A Book of the Seasons, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I find at length a

pitcher-plant with last night's dew

in all this drought. 

August 22, 1854

At Holden's Spruce Swamp

the water is frozen in 

the pitcher-plant leaf. 

November 16, 1852

(Sarracenia purpurea)

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower,

fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is,

what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome

and interesting plant to me,

the leaf especially

.June 12, 1852 

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower

(Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.  . . .

No plants are more richly painted and streaked

than the inside of the broad lips of these. 

Old Josselyn called this "Hollow-leaved Lavender."

No other plant, methinks, that we have is

so remarkable and singular.

September 28, 1851

May 28.  The sidesaddle-flower conspicuous, but no pollen yet. May 28, 1853

May 30. The sidesaddle-flowers . . . are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their undersides. May 30, 1852

June 8.  Sidesaddle, apparently to-morrow (?) June 8, 1854

June 8.   The sidesaddle-flower is out, — how long? June 8, 1858

June 9. Sidesaddle, apparently a day or two; petals hang down. June 9, 1855

June 10. Sidesaddle generally out; petals hang down, apparently a day or two. It is a conspicuous flower. June 10, 1854 

June 12. The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.June 12, 1852 

June 12. The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?) June 12, 1853 

June 12. Sidesaddle flower numerously out now. June 12, 1856

August 18. We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty. August 18, 1854

August 21. In Hubbard's meadow, between the two woods, I can not find a pitcher-plant with any water in it. August 21, 1854 

August 22  I find at length a pitcher-plant with a spoonful of water in it. It must be last night's dew.  It is wonderful that in all this drought it has not evaporated.  August 22, 1854

September 11. We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation.  What wells for the birds! September 11, 1851

September 27.  I never found a pitcher-plant without an insect in it. The bristles about the nose of the pitcher all point inward, and insects which enter or fall in appear for this reason unable to get out again. It is some obstacle which our senses cannot appreciate. Pitcher-plants more obvious now. September 27, 1851

September 28. This swamp [the spruce swamp in Conant's Grove] contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.  They ray out around the dry scape and flower, which still remain, resting on rich uneven beds of a coarse reddish moss, through which the small flowered andromeda puts up, presenting altogether a most rich and luxuriant appearance to the eye. Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet. I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher-plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these.  Old Josselyn called this "Hollow-leaved Lavender." No other plant, methinks, that we have is so remarkable and singular.  September 28, 1851

November 9.  The pitcher plant, though a little frost-bitten and often cut off by the mower, now stands full of water in the meadows. I never found one that had not an insect in it.  November 9, 1850

November 11.  In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. November 11, 1858

November 15 The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants. November 15, 1857

November 16. At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf November 16, 1852

December 31. Even the sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds. December 31, 1859

February 11. The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched.  February 11, 1858

February 13.  Cafferty's Swamp. . . How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc., and to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry. February 13, 1858 

See also:

• Mass Audubon, Carnivorous Plants Found in Massachusetts
• Kent McFarland, Pitcher Plant’s Web of Life

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

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-pitcher

I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

 

June 12. 

June 12, 2019

Saturday. P. M. – To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook.

For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?).

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio.

Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac - tinted, rather pretty.

The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest.

The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf.

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.

The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit.

How completely all character is expressed by flowers !

This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow and ornaments it much.

The critchicrotches are going to seed.

I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.

Enothera pumila, dwarf tree-primrose. Ever it will be some obscure small and modest flower that will most please us.

Some of the ferns have branches wholly covered with fruit.

How difficult, if not impossible, to do the things we have done ! as fishing and camping out. They seem to me a little fabulous now.

Boys are bathing at Hubbard's Bend, playing with a boat (I at the willows).

The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh - color. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water.

As yet we have not man in nature.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties ! A pale pink, which the sun would soon tan.

White men ! There are no white men to contrast with the red and the black; they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe and does not stay by his clothes.

Small white - bellied (?) swallows in a row ( a dozen ) on the telegraph - wire over the water by the bridge. This perch is little enough departure from unobstructed air to suit them. Pluming themselves.

