On Reading Linnæus, "this lawgiver of science, this systematizer, this methodist"

March 12. 

I have learned in a shorter time and more accurately the meaning of the scientific terms used in botany from a few plates of figures at the end of the “Philosophia Botanica," with the names annexed, than a volume of explanations or glossaries could teach.

And, that the alternate pages to the plates may not be left blank, he has given on them very concise and important instruction to students of botany.

This lawgiver of science, this systematizer, this methodist, carries his system into his studies in the field.

On one of these little pages he gives some instruction concerning herbatio, or what the French called herborisations, — we say botanizing.

Into this he introduces law and order and system, and describes with the greatest economy of words what some would have required a small volume to tell, all on a small page; tells what dress you shall wear, what instruments you shall carry, what season and hour you shall observe, - viz. “from the leafing of the trees, Sirius excepted, to the fall of the leaf, twice a week in summer, once in spring, from seven in the morning till seven at night," – when you shall dine and take your rest, etc., in a crowd or dispersed, etc., how far shall go, –two miles and a half at most, – what you shall collect and what kind of observations make, etc. etc.


Railroad to Walden, 3 P. M.


I see the Populus (apparently tremuloides, not grandidentata) at the end of the railroad causeway, showing the down of its ament.

Bigelow makes it flower in April, the grandidentata in May.

I see the sand flowing in the Cut and hear the harp at the same time.

Who shall say that the primitive forces are not still at work? Nature has not lost her pristine vigor, neither has he who sees this.

To see the first dust fly is a pleasant sight. I saw it on the east side of the Deep Cut.

These heaps of sand foliage remind me of the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens, — somewhat linear-laciniate. It cannot make much odds what the sand is, for I have seen it in the soil of our garden. They come out from the interior of the earth like bowels — a rupture in the spring - and bury the snow.  The crust of the snow is completely concealed with the sand for an eighth of a mile.

They also remind me sometimes of masses of rockweed on the rocks.

At any moment the creative stream will be seen flowing in a restricted channel or artery, but it is forming new lobes, and at last, in the ditch, it forms sands, as at the mouths of rivers, in which the outlines of the different lobes are almost lost, are dissipated into mere shaded outlines on the flat floor.

Bent has left the chestnuts about Walden till the sap is well up, that the bark may peel. He has cut the other trees.

I saw the ants crawling about torpidly on the stump of an oak which had been sawed this winter. The choppers think they have seen them a fortnight.

The whistling of the wind, which makes one melancholy, inspires another.

The little grain of wheat, triticum, is the noblest food of man.

The lesser grains of other grasses are the food of passerine birds at present. Their diet is like man's.

The gods can never afford to leave a man in the world who is privy to any of their secrets. They cannot have a spy here. They will at once send him packing.

How can you walk on ground when you see through it? 

The telegraph harp has spoken to me more distinctly and effectually than any man ever did.

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

I have learned in a shorter time and more accurately the meaning of the scientific terms used in botany.  See February 17 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnaeus at once . . .His "Philosophia Botanica," . . . is simpler, more easy to understand, and more comprehensive, than any of the hundred manuals to which it has given birth. A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation.");. See also note to March 1,1852 ("Linnæus, speaking of the necessity of precise and adequate terms in any science")


I see the Populus (apparently tremuloides, not grandidentata) at the end of the railroad causeway , showing the down of its ament.Bigelow makes it flower in April.. See March 27, 1859 ("Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all"); April 9, 1856 ("Early aspen catkins have curved downward an inch, and began to shed pollen apparently yesterday") See aslo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

The civility of one's ancestors II.

May 8


P. M. – To Annursnack.

A long row of elms just set out by Wheeler from his  gate to the old Lee place.

The planting of so long a row of trees which are so stately and may endure so long deserves to be recorded. In many localities a much shorter row, or even a few scattered trees, set out sixty or a hundred years since, is the most conspicuous as well as interesting relic of the past in sight.

Nothing more proves the civility of one's ancestors.

The Ribes floridum, wild black currant, just begun by the wooden bridge just this side of the Assabet stone bridge, with dotted leaves.

The thimble-berry and high blackberry leaves are among the most forward.

That large reddish-stemmed cornel shows now narrow green buds tipped with reddish, three quarters of an inch long by one quarter wide.

Some thrashers are plainly better singers than others.

