Fall flowers and a fetid fungus.

October 16.

October 16.

Ground all white with frost. 

P. M. — To chestnuts, down Turnpike. 

I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, i. e. a few of them: hedge-mustard, mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover.  

Polygonum orientate was finished by yesterday's frost. There was plenty of the front-rank polygonum freshly open along river on the 13th. Perhaps the frosts have nipped it. 

I saw a farmer busily collecting his pumpkins on the 14th, — Abel Brooks, — rambling over his corn-fields and bringing the pumpkins out to the sides on the path, on the side of the field, where he can load them. The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. 

Bent is now making haste to gather his apples. I. Wright, too, is collecting some choice barrels of golden russets. Many times he turns it over before he leaves out a specked one. A poor story if the farmer cannot get rich, for everything he has is salable, even every load of mud on his farm. 

At the Everett meadow a large flock of mewing and lisping goldfinches, with but little yellow, pass over the Turnpike. 

Many chestnut burs are now open, yet a stone will not jar down many nuts yet. Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry, and the prickles come off in your hand when you touch them, yet the nuts do not readily drop out. Many nuts have fallen within two or three days, but many squirrels have been busily picking them up. 

Found amid the sphagnum on the dry bank on the south side of the Turnpike, just below Everett's meadow, a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole height six and three quarters inches, two thirds of it being buried in the sphagnum. It may be divided into three parts, pileus, stem, and base, — or scrotum, for it is a perfect phallus. 

One of those fungi named impudicus, I think. This is very similar to if not the same with that represented in Loudon's Encyclopedia and called "Phallus impudicus, Stinking Morel, very fetid." In all respects a most disgusting object, yet very suggestive. 

It is hollow from top to bottom, the form of the hollow answering to that of the outside. The color of the outside white excepting the pileus, which is olive-colored and somewhat coarsely corrugated, with an oblong mouth at tip about one eighth of an inch long, or, measuring the white lips, half an inch. This cap is thin and white within, about one and three eighths inches high by one and a half wide. The stem (bare portion) is three inches long (tapering more rapidly than in the drawing), horizontally viewed of an oval form. Longest diameter at base one and a half inches, at top (on edge of pileus) fifteen sixteenths of an inch. Short diameters in both cases about two thirds as much. It is a delicate white cylinder of a finely honeycombed and crispy material about three sixteenths of an inch thick, or more, the whole very straight and regular. The base, or scrotum, is of an irregular bag form, about one inch by two in the extremes, consisting of a thick trembling gelatinous mass surrounding the bottom of the stem and covered with a tough white skin of a darker tint than the stem. The whole plant rather frail and trembling. There was at first a very thin delicate white collar (or volva?) about the base of the stem above the scrotum. 

In all respects a

most disgusting object, yet 

very suggestive. 

It was as offensive to the eye as to the scent, the cap rapidly melting and defiling what it touched with a fetid, olivaceous, semiliquid matter. In an hour or two the plant scented the whole house wherever placed, so that it could not be endured. I was afraid to sleep in my chamber where it had lain until the room had been well ventilated. It smelled like a dead rat in the ceiling, in all the ceilings of the house. 

Pray, what was Nature thinking of when she made this ? She almost puts her self on a level with those who draw in privies. 

The cap had at first a smooth and almost dry surface, of a sort of olive slate-color, but the next day this colored surface all melted out, leaving deep corrugations or gills — rather honeycomb-like cells — with a white bottom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1856

Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry . . .many squirrels have been busily picking them up. See October 8, 1856 ("A few chestnut burs are open, and have been some days, before they could have felt frost, showing that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club thrown into the tree yet.. . ."); December 9, 1852 ("The chestnuts are almost as plenty as ever, . . .. There are more this year than the squirrels can consume.. . .")

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows.

October 8.

October 8.  P. M. — To Smith Chestnut Grove by Turnpike, and Saw Mill. 

At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, on Emerson Heater Piece trees. They are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them. The tip of each scale is covered with fresh flowing pitch. 

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows, Emerson's buckthorn hedge especially, and Watts's weeds adjoining. I observe white-throated sparrows, song sparrows, I think some Fringilla juncorum, etc. (maybe tree sparrows ???). They are all together and keep up a faint warbling, apparently the white-throats and tree sparrows, — if the last are there. A song sparrow utters a full strain.

Asters and goldenrods are now scarce; no longer that crowd along the low roadsides. The following is the condition of the asters and goldenrods, judging from my observations on this walk alone. I will only refer to those which were not done September 24th. I speak of their general condition, though a very few specimens here and there may present a different appearance. 

Swamp striata, done, some hoary.
S. nemoralis, done, many hoary, though a very few flowers linger.
S. altissima, done, many hoary,
S. puberula, not seen.
S. tricolor and variety, probably done (not seen out). S. latifolia, far gone.
S. casia, much the worse for the wear, but freshest of any seen.
S. speciosa, not seen (it was in prime Oct. 2d).
D. umbettatus, not seen, probably done.
A. patens, apparently done.
A. macrophyllus, not seen.
A. acuminatus, not seen.
A. dumosus, probably done.
D. linariifolius, apparently nearly done.
A. undulatus, comparatively fresh.
A. corymbosus, looks fresh !
A. Laevis, not noticed, probably done (?) generally.
A. Tradescanti, a few still.
A. puniceus, hardly seen, probably nearly done.
A. longifolius, a few still.
A. multiflorus, none observed.
A. miser, a very few left.

Diplopappus cornifolius, not seen, probably done.

Of solidagos, I judge that only the last three named, and perhaps puberula and S. bicolor in some places, are common still; and, of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus, Tradescanti, and longifolius (know not of multiflorus) are common. 

The Bidens cernuum is quite common and fresh yet in Everett's meadow by Turnpike. 

A few chestnut burs are open, and have been some days, before they could have felt frost, showing that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club thrown into the tree yet. I get half a pocketful out of slightly gaping burs at the expense of many prickles in my fingers. The squirrels have cut off some burs. I see the marks of their teeth. 

Find many checker-berries on Smith's hill beyond the chestnut grove, which appear to be just ripe, a lighter pink color, with two little white checks on the stem side, the marks of what I suppose are the two outer calyx-leaves. 

Near by, a short fertile fern with large shelly capsules, perhaps a botrychium. 

A great deal, a great part, of the dicksonia fern at Saw Mill is now whitened or whitening. 

I see, as I go through the hollow behind Britton's shanty, the already hoary tops of many S. nemoralis and also the yellowish spheres of the Hicracium scabrum amid the scarlet (or crimson) sumach and reddened comptonia. So fast the winter advances.

I notice a large toad amid the dead leaves in the woods at Chimaphila maculata, colored like the leaves, a much darker brown than usual, proving that they resemble the ground they occupy. 

Meet Nealy, short and thick, in the woodland path, with his great silent mastiff by his side and his double-barrelled gun in his palm, all dangerously cocked. He is eager for partridges, but only guilty of killing a jay, I judge, from his report. Once or twice I hear the report of his fowling-piece. 

I heard partridges drum the 3d instant. 

Observed in the woods a very large, perhaps owl pellet, or possibly fox stercus, of gray fur and small bones and the jaw of a rodent, apparently a wild mouse. 

Shagbark Hickory

(avesong)

October. 6, 2022

The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing. 

Sophia brings home two or three clusters of very large freshly ripe thimble-berries, with some unripe, a second crop, apparently owing to the abundance of rain for the last six weeks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1856

At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, . . .and the seeds . . . gone. So September is the time to gather them. . .See October 15, 1855 ("Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”); September 18, 1859 "There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open. . . . It is worth a long walk to look from some favorable point over a pine forest whose tops are thus covered with the brown cones just opened, — from which the winged seeds have fallen or are ready to fall. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!”); October 13, 1860 ( "So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?)“)

The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows. See October 2, 1858 ("The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings."); October 8, 1855 ("Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows.”); October 8, 1857 (" I see and hear white-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river's edge, uttering a faint sharp cheep.")

Asters and goldenrods are now scarce . . . See September 24, 1856 (“Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods and asters now”); September 1, 1856 ("I think it stands about thus with asters and golden-rods now. . .”); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .”)