Raspberries at their height

July 15. 

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp.

First notice Canada thistle, Aralia hispida, Stachys aspera, and Asclepias pulchra. 

The Eriophorum vaginatum done. 

The white orchis not yet, apparently, for a week or more. 

Hairy huckleberry still in bloom, but chiefly done. 

Gather a few Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum. 

Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1859

  The Eriophorum vaginatum done.See 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.")

The white orchis not yet, apparently, for a week or more. See .July 24, 1859 ("The white orchis will hardly open for a week.");  see also  July 23, 1854 ("The white orchis at same place, four or five days at least; spike one and three quarters by three inches."); August 8, 1858 (" I find at Ledum Swamp, near the pool, the white fringed orchis, quite abundant but past prime, only a few, yet quite fresh. It seems to belong to this sphagnous swamp and is some fifteen to twenty inches high, quite conspicuous, its white spike, amid the prevailing green. The leaves are narrow, half folded, and almost insignificant. It loves, then, these cold bogs"); August 11, 1852 ("Platanthera blephariglottis, white fringed orchis.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Fringed Orchis

To Ledum Swamp.Hairy huckleberry still in bloom, but chiefly done. Gaylussacia bigeloviana  (Gaylussacia dumosa var. bigeloviana;  Gaylussacia dumosa, var. hirtella, Vaccinium dumosum) BOG HUCKLEBERRY  See July 24, 1859 ("The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them."); August 8, 1858 (“The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella is the prevailing low shrub, perhaps. I See one ripe berry. This is the only inedible species of ' Vaccinieaz that I know in this town") See also August 30, 1856 ([Beck Stow's Swamp]"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. . . It grows from one to two feet high, the leaves minutely resinous- dotted — are not others ? — and mucronate, the racemes long, with leaf-like bracts now turned conspicuously red. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth ; has very prominent calyx-lobes.I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society. . . . That wild hairy huckleberry, inedible as it was, was equal to a domain secured to me and reaching to the South Sea. That was an unexpected harvest. "); June 25, 1857 ("To Gowing's Swamp. . . . Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.”): July 2, 1857 (" To Gowing's Swamp. . . .The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. This is commonly an inconspicuous bush, eight to twelve inches high, half prostrate over the sphagnum in which it grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc., but sometimes twenty inches high quite on the edge of the swamp. It has a very large and peculiar bell-shaped flower, with prominent ribs and a rosaceous tinge, and is not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. The flower deserves a more particular description than Gray gives it. But Bigelow says well of its corolla that it is "remarkable for its distinct, five angled form." Its segments are a little recurved. The calyx-segments are acute and pink at last; the racemes, elongated, about one inch long, one-sided; the corolla, narrowed at the mouth, but very wide above; the calyx, with its segments, pedicels, and the whole raceme (and indeed the leaves somewhat), glandular-hairy."); July 8, 1857 (to Gowing's Swamp. The Gaylussacia dumosa is now in prime at least"); August 30, 1860 ("Am surprised to find on Minott's hard land, where he once raised potatoes, the hairy huckleberry, which before I had seen in swamps only. The berries are in longer racemes or clusters than any of our huckleberries. They are improved, you would say, by the firmer ground. They are the prevailing berry all over this field. Are now in prime.");  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.”)

Gather a few Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum. See July 3, 1852 ("When the woods on some hillside are cut off, the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum springs up, or grows more luxuriantly, being exposed to light and air, and by the second year its stems are weighed to the ground with clusters of blueberries covered with bloom, and much larger than they commonly grow, also with a livelier taste than usual, as if remembering some primitive mountain-side given up to them anciently.");July 11, 1857(“Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ripe. Their dark blue with a bloom is a color that surprises me. ”); July 13, 1852 ("There are evidently several kinds of . . . blueberries not described by botanists: of the very early blueberries at least two varieties, one glossy black with dark-green leaves, the other a rich light blue with bloom and yellowish-green leaves"); July 13, 1854 (“The V. Pennsylvanicum is soft and rather thin and tasteless, mountain and spring like, with its fine light-blue bloom, very handsome, simple and ambrosial.”) July 16, 1857(“I hear of the first early blueberries brought to market.”)

Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height. July 2, 1851("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits”); July 6, 1857 (“Rubus triflorus well ripe.”); July 11, 1857 ("I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp.. . .They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit."); July 17, 1852 ("I pick raspberries dripping with rain beyond Sleepy Hollow. ");. . July 19, 1854 ("In Moore's Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

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

Each humblest plant has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint

October 22. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

A thickly overcast yet thick and hazy day. 

October 22, 2018

I see a Lombardy poplar or two yellowing at last; many leaves clear and handsome yellow. They thus, like the balm-of-Gilead and aspens, show their relation to the willows. Horse-chestnuts are yellow and apparently in prime. I see locusts are generally yellow but thinly leaved, and those at extremities. 

Going by Farrar’s field bought of John Reynolds, I examined those singular barren spots produced by putting on too much meadow mud of a certain quality. In some places the sod was entirely gone; there was no grass and only a small sandy desert with the yellowish Fimbristylis capillaris and sorrel on it. In most places this sand was quite thickly covered with sarothra, now withered and making a dark show at a distance, and sorrel, which had not risen from the surface. These are both sour-juiced plants. It was surprising how completely the grass had been killed.

I see the small narrow leaves of the Aster dumosus and also the yet finer ones of the Diplopappus linariifolius in wood-paths, turned a clear light-yellow. The sagittate leaves of the Viola ovata, too, now flat in the path, and the prettily divided leaves or fingers of the V. pedata, with purple petioles (also fallen flatter than usual ?), are both turned a clear handsome light-yellow. Also the V. cucullata is turned yellow. These are far more conspicuous now than ever before, contrasted with the green grass; so that you do not recognize them at first on account of their very conspicuousness or brightness of color. 

Many other small plants have changed now, whose color we do not notice in the midst of the general changing. Even the Lycopodium complanatum (evergreen) is turned a light yellow (a part of it) in its season, like the pines (or evergreen trees).  

I go up the hill from the spring. Oaks (except the scarlet), especially the small oaks, are generally withered or withering, yet most would not suspect it at a little distance, they have so much color yet. Yet, this year at least, they must have been withered more by heat than frost, for we have had very hot weather and little if any frost since the oaks generally changed. Many of the small scarlet ones are withered too, but the larger scarlet appear to be in their prime now. Some large white, black, and red are still pretty fresh.

It is very agreeable to observe now from an eminence the different tints of red and brown in an oak sprout land or young woodland, the brownish predominating. The chocolate is one. Some will tell you that they prefer these more sober colors which the landscape wears at present to the bright ones it exhibited a few days ago, as some prefer the sweet brown crust to the yellow inside. It is interesting to observe how gradually but steadily the woods advance through deeper and deeper shades of brown to their fall. You can tell the young white oak in the midst of the sprout-land by its light brown color, almost like that of the russet fields seen beyond, also the scarlet by its brighter red, but the pines are now the brightest of them all. 

Apple orchards throughout the village, or on lower and rich ground, are quite green, but on this drier Fair Haven Hill all the apple trees are yellow, with a sprinkling of green and occasionally a tinge of scarlet, i. e. are russet. 

I can see the red of young oaks as far as the horizon on some sides. 

I think that the yellows, as birches, etc., are the most distinct this very thick and cloudy day in which there is no sun, but when the sun shines the reds are lit up more and glow. 

The oaks stand browned and crisped (amid the pines), their bright colors for the most part burnt out, like a loaf that is baked, and suggest an equal wholesomeness. The whole tree is now not only ripe but, as it were, a fruit perfectly cooked by the sun. That same sun which called forth its leaves in the spring has now, aided by the frost, sealed up their fountains for the year and withered them. The order has gone forth for them to rest. As each tree casts its leaves it stands careless and free, like a horse freed from his harness, or like one who has done his year’s work and now stands unnoticed, but with concentrated strength and contentment, ready to brave the blasts of winter without a murmur. 