If you could furnish a perch aerial enough, even birds of paradise would alight.

Swallows have forked tails, and wings and tails are about the same length. They do not alight on trees, methinks, unless on dead and bare boughs, but stretch a wire over water and they perch on it.

This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph.

Hedge-mustard.

(Turned into the lane beyond Dennis's.) 

Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, — its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, — three or four acres of it.

To the farmer or grazier it is a troublesome weed, but to the landscape-viewer an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

It appears to be avoided by the cows.

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves ! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.

Rye that has sown itself and come up scatteringly in bunches is now nearly ripe.

They are beginning to cut rank grass on the village street.

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer ! 

The glory of Dennis's lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance beneath them.

So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers.

The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower.

So man's works fall into nature.

The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary of the length of the days.

The river is shrunk to summer width; on the sides smooth whitish water, or rather it is the light from the pads; - in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled.

The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown.

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house.

The Ranunculus filiformis on the muddy shore of the river.

The locusts ' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon.

Who knows how much lighter day there may be?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1852

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. See June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup."); June 10, 1854 ("The meadows now begin to be yellow with senecio.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa small-flowered forget- me- not)

The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches some two or three days; now tender to eat . How agreeable and surprising the peculiar fragrance of the sweet flag when bruised! That this plant alone should have extracted this odor surely for so many ages each summer from the moist earth!");   May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); July 20, 1852. "Dug open a muskrat's gallery ... there was half a critchicrotch in it." May 29 1854  (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places. It must be a kind of water milfoil, whose leaves I now see variously divided under water, and some nearly two feet long. ") See also Critchicrotches · iNaturalist ("It turns out Thoreau is referring to the fruit of Acorus calamus. This wetland plant goes by dozens of common names . . . sweet flag, calamus, beewort, bitter pepper root, gladdon, myrtle grass, myrtle sedge, pine root, rat root, sea sedge, sweet cane, sweet cinnamon, sweet grass, sweet myrtle, sweet root, sweet rush, and sweet sedge. . . . I continue to be amazed at how often I can observe the same plant or animal on the exact same date as Thoreau observes it.") and Journal IV 74, 92, 240, V 155, VI 307, VII 387.

Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. See June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red!  . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season."); June 12, 1854 ("Clover now reddens the fields."); See also June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!"); June 5, 1853 ("The distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green."); June 6, 1857(“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”)

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); June 1, 1853 ("Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather");June 4, 1860 (''The leafy season has fairly commenced."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 9, 1852 (The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season")

At this moment these turtles are on their way inland to lay their eggs.

June 12. 

P . M. Up Assabet.

I find several Emys insculpta nests and eggs, and see two painted turtles going inland to lay at 3 P. M. 

At this moment these turtles are on their way inland to lay their eggs all over the State, warily drawing in their heads and waiting when you come by.

Here is a painted turtle just a rod inland, its back all covered with the fragments of green leaves blown off and washed up yesterday, which now line the shore . It has come out through this wrack. 

As the river has gone down, these green leaves mark the bank in lines just like sawdust. 

I see a young yellow-spot turtle in the Assabet, still quite broad and roundish though I count about seven striæ. It is very handsome. 

At 7. 30 P. M.  I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes. [17th, have heard no more hylodes.]

River ten and one third above summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1860

I find several Emys insculpta nests and eggs. See June 11, 1858 ("Looking carefully to see where the ground had been recently disturbed, I dug with my hand and could directly feel the passage to the eggs, and so discovered two or three nests with their large and long eggs, – five eggs in one of them."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

   

Warily drawing in their heads and waiting when you come by. See June 5, 1858 ("I now see a painted turtle in a rut, crossing a sandy road. They are now laying, then. When they get into a rut they find it rather difficult to get out, and, hearing a wagon coming, they draw in their heads, lie still, and are crushed")

A painted turtle just a rod inland . See . May 27, 1855 ("See a painted turtle on a hill forty or fifty feet above river, probably laying eggs."); June 7, 1860 ("A painted turtle beginning her hole for eggs at 4 P.M."); June 14, 1853 ("On the Strawberry Hill on the further side of White Pond, about fifty feet above the pond and a dozen rods from it, found a painted tortoise laying her eggs.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Green leaves mark the bank in lines just like sawdust. See April 1, 1858 ("It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”); April 1, 1860 ("We see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks, for thirty rods or more visible at once, reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be. The sawdust . . .probably marks the standstill or highest water for the time.”)

I see a young yellow-spot turtle in the Assabet, still quite broad and roundish though I count about seven striæ. See March 10, 1853 ("I am surprised to find on the rail a young tortoise, an inch and one sixteenth long in the shell, . . .which I think must be the Emys guttata, for there is a large and distinct yellow spot on each dorsal and lateral plate, . . . two yellow spots on each side of the hind head and one fainter on the top of the head. . . . It is about seven eighths of an inch wide. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle

I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes. See . June 12, 1855  (" I hear the toad . . . still. . . .This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds") See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.: -Heat about 85° at 2 P. M. True summer . Hylodes cease to peep . Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease . Lightning - bugs first seen . Bullfrogs trump generally . Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome . Afternoon thunder - showers almost regular . Sleep with open window ( 10th), and wear thin coat and ribbon on neck . Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.")

I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now.

June 12. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now, e. g. Lepidium campestre field. What a wholesome red! It is densest in parallel lines according to the plowing or cultivation. There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season. 

Maryland yellow-throat four eggs, fresh, in sphagnum in the interior omphalos.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1859

I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season. See June 12, 1852 ("It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, — three or four acres of it.")  See also May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!"); June 5, 1853 ("The distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green.");  June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood.");  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis) and also .June 12, 1854 ("Clover now reddens the fields.."); June 15, 1851 (“the clover gives whole fields a rich appearance, -- the rich red and the sweet-scented white. The fields are blushing with the red species as the western sky at evening.”); June 15, 1853 ("Clover now in its prime. What more luxuriant than a clover-field");  June 15, 1853 ("The rude health of the sorrel cheek has given place to the blush of clover") 

Maryland yellow-throat four eggs, fresh, in sphagnum. See June 7, 1857 ("In a tuft a little from under the east edge of an apple tree, below violet wood-sorrel, a nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end. . . It was a Maryland yellow-throat. Egg fresh. She is very shy and will not return to nest while you wait, but keeps up a very faint chip in the bushes or grass at some distance."); June 8, 1855 ("What was that little nest on the ridge near by, made of fine grass lined with a few hairs and containing five small eggs (two hatched the 11th), nearly as broad as long, yet pointed, white with fine dull-brown spots especially on the large end—nearly hatched? . . .(June 11.—It is a Maryland yellow-throat.)”); June 10, 1858 ("Perfectly concealed under the loose withered grass at the base of a clump of birches, with no apparent entrance. The usual small deep nest (but not raised up) of dry leaves, fine grass stubble, and lined with a little hair. Four eggs, white, with brown spots, chiefly at larger end, and some small black specks or scratches. The bird flits out very low and swiftly and does not show herself, so that it is hard to find the nest or to identify the bird.”)

The interior omphalos. See May 31, 1857 ("That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb.”)

Rains all day.

June 12. 

Rains all day. Much water falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , June 12, 1858

Looking at the birds' eggs in the Natural History Rooms in Boston./ botanizing Cape Cod

June 12. 

June 12, 2017

Friday. 8.30 a. m. — Set out for CAPE COD. 

Eggs. — 

     At Natural History Rooms. — 


The egg found on ground in R. W. E.'s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink's, for that is about as big as a bay-wing's but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches. 

The egg of the Turdus solitarius is lettered "Swamp Robin." Is this what they so call at New Bedford? 

The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. 

The yellow-shouldered sparrow's egg is size of Maryland yellow-throat's, white with brown spots, sometimes in a ring at the larger end. 

The Savannah sparrow's is about the same size, dirty-white with thick brown blotches. 

I find that the egg Farmer gave me for the "chicklisee's " is enough like the yellow-throat's to be it. Can he be thinking of the note, whittichee ? Or is it the yellow-shouldered sparrow's egg? 

The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green. 

Some edible swallows' (?) nests, on a stick, side by side, shallow and small and shaped like oyster-shells, light-colored, but yet placed somewhat like the chimney swallows'. 

Among the frogs in alcohol I notice the Scaphiopus solitarius, Cambridge!! 

Michaux says that mocker-nuts are of various sizes and forms, some round, some oblong. So I have found them. He also says that "the red-flowering maple [Acer rubrum]  is the earliest tree whose bloom announces the return of Spring." This is a mistake, the white maple being much earlier. 

I have not found the white spruce yet. 

P. M. — At Watson's, Plymouth. 

W. has several varieties of the English hawthorn (oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and sin gle, and very handsome now. 

His English oak is almost entirely out of bloom, though I got some flowers. The biggest, which was set out in '49, is about thirty feet high, and, as I measured, just twenty inches in circumference at four inches from the ground. A very rapid growth. 

I obtained there specimens of the plum-leaved willow, come well ditto, — because it comes on fast, — and Salix rosmarinifolia. Only some lingering bloom with the last. 

He has the foreign Betula alba (much like our populifolia), its bark loosened up like our papyracea, but not so white; and what was sent him for popvlifolia, much like our red birch, the bark much like that of alba loosened up, but more reddish, the limbs red, leaves like a balm-of-Gilead somewhat, large (vide press). The papyracea leaves are unusually wedge-shaped at base, methinks. 

The moosewood is chiefly fruiting, but some still in bloom. 

Cornus sanguinea, in its prime. Its bark is bright-red and greenish. That of C. sericea (not well named) is dark-purplish. The Oriental is later to bloom than ours or else smaller-fruited. 

The American mountain-ash not yet out (Cheney's in Concord, a day or two, June 25th). Nuttall says its leaves are at last very smooth. 

I have hitherto observed the Pyrus aucuparia, or European, at Prichard's, Whiting's, etc. 

W. has the Crataegus prunifolius, with its thorns (vide herbarium); Castanea vesca, Spanish chestnut, of which ours is made a variety merely; Populus monilifera, as he calls it, and another very like it.

Bayberry well out. Senecio vulgaris a common weed, apparently in prime. 

Honkenya and beach pea well out on Plymouth beach. 

W. has a very flourishing and large white maple of his setting, and they stand in Plymouth streets also, very pretty.

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

The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. . . . The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green. See  May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”); Also see  note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.")

W[atson] has several varieties of the English hawthorn (oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and sin gle, and very handsome now. See June 12, 1855  ("A hawthorn grows near by, just out of bloom, twelve feet high — Crataegus Oxyacantha.")

A Book of the Seasons: June 12 ( The mouse-ear forget me-not, sunlight sorrel, and clover, turtles , sidesaddlef-flower and orchis, birds' nests, the note of the woodthrush)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

June 12

Red contrasting with

the greener fields, blue sky, and

dark or downy clouds.

June 12, 1852

The wood thrush answers

the unexhausted morning

vigor of the hearer.

June 12, 1853

At Hubbard's meadow

sunshine lights the trunk and limbs

of a swamp white oak.

June 12, 1854

What a wholesome red!

I am struck with the beauty

of the sorrel now.

June 12, 1859

June 12, 2016

June 12, 2018

June 12, 2019

June 12, 2020

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon. Who knows how much lighter day there may be? June 12, 1852

There would be this advantage in travelling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer travellers' mistakes. June 12, 1851

The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.  June 12, 1853

The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest. June 12, 1852

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.  June 12, 1852

Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. June 12, 1852 

Clover now reddens the fields. June 12, 1854

I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red!  . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season. June 12, 1859

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. June 12, 1852

Senecio vulgaris a common weed, apparently in prime.  June 12, 1857

A Carya tomentosa hickory on the hill well out, and froth on the nuts, almost all out and black; perhaps three or four days. June 12, 1855

I see a young yellow-spot turtle in the Assabet, still quite broad and roundish though I count about seven striæ. It is very handsome. June 12, 1860

Up Assabet. I find several Emys insculpta nests and eggs, and see two painted turtles going inland to lay at 3 P. M. June 12, 1860

Here is a painted turtle just a rod inland, its back all covered with the fragments of green leaves blown off and washed up yesterday, which now line the shore. It has come out through this wrack.  June 12, 1860

 Visited the great  orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. June 12, 1853

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.  June 12, 1852 

The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?)  June 12, 1853 

Sidesaddle flower numerously out now. June 12, 1856

In a hedge thicket by meadow near Peter’s Path, a catbird’s nest, one egg; as usual in a high blueberry, in the thickest and darkest of the hedge, and very loosely built beneath on joggle-sticks.  June 12, 1855 

In a high blueberry bush, on the Poplar Hill-side, four feet from ground, a catbird’s nest with four eggs, forty feet high up the hill. They even follow the blueberry up-hill.  June 12, 1855 

A field sparrow’s nest with three young, on a Vaccinium vacillans, rose, and grass, six inches from ground, made of grass and hair. June 12, 1855

Do I not see two birds with the seringo note, — the Savannah (?) sparrow, larger with not so bright a yellow over eye, none on wing, and white breast, and beneath former streaked with dark and perhaps a dark spot, and the smaller yellow-winged, with spot on wing also and ochreous breast and throat ? The first sings che che rar, che ra- a-a-a-a-ar. June 12, 1854

 In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. June 12, 1855 

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods. June 12, 1853

Near by, in a part of the swamp which had been cleared and then burnt apparently by accident, we find the nest of a veery on a tussock eight inches high, which like those around has been burnt all off close and black. The nest is directly in the top, the outside burnt. It contains three eggs, which have been scorched, discolored, and cooked, — one cracked by the heat, though fresh. Some of the sedge has since sprung up green, eight inches high, around here and there. All the lower part of the nest is left, an inch thick with dead leaves, —maple, etc., —and well lined with moss stems (?). It is a dry swamp. June 12, 1855

Hear the evergreen-forest note, and see the bird on the top of a white pine , somewhat creeper like, along the boughs, and golden head except a black streak from eyes, black throat, slate-colored back, forked tail , white beneath, er te, ter ter te.  Another bird with yellow throat near by may have been the other sex. June 12, 1854

Young red-wings now begin to fly feebly amid the button-bushes, and the old ones chatter their anxiety.  At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest . . . with four eggs variously marked, full of young. June 12, 1855 

Scare a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives and apparently catches a fish, with which he flies off low over the water to a tree. June 12, 1854

Apparently a small pewee nest on apple in Miles’s meadow. Bird on, and not to be frightened off, though I throw sticks and climb the tree to near her. June 12, 1856

I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. He sits close to the edge of the water and is hard to find—hard to tell the direction, though you may be within three feet. I detect him chiefly by the motion of the great swelling bubble in his throat. A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! How serenely it ripples over the water! What a luxury life is to him! I have to use a little geometry to detect him. Am surprised at my discovery at last, while C. sits by incredulous. Had turned our prow to shore to search. This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds. June 12, 1855 

At 7. 30 P. M.  I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes. June 12, 1860

The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer. June 12, 1853

Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear. June 12, 1851

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau:

June Moonlight

blue-eyed grass

The Golden Senecio

the Skunk Cabbage

The Rattlesnake-Plantain

he Mouse-ear forget-me-not

The Purple Pitcher Plant

The Purple Fringed Orchids

The Yellow-Spotted Turtle

the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

Young Birds

The Wood  Thrush

The Veery

the “Small Pewee"

Catbird nests

The Red-eyed Vireo

The Black-throated Green Warbler

The Blueberries

Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)

The Ring of Toads

The Field Sparrow

AThe Savannah Sparrow (Fringilla savanna)

The Kingfisher

June 12, 2019

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

April 7, 1853  

June 11<<<<< June 12 >>>>> June 13

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 12

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 ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDT12June