The female flowers of the alder are now very pretty when seen against the sun.

April 17.

P. M. – Via Assabet to Coral Rock. 

See several kingfishers. Red-wings still in flocks, and crow blackbirds feeding amid leaves by Assabet side, half a dozen together. 

The female flowers of the alder are now very pretty when seen against the sun, bright-crimson. 

I take up a wood turtle on the shore, whose sternum is covered with small ants. 

The sedge is shooting up in the meadows, erect, rigid, and sharp, a glaucous green unlike that of the grass on banks. 

The linnaea-like plant turns out to be golden saxifrage. Its leaf is the same form, but smooth and not shrubby. 

The Rana halecina spawn in tumbler begins to struggle free of the ova, but it is not so much developed as the R. sylvatica. Some of the first may be a little more forward in the meadows. I see some to-day, probably this kind, flatted out, though I do not see the frog. It made the same sound, however. The R. sylvatica is probably generally the earliest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1858

The female flowers of the alder are now very pretty when seen against the sun, bright-crimson. See April 8, 1859 ("The fertile flowers are an interesting bright crimson in the sun.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Alders

I take up a wood turtle on the shore, whose sternum is covered with small ants.  See. April 17, 1859 ("A wood tortoise on bank; first seen."); see also. April 6, 1855 (" I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum."); May 7, 1858 ("I see a wood tortoise by the river there, half covered with the old withered leaves. Taking it up, I find that it must have lain perfectly still there for some weeks,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.

September 21. 

Monday. P. M. – To Corallorhiza Rock. and Tobacco-pipe Wood, northeast of Spruce Swamp. 

Peaches are now in their prime. 

Came through that thick white pine wood on the east of the spruce swamp. This is a very dense white pine grove, consisting of tall and slender trees which have been thinned, yet they are on an average only from three to six feet asunder. Perhaps half have been cut. It is a characteristic white pine grove, and I have seen many such. The trees are some ten inches in diameter, larger or smaller, and about fifty feet high. They are bare for thirty-five or forty feet up, — which is equal to at least twenty-five years of their growth, or with only a few dead twigs high up. Their green crowded tops are mere oval spear-heads in shape and almost in proportionate size, four to eight feet wide, – not enough, you would think, to keep the tree alive, still less to draw it upward. In a dark day the wood is not only thick but dark with the boles of the trees. 

Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow Goodyera pubescens and repens, Corallorhiza multiflora (going to seed), white cohosh berries, Pyrola secunda, and, on the low west side and also the east side, an abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black at the tip of the petals and leaves. 

The Solidago casia is very common and fresh in copses, perhaps the prevailing solidago now in woods. 

Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time. 

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days. 

Measured the large white willow north the road near Hildreth's. At a foot and a half from the ground it is fourteen feet in circumference; at five feet, the smallest place, it is twelve feet in circumference. It was once still larger, for it has lost large branches.[Cut down in '59.]

H. D. Thoereau, Journal, September 21, 1857


Corallorhiza Rock. See August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.")

Corallorhiza multiflora [spotted coral root] (going to seed)... See note to August 13, 1857

Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow Goodyera pubescens and repens See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)

An abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black . . . See July 24, 1856 ("Tobacco-pipe much blackened, out a long time.")

The Solidago casia is very common and fresh in copses, perhaps the prevailing solidago now in woods. See October 8, 1856 ("S. casia, much the worse for the wear, but freshest of any [goldenrod] seen.")

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days. See  September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . ."If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”); August 29, 1854 ("I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. ")

A wood frog in hand.

September 12. 

Saturday. P. M. – To Owl Swamp (Farmer's).

In an open part of the swamp, started a very large wood frog, which gave one leap and squatted still. I put down my finger, and, though it shrank a little at first, it permitted me to stroke it as long as I pleased. Having passed, it occurred to me to return and cultivate its acquaintance. To my surprise, it allowed me to slide my hand under it and lift it up, while it squatted cold and moist on the middle of my palm, panting naturally. 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 armor defined by a varied line on each side, where, as it seemed, the plates of armor united. It had four or five dusky bars which matched exactly when the legs were folded, showing that the painter applied his brush to the animal when in that position, and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the side of the head, whose upper edge passed directly through the eye horizontally, just above its centre, so that the pupil and all below were dark and the upper portion of the iris golden. 

September 17, 2023

(avesong)

I have since taken up another in the same way.[Indeed they can generally be treated so. Some are reddish, as burnished copper.] 

Round-leaved cornel berries nearly all fallen.

Crossing east through the spruce swamp, I think that I saw a female redstart. 

What is that running herbaceous vine which forms a dense green mat a rod across at the bottom of the swamp northwest of Corallorhiza Rock? [It is chrysosplenium.] It is of the same form, stem and leaves, with the more brown hairy and woolly linnaea. It also grows in the swamp by the beech trees in Lincoln.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 12, 1857

To Owl Swamp (Farmer's). See June 24, 1857 ("Went to Farmer's Swamp to look for the owl's nest Farmer had found.")

Not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze armor . . . Compare May 27, 1852 ("Catch a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaks as I hold him, perfectly frog-like.”)

I think that I saw a female redstart. See May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males"); April 11, 1853 ("Female dark ashy and fainter marks.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart
"

Corallorhiza Rock.  See August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.")

To Owl-Nest Swamp and Indian Rock

August 29. 

Spotted coral-root
Mt. Pritchard August 2018
(Avesong)

"Nearby, north, is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant. Call that Corallorhiza Rocks.”

August 29, 1857

Saturday. P. M. —To Owl-Nest Swamp with C.

Gerardia tenuifolia, a new plant to Concord, apparently in prime, at entrance to Owl-Nest Path and generally in that neighborhood. Also on Conantum height above orchard, two or three days later. This species grows on dry ground, or higher than the purpurea, and is more delicate. 

Got some ferns in the swamp and a small utricularia not in bloom, apparently different from that of Pleasant Meadow (vide August 18). 

The proserpinaca leaves are very interesting in the water, so finely cut. Polygonum arifolium in bloom how long? We waded amid the proserpinaca south of the wall and stood on a small bed of sphagnum, three or four feet in diameter, which rose above the surface. 

Some kind of water rat had its nest or retreat in this wet sphagnum, and being disturbed, swam off to the shore from under us. He was perhaps half as large again as a mole, or nearly, and somewhat grayish. 

The large and broad leafed sium which grows here is, judging from its seed, the same with the common. 

I find the calla going to seed, but still the seed is green. 

That large, coarse, flag-like reed is apparently Carex comosa; now gone to seed, though only one is found with seed still on it, under water. 

The Indian Rock, further west, is upright, or over hanging two feet, and a dozen feet high. Against this the Indians camped.

It has many very large specimens of the Umbilicaria Dillenii, some six or eight inches in diameter, dripping with moisture to-day, like leather aprons hanging to the side of the rock, olive-green (this moist day), curled under on the edges and showing the upper side; but when dry they curl upward and show the crocky under sides. 

Nearby, north, is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant. Call that Corallorhiza Rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1857

Owl-Nest Swamp. See June 24, 1857 ("Went to Farmer's Swamp to look for the owl's nest Farmer had found. “)  Owl-Nest Swamp and Calla Swamp are the same, located south of Bateman’s Pond .

I find the calla going to seed. . . June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom") and note to July 2, 1857 ("Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. ")

Corallorhiza multiflora [spotted coral root]... See note to August 13, 1857