Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf.

 

October 31

Cloudy still and, in the afternoon, rain, the ninth day.

The sugar maple and elm leaves are fallen, but I still see many large oaks, especially scarlet ones, which have lost very few leaves. Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet.

The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods.

                                                  ***

Aspidium spinulosum

In the Lee farm swamp, by the old Sam Barrett mill site, I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?).

They are also common in other swamps now. They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now. The atmosphere of the house is less congenial to them.

In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves.

You are inclined to approach and raise each frond in succession, moist, trembling, fragile greenness. They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under the bare maples and grape-vines and witch-hazels, and about each trickling spring which is half choked with fallen leaves.

What means this persistent vitality, invulnerable to frost and wet? Why were these spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken down? They stay as if to keep up the spirits of the cold-blooded frogs which have not yet gone into the mud; that the summer may die with decent and graceful moderation, gradually,

Is not the water of the spring improved by their presence ? They fall back and droop here and there, like the plumes of departing summer, — of the departing year,

Even in them I feel an argument for immortality. Death is so far from being universal.  The same destroyer does not destroy all,

How valuable they are (with the lycopodiums) for cheerfulness.  Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf, as in a hale old age.

To my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and always some forest noble-ness seems to have its haunt under their umbrage. Each such green tuft of ferns is a grove where some nobility dwells and walks.

All that was immortal in the swamp's herbage seems here crowded into smaller compass, the concentrated greenness of the swamp. 

How dear they must be to the chickadee and the rabbit! The cool, slowly retreating rear-guard of the swamp army.

What virtue is theirs that enables them to resist the frost?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1857

Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet. See October 31, 1858 ("The woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods. See October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 22, 1858 (" The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. . . . The lowermost leaves turn golden and fall first; so their autumn change is like a fire which has steadily burned up higher and higher, consuming the fuel below, till now it has nearly reached their tops.")

The Aspidium spinulosum and cristatum. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. Apparently Aspidium cristatum elsewhere . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum

A tragedy in a quiet swamp

October 8. 

A quiet swamp. October 8, 2020

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. 

The changing red maples along the river are past their prime now, earlier than generally elsewhere. They are much faded, and many leaves are floating on the water. 

Those white maples that were so early to change in the water have more than half lost their leaves. 

Walking through the Lee farm swamp, a dozen or more rods from the river, I found a large box trap closed. I opened it and found in it the remains of a gray rabbit, -skin, bones, and mould, - closely fitting the right-angled corner of one side. It was wholly inoffensive, as so much vegetable mould, and must have been dead some years. None of the furniture of the trap remained, but the box itself, with a lid which just moved on two rusty nails; the stick which held the bait, the string, etc., etc., were all gone. The box had the appearance of having been floated off in an upright position by a freshet. It had been a rabbit’s living tomb. He had gradually starved to death in it. What a tragedy to have occurred within a box in one of our quiet swamps! The trapper lost his box, the rabbit its life. The box had not been gnawed. After days and nights of moaning and struggle, heard for a few rods through the swamp, increasing weakness and emaciation and delirium, the rabbit breathes its last. They tell you of opening the tomb and finding by the contortions of the body that it was buried alive. This was such a case. Let the trapping boy dream of the dead rabbit in its ark, as it sailed, like a small meeting-house with its rude spire, slowly, with a grand and solemn motion, far amid the alders. 

Four dark-colored ducks (white beneath), maybe summer, or teal (??), with a loud creaking note of alarm, flew away from near the shore and followed the bend of the river upward. 

I see and hear white-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river's edge, uttering a faint sharp cheep. 

The chipmunk, the wall-going squirrel, that will cross a broad pasture on the wall, now this side, now that, now on top, and lives under it, — as if it were a track laid for him expressly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1857

The changing red maples along the river are past their prime now. . . Compare October 8, 1852 (“Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the [Walden] shore and extend their red banners over the water.”)

White-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river's edge. . . See October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows . . .”); October 8, 1855 (" Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows . . .”)

I found a large box trap closed. I opened it and found in it the remains of a gray rabbit . See  December 5, 1853 ("Two other boys asked leave to ride, with four large empty box-traps which they were bringing home from the woods. It was too cold and late to follow box-trapping longer. They had caught five rabbits this fall, baiting with an apple.")

Oak seedlings seek the Pines

October 27

October 27, 2013

I have come out this afternoon to get ten seedling oaks out of a purely oak wood, and as many out of a purely pine wood, and then compare them. I look for trees one foot or less in height, and convenient to dig up. I could not find one in the small wood-lot of oak and hickory on the Lee farm, west of hill.  I then searched in the large Woodis Park, the most oaken parts of it, wood some twenty-five or thirty years old, but I found only three.

After searching here more than half an hour I went into the new pitch and white pine lot just southwest, toward the old Lee cellar, and there were thousands of the seedling oaks only a foot high and less, quite reddening the ground now in some places, and these had perfectly good roots.  

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks. They prevail and are countless under the pines, while they are hard to find under the oaks.

As I am coming out of the white pine wood not far north of railroad I see a jay, screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which pine woods are stocked with the numerous little oaks.

By looking to see what oaks grow in the open land near by or along the edge where the wood is extensively pine, I can tell surely what kinds of oaks I shall find under the pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 27, 1860 

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks.See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, . . . If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)