You get very near wood ducks with a boat nowadays. 

I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree, though I had not expected it, — large oaks do not turn so completely,—and now is for the most part burnt out for want of fuel, i. e. excepting the scarlet ones. The brown and chocolate colors prevail there. 

That birch swamp under the Cliff is very interesting. The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. At this distance their bare slender stems are very distinct, dense, and parallel, apparently on a somewhat smoky ground (caused by the bare twigs), and this pretty thicket of dense parallel stems is crowned or surmounted by little cones or crescents of golden spangles. 

Hear a cuckoo and grackles. 

The birches have been steadily changing and falling for a long, long time. 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. These are quite distinct from the reddish misty maze below, fit if they are young trees, or the fine and close parallel white stems if they are larger. Nevertheless the topmost leaves at the extremities of the leaves [sic] are still green.

I am surprised to find on the top of the Cliff, near the dead white pine, some small staghorn sumachs. (Mother says she found them on the hill behind Charles Davis’s!) These are now at the height of their change,‘ as is ours in the yard, turned an orange scarlet, not so dark as the smooth, which is now apparently fallen. But ours, being in a shady and cool place, is probably later than the average, for I see that one at Flood’s cottage has fallen. I guess that they may have been at height generally some ten days ago.

Near by, the Aralia hispida, turned a very clear dark red.

I see Heavy Haynes fishing in his old gray boat, sinking the stern deep. It is remarkable that, of the four fishermen who most frequent this river, — Melvin, Goodwin, and the two Hayneses, — the last three have all been fishermen of the sea, have visited the Grand Banks, and are well acquainted with Cape Cod. These fishermen who sit thus alone from morning till night must be greater philosophers than the shoemakers. 

You can still pluck a variegated and handsome nosegay on the top of the Cliff. I see a mullein freshly out, very handsome Aster undulatus, and an abundance of the little blue snapdragon, and some Polygonum Persicaria, etc., etc. 

The black shrub oak on the hillside below the bear berry fast falling and some quite bare. Some chinquapin there not fallen. Notice a chestnut quite bare. The leaves of the hickory are a very rich yellow, though they may be quite withered and fallen, but they become brown. Looking to Conantum, the huckleberries are apparently fallen.  

The fields are now perhaps truly and most generally russet, especially where the blackberry and other small reddish plants are seen through the fine bleached grass and stubble, —-like a golden russet apple. This occurs to me, going along the side of the Well Meadow Field.

Apparently the scarlet oak, large and small (not shrubby), is in prime now, after other oaks are generally withered or withering. The clumps of Salix tristis, half yellow, spotted with dark-brown or blackish and half withered and turned dark ash-colored, are rather interesting. The S. humilis has similar dark spots. ’ 

Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets; and little wasp (?) nests, one and a half inches wide,on huckleberry (?) and sweet-fern (?).

White pines have for the most part fallen. All the underwood is hung with their brown fallen needles, giving to the woods an untidy appearance. _

C. tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass. Were they not meadow-hens?  Rice says he saw one within a week. Have they not lingered to feed in our meadows the late warm and pleasant nights?

The haze is still very thick, though it is comparatively cool weather, and if there were no moon to-night, I think it would be very dark. Do not the darkest nights occur about this time, when there is a haze produced by the Indian-summer days, succeeded by a moonless night?

These bright leaves are not the exception but the rule, for I believe that all leaves, even grasses, etc., etc., — Panicum clandestinum, — and mosses, as sphagnum, under favorable circumstances acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints, though it may be rare and unobserved, as many a plant is at all seasons. And if you undertake to make a complete list of the bright tints, your list will be as long as a catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.

Think how much the eyes of painters, both artisans and artists, and of the manufacturers of cloth and paper, and the paper-stainers, etc., are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer’s envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of the leaves of a single tree sometimes. If you want a different shade or tint of a particular color, you have only to look further within or without the tree, or the wood. The eye might thus be taught to distinguish color and appreciate a difference of tint or shade.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1858


It is interesting to observe how gradually but steadily the woods advance through deeper and deeper shades of brown to their fall. See October 22, 1857 ("Large oaks are already generally brown. Reddish brown is the prevailing color of deciduous woods")

The birches are now but thinly clad its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now surmounted by little cones or crescents of golden spangles.  See October 22, 1855; ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines"); October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.')

On the top of the Cliff I see a mullein freshly out, very handsome Aster undulatus, and an abundance of the little blue snapdragon. See October 22, 1851 ("the Canada snapdragon still blooms bluely by the roadside."); October 11, 1856 ("Here on the Cliffs are fresh poke flowers and small snapdragon and corydalis."); October 22, 1859 ("In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together.")

Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets. See October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone");

White pines have for the most part fallen. See October 22, 1851 ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.")

A bobolink's egg.

June 24. 

Very hot weather. 

Aralia hispida at Cliffs. 

Epilobium, how long? 

Storrow Higginson gives me a bobolink's egg. It is a regular oval, seven eighths by five eighths inch. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish, chiefly at the large end, and very faint, more internal pale-purplish spots equally dispersed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1858

A bobolink's egg. It is a dark cream-color with pretty large spots of brown, sometimes blackish. See June 12, 1857 (“ 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.”)

A very large black snake I thought was preparing to strike at me

May 16

A. M. – Up Assabet. 

Aralia nudicaulis at Island. The leaf-stalks are often eaten off, probably by some quadruped. 

The flower-buds of the Cornus florida are five eighths of an inch in diameter. 

The Salix lucida will hardly bloom within two days. The S. Torreyana catkins are so reddish that at a little distance it looks some what like the common black cherry now leafing. 

A hummingbird yesterday came into the next house and was caught. Flew about our parlor to-day and tasted Sophia's flowers. In some lights you saw none of the colors of its throat. In others, in the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections about the neck and throat. 

It uttered from time to time, as it flew, a faint squeaking chirp or chirrup. The hum sounded more hollow when it approached a flower. Its wings fanned the air so forcibly that you-felt the cool wind they raised a foot off, and nearer it was very remarkable. Does not this very motion of the wings keep a bird cool in hot weather? 

The only indigenous willow I noticed yesterday on the Shawsheen — a mile below Fitch's mill — was the small sericea, such as by Assabet white maple. 

What was that loud but distant note of a bird, apparently in the low land, somewhat like the guinea-hen note, also reminding me a little of the plover about Truro light, but apparently a hawk? 

Got quite a view down the valley of the Shawsheen below the junction of Vine Brook, northeast, from a hill in the extreme northeast of Bedford.

P. M. – To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. 

See again the warbler of yesterday. All bright yellow beneath and apparently bluish-slate above, but I do not see it well. Its note, with little variation, is like twit twit, twit twit, twitter twitter twe. It must be the parti-colored warbler.

Sat down in the sun in the path through Wright's wood-lot above Goose Pond, but soon, hearing a slight rustling, I looked round and saw a very large black snake about five feet long on the dry leaves, about a rod off. 

When I moved, it vibrated its tail very rapidly and smartly, which made quite a loud rustling or rattling sound, reminding me of the rattlesnake, as if many snakes obeyed the same instinct as the rattle snake when they vibrate their tails. Once I thought I heard a low hiss. 

It was on the edge of a young wood of oaks and a few white pines from ten to eighteen feet high, the oaks as yet bare of leaves. 

As I moved toward the snake, I thought it would take refuge in some hole, but it appeared that it was out on a scout and did not know of any place of refuge near. Suddenly, as it moved along, it erected itself half its length, and when I thought it was preparing to strike at me, to my surprise it glided up a slender oak sapling about an inch in diameter at the ground and ten feet high. 

