few new fungi within a week. The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1854

I find the new rudbeckia in five distinct and distant parts of the town. See July 30, 1856 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week.”); See also  July 31, 1856 (“Measured a Rudbeckia hirta flower; more than three inches and three eighths in diameter.”); August 6, 1853 ("The rudbeckia must have been out at least a week or more; half the buds have opened."); August 16, 1852 ("I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's");  August 18, 1852 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's”).; September 4, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata by Dodge's Brook"); September 21, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time.")

Clustered low blackberries on the sand . . with a cool subacid taste See  July 23, 1859 ("Low blackberries have begun. "); July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and  low blackberries are in their prime now.”); See also August 3, 1856 ("High blackberries beginning; a few ripe"); August 4, 1856 ("You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the biggest of the blackberries — as big as your thumb"); TAugust 17, 1853 ("The high blackberries are now in their prime;") and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves.  See July 30, 1853 ("The tobacco-pipe has also pushed up there amid the dry leaves in the shade.") See also July 29, 1853 ("There is not only the tobacco-pipe, but pine-sap.") jand A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pine-sap and Indian-pipe

July 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 30

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

Early summer in Hubbard's Close

May 30

I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard's Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries.

May 30, 2016

In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea,  above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. 

Wood frogs skipping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble.

Arethusa bulbosa (Dragon's mouth)

I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days, though not yet at Arethusa Meadow, probably on account of the recent freshet. It is so leafless that it shoots up unexpectedly. It is all color, a little hook of purple flame projecting from the meadow into the air. Some are comparatively pale. This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.

The pink is certainly one of the finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds in my memory . It is now in its prime on the south side of the Heywood Peak , where it grows luxuriantly in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres , raying out on every side and presenting an even and regular surface of expanded flowers . I count in one such tuft , of an oval form twelve inches by eight , some three hundred fully open more than a and about three times as many buds , thousand in all . Some tufts consist wholly of white ones with a very faint tinge of pink . This flower is as ele- gant in form as in color , though it is not fragrant . It is associated in my mind with the first heats of sum- mer , or [ those ] which announce its near approach . Few plants are so worthy of cultivation . The shrub oak pin- cushion ( ? ) galls are larger , whiter , and less compact than those of the white oak . 

I find the linnæa, and budded, in Stow's Wood by Deep Cut. 

Sweet flag. Waxwork tomorrow.[June 1st]

I see my umbrella toadstool on the hillside has already pierced the ground . 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1854

Tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, See May 26, 1855 ("Cinnamon fern to-day"); May 28, 1858 ("The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long. "); May 31, 1857 (" Also the cinnamon fern grows in circles"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

Wood frog ~ See May 27, 1852 ("Catch a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaks as I hold him, perfectly frog-like.”); September 12, 1857 ("I brought it close to my eye and examined it. It was very beautiful seen thus nearly, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze . . . and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the side of the head,"); October 16, 1857 ("I see a delicate pale brown-bronze wood frog. I think I can always take them up in my hand. They, too, vary in color,")   See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close. See May 30, 1852 ("The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicuous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow."); See also May 28, 1853 ("The bulbous arethusa out a day or two — probably yesterday. Though in a measure prepared for it, still its beauty surprised me; it is by far the highest and richest color yet. Its intense color in the midst of the green meadow made it look twice as large as reality; it looks very foreign in the midst of our plants - its richly speckled, curled, and bearded lip."); May 29, 1856 (" Two Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.”);.June 1, 1855 (“Arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.“) 

Arethusa Meadow and  Hubbard's Close. See Ray Angelo, Thoreau Place Namess, "Arethusa Meadow" ("This is a meadow near the Sudbury River that Thoreau names after the Arethusa orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) that was not uncommon in Thoreau’s time but now has disappeared from Concord and most of southern New Englan. . .  From the Journal references . . .we know that there was a Viburnum hedge on the west side of the meadow, that it was not far too far from the Sudbury River, Hubbard’s Bathing Place, and from a brook (almost certainly Hubbard’s Brook), that it was large enough to have been subject to ditching by the owners, and that it was an open, wet, sphagnous (peaty) area -- habitat suitable for the orchid.") and "Hubbard's Close" ("This close -- a small piece of enclosed land -- refers to an area just east of Walden Street surrounded by elevated land on all but two narrow sides. It is within the current Town Forest and in Thoreau’s time was known as Fairyland. Thoreau’s reference to Cotton-grass (Eriophorum sp.), the Grass-pink orchid (Calopogon tuberosus) and Arethusa orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) in the Close indicates that it had an open, sphagnous area. Apparently there was a pool in the Close according to his Journal entry of April 7, 1855.. . .This land and much of the surrounding woods (“Ebby Hubbard’s Woods”) was owned by the farmer Ebenezer Hubbard (1782 - 1871) after whom Thoreau named this close. Thoreau refers to Brister’s Meadow only in 1852 twice. He began to use the name Hubbard’s Close in 1853. He associated the very uncommon wildflower Polygala cruciata with both these place names. These circumstances establish the equivalence of these two names.")

May 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30 

The arethusa

shoots up unexpectedly –

it is all color.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The arethusa shoots up unexpectedly

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540530