How surprising and interesting this cluster of leek buds on the rock in the Jesse Hosmer farm, composed of thick, succulent green leaves, cactus-like, tipped with dull purple, in buds from a half-inch to three inches in diameter! What tenacity of life! Its leaves so disposed (from circumference to centre) as to break joints.

Some place it on a gate-post to grow high and dry above the earth for a curiosity. It may be a convenient symbol.

At the foot of Annursnack, rising from the Jesse Hosmer meadow, was surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. Some may have been out a day or two.

Methinks this the most high-colored and brilliant flower yet, not excepting the columbine. In color it matches Sophia's cactus blossoms exactly. It is all the more interesting for being a painted leaf and not petal, and its spidery leaves, pinnatifid with linear divisions, increase its strangeness.

It is now from three to six inches high, rising from the moist base of the hill.

It is wonderful what a variety of flowers may grow within the range of a walk, and how long some very conspicuous ones may escape the most diligent walker, if you do not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight, when their signs are out.

It is a flaming leaf. The very leaf has flowered; not the ripe tints of autumn, but the rose in the cheek of infancy; a more positive flowering.

Still more abundant on the same ground was the Erigeron bellidifolius, robin's-plantain,  with a pale-purple ray still erect, like a small thimble, not yet horizontal. This, then, its very earliest date.

Neither of these did I see last year, and I was affected as if I had got into a new botanical district.

A kind of mint, shoots now six or eight inches high, with a velvety purple or lake under surface to leaves.

They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects.

The landscape is in some respects more interesting because of the overcast sky, threatening rain; a cold southwest wind.

I am struck and charmed by the quantity of forest, especially in the southwest, after having witnessed the bareness of the Haverhill country. It is as if every farmer had a beautiful garden and boundless plantations of trees and shrubs, such as no imperial wealth can surpass. 

The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look, and the evergreens were more sharply divided from them, but now they have the appearance of being merged in or buoyed up in a mist.

I am not  sure what is the cause of the reddish line around the lower edges of the wood. It is plainly the red maple, and in many places, no doubt, the shrub oak. The oaks are plainly more gray already and some trees greenish. Vide again after a week.

The catkins of the black birch appear more advanced than those of the white birch. They are very large, four inches long, half a dozen gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance in wisps, as if dry leaves left on, very rich golden.

black birch catkins

May 9, 2015

The yellow birch is the first I have noticed fully in bloom, — considerably in advance of the others. Its flowers smell like its bark.

Methinks the black and the paper birch next, and then the white, or all nearly together.

The leaves of the papyracea unfold like a fan and are sticky. How fresh and glossy !And the catkins I gather shed pollen the next morning.

Some hickory buds are nearly two inches long.

The handsome finely divided leaves of the pedicularis are conspicuous. It is now budded amid the painted-cups.

The fruit of the Populus grandidentata appears puffed up and blasted into a large bright yellow ( sic ), like some plums some seasons.

The thorn bushes have so far leaved out on the north side of Annursnack as to reveal their forms, as I look up the hill and see them against the light. They are remarkably uniform, somewhat like this, the leading shoot finally rising above the rest, somewhat like a broad poplar.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1853

 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 8

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 ©  2009-2021

Surprised by the brilliant pale scarlet flowers of the painted-cup (Castilleja coccinea) just coming into bloom. See note to June 3, 1853 ("The painted-cup is in its prime. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, It might be called flame-flower, or scarlet-tip. Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it.")

The catkins of the black birch gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance in wisps, very rich golden. See May 12, 1853 ("The black birch is now a beautiful sight, its long, slender, bushy branches waving in the wind ( the leaf-buds but just beginning to unfold ), with countless little tassel like bunches of five or six golden catkins, spotted with brown and three inches long, one bunch at the end of each drooping twig, hanging straight down, or dangling like heads of rye, or blown off at various angles with the horizon."); May 17, 1856 ("The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hanging straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

Some thrashers are plainly better singers than others. See May 3, 1852 ("Hear the first brown thrasher, — two of them. They drown all the rest. He says cherruwit, cherruwit ; go ahead, go ahead; give it to him, give it to him");  May 4, 1859 ("We hear a thrasher sing for half an hour steadily, — a very rich singer and heard a quarter of a mile off very distinctly"); May 12, 1855 (The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods"")

The fruit of the Populus grandidentata appears puffed up. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen