In Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia

July 14.

Heavy fog. 

I see a rose, now in its prime, by the river, in the water amid the willows and button-bushes, while others, lower on shore, are nearly out of bloom.

Is it not the R. Carolina?

Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. 

This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. 

Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnæus’s account. I now find it in abundance. 

Andromeda Polifolia

It is a neat and tender-looking plant, with the pearly new shoots now half a dozen inches long and the singular narrow revolute leaves. I suspect the flower does not add much to it.

There is an abundance of the buck-bean there also. 

Holly berries are beginning to be ripe. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper, by to-morrow. 

Spergula arvensis gone to seed and in flower. 

A very tall ragged orchis by the Heywood Brook, two feet high, almost like a white fringed one. Lower ones I have seen some time. 

The clematis there (near the water-plantain) will open in a day or two.  

Mallows gone to seed and in bloom.

Erigeron Canadensis, butter-weed. 

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1853

In Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia. See February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. . . . in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.”); May 24, 1854 ("Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime. . .A timid botanist would never pluck it."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [Ledum Swamp] [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”); See also February 12, 1858 ("There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in [C.Miles] swamp than anywhere else in Concord."); November 23, 1857 ("This [Gowing's] swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia."). See also  Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

This is another instance of a common experience. When I become interested in some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. See  May 31, 1853 ("The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw. . . may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive."); August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”); January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . “I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”);  September 2, 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things."); February 4, 1858 ("It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.") November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.") See also  January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.")

Beck Stow's Swamp. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! When life looks sandy and barren, is reduced to its lowest terms, we have no appetite, and it has no flavor, then let me visit such a swamp as this, deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where the swallows skim and twitter, its meadow and cotton-grass, its dense patches of dwarf andromeda, now brownish-green, with clumps of blue berry bushes, its spruces and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side. ") A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  at Beck Stow's Swamp. 

There is an abundance of the buck-bean there also See August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that [Gowings] swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) See also  May 29, 1856 (" Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”)

A very tall ragged orchis by the Heywood Brook, two feet high, almost like a white fringed one. See July 21, 1851 ("The ragged orchis on Conantum."); July 13, 1856 ("Orchis lacera, apparently several days, lower part of spike, willow-row, Hubbard side, opposite Wheildon's land.")

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color..

May 26. 

RWE 1847

Thursday. P. M. — To Ledum Swamp and Lee's Cliff.

Eleocharis tenuis in bloom, apparently the earliest eleocharis. 

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color. 

Eriophorum vaginatum, how long? 

Ledum out apparently two or three days. 

Andromeda Polifolia out, how long? 

Tall swamp huckleberry just budded to bloom. 

Do I not hear the nuthatch note in the swamp? 

Do not detect the scheuchzeria there yet.

The air is full of terebinthine odors to-day, — the scent of the sweet-fern, etc. 

May 26, 2019
Moss Ledge

The reddish leaves (and calyx) of the Vaccinium vacillans, just leafed, are interesting and peculiar now, perhaps more or less crimson. 

See a flock of cowbirds, the first I have seen. 

Cows in water, so warm has it got to be. 

Geranium (how long?), behind Bittern Cliff, and wild pink. 

Pitch pine pollen at Lee's. 

Cherry-birds. 

Ascendant potentilla abundant, how long? 

Juniperus repens pollen, how long ? 

Interrupted fern pollen [sic]. 

The dicksonia fern is one foot high, but not fairly unfolded. 

The tender white-downy stems of the meadow saxifrage, seen toward the westering sun, are very conspicuous and thick in the meadows now. 

A purple finch's nest in one of our firs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1859

The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color.   See May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out.”);  May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.”); May 18, 1853 ("The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms."); May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday."); May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there [Kalmia Swamp] maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day. "); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday");  May 19, 1854 ("The rhodora is late, and is naked flowering."); May 27, 2016 (“Kalmia in prime, and rhodora.”); May 31, 1857 (“Rhodora now in its prime.”).

See a flock of cowbirds, the first I have seen. See September 6, 1858  (“To Ledum Swamp. Going over Clamshell Plain, I see a very large flock of a hundred or more cowbirds about some cows.”); August 25, 1855 (“They keep close to the cow’s head and feet, and she does not mind them; but when all go off . . .at my approach, the cow (about whom they were all gathered) looks off after them for some time, as if she felt deserted.”).

Cows in water, so warm has it got to be. See July 12, 1857 (“It is exceedingly sultry this afternoon, and few men are abroad. The cows stand up to their bellies in the river, lashing their sides with their tails from time to time.”).

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

A song sparrow's nest in a little spruce

June 13. 

Louring all day. 

P. M. – To Ledum Swamp. 

Lambkill, maybe one day. 

Strawberries. 

In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. 

The ledum is apparently past prime. 

The Kalmia glauca and the Andromeda Polifolia are done, the kalmia just done. 

The ledum has grown three or four inches (as well as the andromeda). It has a rather agreeable fragrance, between turpentine and strawberries. It is rather strong and penetrating, and some times reminds me of the peculiar scent of a bee. The young leaves, bruised and touched to the nose, even make it smart.

It is the young and expanding ledum leaves which are so fragrant. There is a yellow fungus common on its leaves, and a black one on the andromeda. 

The Vaccinium Oxycoccus grows here and is abundantly out; some days certainly. 

I hear and see the parti-colored warbler, blue yellow-backed, here on the spruce trees. It probably breeds here. 

Also, within three feet of the edge of the pond-hole, where I can hardly stand in india-rubber shoes without the water flowing over them, a large ant-hill swarming with ants, – though not on the surface because of the mizzling rain. 

One of the prevailing front-rank plants here, standing in the sphagnum and water, is the elodea. 

I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. It rests on the thick branches fifteen inches from the ground, firmly made of coarse sedge without, lined with finer, and then a little hair, small within, — a very thick, firm, and portable nest, an inverted cone; — four eggs. They build them in a peculiar manner in these sphagnous swamps, elevated apparently on account of water and of different materials. Some of the eggs have quite a blue ground. 

Go to Conantum end. 

The Rubus frondosus will not bloom apparently for a day or two, though the villosus is apparently in prime there. 

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. 

Arenaria lateriflora, how long? 

The Scheuchzeria palustris, now in flower and going to seed, grows at Ledum Pool, as at Gowing's Swamp. 

See now in meadows, for the most part going to seed, Carex scoparia, with its string of oval beads; and C. lupulina, with its inflated perigynia; also what I take to be C. stipata, with a dense, coarse, somewhat sharp triangular mass of spikelets; also C. stellulata, with a string of little star-like burs. The delicate, pendulous, slender-peduncled C. debilis.

Catbirds hatched.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1858

Lambkill, maybe one day. See June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out."); June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here"); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year");


In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. See May 17, 1858 ("Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circumference ");  June 13, 1855 ("C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground."); June 10, 1856 ("In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. . . .")

A song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. See  April 30, 1858 ("I find a Fringilla melodia nest with five eggs. Part, at least, must have been laid before the snow of the 27th, but it is perfectly sheltered under the shelving turf and grass on the brink of a ditch."); June 14, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them."); July 12, 1857 ("A song sparrow's nest in a small clump of alder, two feet from ground! Three or four eggs.")

See Carex now in meadows. See June 11, 1855 ("Carex cephalophora (?) on Heywood’s Peak. That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands, never mown, is apparently the C. Pennsylvanica, or early sedge. ")

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. See. June 13, 1852 (" I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them")

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 13

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

The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood.

May 30. 

Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long? 

I saw the Nuphar advena above water and yellow in Shrewsbury the 23d. 

P. M.–To hen-harrier's nest and to Ledum Swamp.

Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered. It is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated, just southwest of Hubbard's Bath, the island of wood in the meadow.

The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. 

The nest is in a more bushy or open place in this low wood, and consists of a large mass of sedge and stubble with a very few small twigs, as it were accidentally intermingled. It is about twenty inches in diameter and remarkably flat, the slight depression in the middle not exceeding three quarters of an inch. The whole opening amid the low bushes is not more than two feet in diameter. The thickness of it raises the surface about four inches above the ground. The inner and upper part is uniformly rather fine and pale-brown sedge. 

There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, white eggs left (of four that were), one of them one and seven tenths inches long, and not “spherical,” as Brewer says, but broad in proportion to length. [Another is one and seven eighths inches long by one and a half inches. Vide the last (which was addled).]

Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed here yesterday? It is decidedly leafing also.

Andromeda Polifolia by the ditch well out, how long?

I perceive the turpentine scent of the ledum in the air as I walk through it. 

As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps from the meadow, far and near, — less visible within a foot of me, — to the height of three or four or ten feet. It does not rise generally and evenly from every part of the meadow, but, as yet, over certain spots only, where there is some warm breath of the meadow turned into cloud.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal  May 30, 1858

Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d. See note to May 30, 1856 ("The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th.")

The nest is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated, just southwest of Hubbard's Bath, the island of wood in the meadow. The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. See May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me.");  See May 20, 1856 (“Two marsh hawks, male and female, flew about me a long time, screaming, the female largest, with ragged wing ,. . . they have, no doubt, a nest thereabouts. ”)

Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed here yesterday. See February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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

The nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath.

February 12. 

 the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

Colder than yesterday morning; perhaps the coldest of the winter. 

P. M. — To Ledum Pond. 

Those small holes in the ground, – musquash, mice, etc., – thickly beset with crystals of frost, remind me of the invisible vapor issuing thence which may be called Earth’s breath, though you might think it were the breath of a mouse. 

In cold weather you see not only men's beards and the hair about the muzzles of oxen whitened with their frozen breath, but countless holes in the banks, which are the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. 

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. Instead of a regular, free, and open growth, you have a multitude of slender branches crowded together, putting out from the summit or side of the stem and shooting up nearly perpendicularly, with dense, fine, wiry branchlets and fine needles, which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. 

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.

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

About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. See February 4, 1858 ("There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. ")

There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord.See February 4, 1858  ("The A. Polifoliais very abundant about the pond-hole."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... ")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 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

Another new plant anticipated. Naming Ledum Swamp.

February 4. 

P. M. – To C. Miles Swamp. 

Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc. 

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. 

The ledum bears a general resemblance to the water andromeda, with its dark reddish-purplish, or rather mulberry, leaves, reflexed; but nearer it is distinguished by its coarseness, the perfect tent form of its upper leaves, and the large, conspicuous terminal roundish (strictly oval) red buds, nearly as big as the swamp pink's, but rounded. The woolly stem for a couple of inches beneath the bud is frequently bare and conspicuously club-shaped. The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. The seed-vessels (which open at the base first) still hold on. 

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. When I showed it to a teamster, he was sure that he had seen it often in the woods, but the sight of the woolly under side staggered him. 

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, reminding one of strange species of evergreen from California, China, etc. 

I brought some home and had a cup of tea made, which, in spite of a slight piny or turpentine flavor, I thought unexpectedly good. 

An abundance of nesaea on the east edge of the pond-hole (call it Ledum Pond-hole); and is that a lysimachia mingled with it?

The ledum does not grow amid the maples, nor, indeed, does the A. Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, nor even the water andromeda abundantly. It bears no more shade than that of the spruce trees, which do not prevail over the above-named shrubbery. 

As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord. It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 4, 1858

Discover the Ledum latiforium ....The rust on the under sides of the leaves seems of a lighter color than that of Maine. See July 25, 1857 (“Here [at Kimeo], among others, were the . . . Oxalis Acetosella, still occasionally in flower; Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), out of bloom; Kalmia glauca, etc., etc., close to the track. ”); August 24, 1857 (“We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike [at Natick] to find the ledum, but did not succeed. ”); June 19, 1856 (“Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed ...Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather 'broader—leafed than mine from Maine.”)  ~~ Recently reclassified from the genus Ledum, labrador-tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) is a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg. It is recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. This shrub is named Labrador-tea because its aromatic leaves were commonly brewed as a tea by northern native Americans. Moose browse the leaves and twigs. ~ Go Botany

The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt. See February 12, 1858 ("There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”). See also July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom.): February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore.)

This plant might easily be confounded with the water andromeda by a careless observer. See August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)

There are many small spruce thereabouts, with small twigs and leaves, an abnormal growth, See November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp .. where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”); February 12, 1858 ("About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. . . , which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath."); June 13, 1858 ("I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch."); August 8, 1858 ("The peculiar plants of [Ledum] swamp are, then, as I remember, these nine: spruce, Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, Ledum latifolium, Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Platanthera blephari glottis, Scheuchzeria palustris, Eriophorum 'vaginatum.");' September 6, 1858 ("That swamp is a singularly wild place, without any natural outlet. I hear of a marsh hawk’s nest there this summer. I see great spiders there of an uncommon kind, whose webs —the main supporting line — stretch six feet in the clear from spruce to spruce, as high as my head, with a dense web of the usual form some fifteen inches in diameter beneath."); October 23, 1858 ("The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that. . . he had found three growths of spruce, one above another, there.")

It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery. See  July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnaeus's account. I now find it in abundance.”); January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”);  September 2, 1856 (“It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.”); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.”); and note to July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 4

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

I called them “a moccasin-print.”

November 24.

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing. 

The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond, considering the main portion north of the isthmus, is surrounded, except at the isthmus, by dry hills, twenty-five to forty feet high perhaps, covered with young oaks. Its interior, or far the greater part of the whole, is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it. 

Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, except, of course, at the isthmus, and part of the way, just within the edge of the andromeda, mixed with it, a second inner border of gray bushes, chiefly, I suppose, blueberry, etc., with a few small birches, maples, pines, etc. As I remember, it lies somewhat thus: — 


The southerly continuation of this and the other two ponds are much more wet, — have open water and less andromeda, much more sedge in proportion. Why does the sedge grow thus around the andromeda in a regular ring next the hill? I think it is because it is more wet there. It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. Why should it be more wet there? I do not know, unless the springs are at the base of the hills. The sedge can evidently bear more water than the andromeda, and the andromeda than the blueberry bushes, etc. Perhaps the sedge prepares the ground for the andromeda some times, furnishing a base and support for it. I see the latter, as it were, making its way out thinly into the sedge here and there. Perhaps the sedge once covered the whole or greater part. 

The sphagnum, apparently, having some slight solid core to grow around, like an andromeda or blueberry stem, builds itself up a foot or more and may make a soil for noble plants thus. On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. Probably it occurs very far off, or high, thinly, but here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp. 

According to this, then, you have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp. Spruce and larch appear to flourish very well at the same time with the andromeda. 

Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. 

Perhaps the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca prefer stagnant water. 

These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why, — and I called them “a moccasin-print.” 

The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes. Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes. 

Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. In that fervid and excitable season we only get the impulse which is to carry us onward in our future career. Ideals are then exhibited to us distinctly which all our lives after we may aim at but not attain. The mere vision is little compared with the steady corresponding‘ endeavor thitherward. It would be vain for us to be looking ever into promised lands toward which in the meanwhile we were not steadily and earnestly travelling, whether the way led over a mountain-top or through a dusky valley. In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. To suppose that this is equivalent to having travelled the road, or obeyed the impulse faithfully throughout a lifetime, is absurd. We are shown fair scenes in order that we may be tempted to inhabit them, and not simply tell what we have seen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1857

It would be open water there all the way round if it were not for the sedge, but I could walk through the andromeda if I could get to it. See January 24, 1855 (“But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.”)

Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. See November 24, 1852 ("At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red . Now it has not turned from brown."): See also  April 19 1852  ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world..”); January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”). See also note to May 5, 1855 (“I can neither get the red cathedral-window light looking toward the now westering sun in a most favorable position, nor the gray colors in the other direction, but it is all a grayish green.”); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) Also The Andromeda Phenomenon

The Fringilla hyemalis . . .go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes.See November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)

Some poets have said that writing poetry was for youths only, but not so. . . .In youth, when we are most elastic and there is a spring to us, we merely receive an impulse in the proper direction. . . .See January 17, 1852 ("It appears to me that at a very early age the mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual power becomes some thing defined and limited. He does not think expansively, as he would stretch himself in his growing days. What was flexible sap hardens into heart-wood, and there is no further change. I. . .  It is the transition from poetry to prose. The young man can run and leap; he has not learned exactly how far, he knows no limits. The grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He has no strength to waste.”)

A walk through Gowing’s Swamp.

November 23. 

Gowing’s Swamp
August 23, 1854

Monday. P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

Garfield, who was working in what was Moore's Swamp, tells me that he sometimes digs up frogs in the winter, when ditching in springy places, one at a time. He is very much troubled by the short-tailed meadow mouse in that meadow. They live under the stumps, and gnaw his potatoes in the fall. He thought that his little dog, a terrier, had killed a bushel of them the past year. 

At the back of Gowing's hillside, just west of his swamp, in the midst of shrub oaks and other dry up land trees, the ground slopes regularly on all sides to a deep round hollow, perhaps fifteen feet lower than the lowest side and thirty feet in diameter at the bottom. The bottom is rather wet and covered with sphagnum, and many stiff and dead-looking button-bushes stand in it, while all around a dense high hedge of high blueberry curves over it. So sudden a change there will be in the vegetation with a change of soil. Many such a dimple with its peculiar vegetations have I seen in a dry wood-lot. The Vaccinium corymbosum and panicled andromeda in a dense hedge, in a circular or oval or other curved form, surrounding and slanting over it so as almost to conceal it; and in the same manner the blueberry, etc., will grow around and overhang the largest ponds. 

Walked through Gowing's Swamp from west to east. You may say it is divided into three parts, – first, the thin woody; second, the coarse bushy or gray; and third, the fine bushy or brown. 

First: The trees are larch, white birch, red maple, spruce, white pine, etc. 

Second: The coarse bushy part, or blueberry thicket, consists of high blueberry, panicled andromeda, Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia, swamp-pink, choke-berry, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, (and probably prinos, holly, etc., etc., not distinguishable easily now), but chiefly the first two. Much of the blueberry being dead gives it a very gray as well as scraggy as pect. It is a very bad thicket to break through, yet there are commonly thinner places, or often opens, by which you may wind your way about the denser clumps. Small specimens of the trees are mingled with these and also some water andromeda and lamb-kill. 

Third: There are the smooth brown and wetter spaces where the water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. In one of the latter portions occurs that open pool.

Sphagnum is found everywhere in the swamp. 

First, there is the dark wooded part; second, the scraggy gray blueberry thicket; third, the rich brown water andromeda spaces. 

The high blueberry delights singularly in these localities. You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds. Think of its wreaths and canopies of cool blue fruit in August, thick as the stars in the Milky Way! The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig. The blueberry is particularly hard to break through, it is so spreading and scraggy, but a hare can double swiftly enough beneath it. The ground of sphagnum is now thickly strewn with the leaves of these shrubs. 

The water andromeda makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which must be nearly impervious to some animals; but as man lifts his head high above it, finds but little difficulty in making his way through it, though it sometimes comes up to his middle, and if his eye scans its surface it makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, whole some surface, even as grass or moss. 

Ascending the high land on the south, I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. This green stagnant pool, rayed with the tracks or trails of musquash and making but a feeble watery impression, reminded me of portions of the map of the moon. 

This swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia. The Kalmia glauca in Gowing's, C. Miles's, and Holden's swamps. The latter has no outlet of any kind. 

I am interested in those plants, like panicled andromeda, shrub oak, etc., for which no use that I know has been discovered. The panicled andromeda, instead of the date tree, might be my coat-of arms. 

Fresh slender shoots of the Viburnum nudum make very good withes, I find. 

Austin Bacon told me that the worst swamp he ever found was not in Vermont or up country where he had surveyed, but in Newton (?), where he surveyed for a road once. The water was about two feet deep, and you jumped from tussock to tussock; these generally tipped over with you into the water. 

There is a strong and warm southwest wind, which brings the frost out of the ground, — more than I thought was in it, — making the surface wet. 

Walking along the top of Gowing's hill wood-lot, I see from time to time large ant-hills amid the young oaks. Often their tops have been disturbed and flattened, by some creature apparently. Some may be deserted. The sedge-grass has sprung up long and thick about the sides of these mounds, though there may be none amid the oaks around. The working of the ants keeps clear a little space amid the bushes. 

In the evening heavy rain and some thunder and lightning, and rain in the night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1857

I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre. See May 31, 1857 (“That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel,”); August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds.”).

Water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry; but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca are seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See February 17, 1854 (“In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc., etc., and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone.”); August 23, 1854 (“Next comes, half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata, — the A. Polifolia mingled with it, — the rusty cotton- grass, cranberries, — the common and also V. Oxycoccus, — pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there,”); August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) See also Gowing's; Swamp historical survey and botanical inventory (2010) (Rare or unusual plants remaining today at Gowing’s Swamp include:

• Black spruce (Picea marianna)
• Bog rosemary (Andromeda polifolia)
• Bog or pale laurel (Kalmia polifolia)
• Purple pitcher-plant (Sarracenia purpurea)
• Round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)
• Small-flowered cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus)
• Tawny cotton sedge (Eriophorum virginicum)
• 53 lichen species, including 3 not found elsewhere in the local area (Cladoniaincrassata, Parmeliopsis subambigua, and Pseudevernia consocians)
• Mountain holly (Nemopanthus mucronatus))

Andromeda polifolia. See July14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experi ence. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnaeus's account. I now find it in abundance.”)

V. Oxycoccus.  See August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”)

Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. See January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp,  I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”)

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf

November 15. 

The obvious falling of leaves (i.e., not to include the fall of the pitch pines and larches and the complete fall of the birches, white willows, etc.) ended about the first of November. 

A very few bright-colored leaves on small shrubs, such as oak sprouts, black cherry, blueberry, etc., have lingered up to this time in favorable places. By the first of November, or at most a few days later, the trees generally wear, in the main, their winter aspect, their leaves gradually falling until spring. 

P. M. — To Holden Swamp and C. Miles Swamp. 

Where the earth has been freshly exposed and so lies light, it is now heaved up and white with asbestos like crystals two or three inches long, which sink and are crunched by my feet. Cold pools in shady woods and under the north sides of walls are now skimmed over. Ice a quarter of an inch thick. I see its large flaky crystals like low undulations, a mosaic of slightly concave, perhaps triangular pieces. The paths whose surface was frozen each night are now thawing and wet. 

The water of the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, where it spreads out a little, though not frozen, is clear, cold, and deserted of life. There are no water-bugs nor skaters on it. Rennie, in “ Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” says they are seen all winter on some pools in England, i. e. the Gyrinus natator. 

I see no ants on the great ant-hills, and methinks I have not for three weeks at least. There is but little insect-life abroad now. You wonder what nourishment the cattle can extract from the withered and bleached grass. This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools. My walk is the more lonely when I perceive that there are no ants now upon their hillocks in field or wood. These are deserted mounds. They have commenced their winter's sleep. 

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf. The surface is composed of great porous tussocks, or hummocks, of sphagnum, fifteen or twenty inches high or more, about the stems of blueberry bushes, choke-berry, water andromeda, swamp-pink, spruce, etc., etc., in which my feet sink five or six inches, and my shoes are filled with the rubbish. The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants. This is the thickest ice I’ve seen. This water was most exposed in the cool swamp. I part the scraggy bushes with my hands and press my way through them. I come out covered with the fragments of lichens and rotten twigs and sphagnum.

Going by my owl-nest oak, I saw that it had broken off at the hole and the top fallen, but, seeing in the cavity some leaves, I climbed up to see what kind of nest it was and what traces of the owls were left. Having shinned up with some difficulty to the top of this great. stump some fifteen or eighteen feet high, I took out the leaves slowly, watching to see what spoils had been left with them. Some were pretty green, and all had evidently been placed there this fall. 

When I had taken all out with my left hand, holding on to the top of the stump with my right, I looked round into the cleft, and there I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me. I held my face thus within seven or eight inches of it as long as I cared to hold on there, and it showed no sign of retreating. When I put in my hand, it merely withdrew downward into a snug little nest of hypnum and apparently the dirty-white wool-like pappus of some plant as big as a batting-ball. 

Wishing to see its tail, I stirred it up again, when it suddenly rushed up the side of the cleft, out over my shoulder and right arm, and leaped off, falling down through a thin hemlock spray some fifteen or eighteen feet to the ground, on the hillside, where I lost sight of it, but heard it strike. It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves, as those of the squirrels are. 

At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th ?). 

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. The former is linear, about twice as long and two thirds as broad as the latter, alternate mucronate, round-stemmed. The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig, the edges springing from the base of the leaves and decussating like them, so that when the twig is held up to the light it appears alternately thicker and thinner. This plant is commonly seen now with only a few narrow and erect young leaves in a tuft near the end of the twigs, but in many cases older, broader, and nearly horizontal ones, half a dozen of them along the last four or five inches of the twig. The andromeda is most white beneath; the other is more greenish. 

The white willows, which retain many of their leaves even yet, are of a peculiar buff (?) or fawn (?) color. 

Raspberry shoots, too, have their bloom like the thimble-berry, but they are not so rank nor smooth. 

Of the evergreen trees described by Loudon, methinks these it would be worth the while to have on one's premises: — 

• Pinus sylvestris, Scotch pine or fir; the most valuable pine of Europe. Looks like our pitch pine. 
• Pinus Pinaster, which is planted on the sands in France. 
• Abies excelsa, the lofty or Norway spruce fir. 
• Perhaps Picea pectinata, the comb-like-leaved sil ver fir. 
• The Scotch larch, which is not indigenous in Britain, but on the mountains of the middle of Europe. I have, 

Of western American trees: — 

• The Pinus Lambertiana, the gigantic or Lambert's pine, Columbia River, one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high, twenty to near sixty in circumference, allied closely to P. Strobus. 
• Abies Douglassii, northwestern America, one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet high. 
• Picea grandis, great silver fir, northern California, one hundred and seventy to two hundred feet high.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1857


Going by my owl-nest oak . . .   See May 26, 1855 ("At Kalmia Swemp ... At the screech owl’s nest I now find two young slumbering."); May 7, 1855 ("I observe a middling-sized red oak standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet from the ground, where apparently a limb on which a felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and so broke out a cavity. . . .This is a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in, — the thick woods just over a white spruce swamp, in which the glaucous kalmia grows.").

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. See December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca.")

The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig ... See January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . .the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.Very delicate evergreen opposite linear leaves, strongly revolute, somewhat reddish-green above, the blossom-buds quite conspicuous. . . .The pretty little blossom-buds arranged crosswise in the axils of the leaves as you look down on them.")

.At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th?). See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.") November 5, 1857 ("The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling.”); November 16, 1858 (“Probably the larch about fallen.”)