It ascended this easily and quickly, at first, I think, slanting its body over the lowest twig of the next tree. There were seven little branches for nine feet, averaging about the size of a pipe-stem. It moved up in a somewhat zig zag manner, availing itself of the branches, yet also in part spirally about the main stem. It finds a rest (or hold if necessary) for its neck or forward part of its body, moving crosswise the small twigs, then draws up the rest of its body. From the top of this little oak it passed into the top of a white pine of the same height an inch and a half in diameter at the ground and two feet off; from this into another oak, fifteen feet high and three feet from the pine; from this to another oak, three feet from the last and about the same height; from this to a large oak about four feet off and three or four inches in diameter, in which it was about fourteen feet from the ground; thence through two more oaks, a little lower, at intervals of four feet, and so into a white pine; and at last into a smaller white pine and thence to the ground. 

The distance in a straight line from where it left the ground to where it descended was about twenty-five feet, and the greatest height it reached, about fourteen feet. It moved quite deliberately for the most part, choosing its course from tree to tree with great skill, and resting from time to time while it watched me, only my approach compelling it to move again. 

It surprised me very much to see it cross from tree to tree exactly like a squirrel, where there appeared little or no support for such a body. It would glide down the proper twig, its body resting at intervals of a foot or two, on the smaller side twigs, perchance, and then would easily cross an interval of two feet, sometimes in an ascending, sometimes a descending, direction. If the latter, its weight at last bent the first twig down nearer to the opposite one. It would extend its neck very much, as I could see by the increased width of the scales exposed, till its neck rested across the opposite twig, hold on all the while tightly to some part of the last twig by the very tip of its tail, which was curled round it just like a monkey's. 

I have hardly seen a squirrel rest on such slight twigs as it would rest on in mid-air, only two or three not bigger than a pipe-stem, while its body stretched clear a foot at least between two trees. It was not at all like creeping over a coarse basket work, but suggested long practice and skill, like the rope dancer's. There were no limbs for it to use comparable for size with its own body, and you hardly noticed the few slight twigs it rested on, as it glided through the air. 

When its neck rested on the opposite twig, it was, as it were, glued to it. It helped itself over or up them as surely as if it grasped with a hand. There were, no doubt, rigid kinks in its body when they were needed for support. It is a sort of endless hook, and, by its ability to bend its body in every direction, it finds some support on every side. Perhaps the edges of its scales give it a hold also. 

It is evident that it can take the young birds out of a sapling of any height, and no twigs are so small and pliant as to prevent it. Pendulous sprays would be the most difficult for it, where the twigs are more nearly parallel with the main one, as well as nearly vertical, but even then it might hold on by its tail while its head hung below. I have no doubt that this snake could have reached many of the oriole-nests which I have seen. 

I noticed that in its anger its rigid neck was very much flattened or compressed vertically. At length it coiled itself upon itself as if to strike, and, I presenting a stick, it struck it smartly and then darted away, running swiftly down the hill toward the pond. 

Yellow butterflies. 

Nabalus leaves are already up and coming up in the wood-paths. 

Also the radical leaves of one variety of Solidago arguta, and apparently of S. altissima, are conspicuously up. 

A golden-crowned thrush hops quite near. It is quite small, about the size of the creeper, with the upper part of its breast thickly and distinctly pencilled with black, a tawny head; and utters now only a sharp cluck for a chip. 

See and hear a redstart, the rhythm of whose strain is tse'-tse, tse'-tse, tse', emphasizing the last syllable of all and not ending with the common tsear. 

Hear the night-warbler. 

The Uvularia perfoliata, which did not show itself at all on the 3d, is now conspicuous, and one is open but will not shed pollen before to-morrow. It has shot up about ten inches in one case and bloomed within thirteen days!! 

Ranunculus repens at Brister's Spring; how long? Was that R. repens at the Everett Spring on the 3d? [Yes.]

The whip-poor-will heard. 

E. Hoar detected the other day two ovaries under one scale of a Salix rostrata, and, under another, a stamen and another stamen converted into an ovary.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1858

To Uvularia perfoliata at Flint's Pond. See May 30, 1857 ("By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond. . .  am surprised to find it the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before.");  May 3, 1858 ("See no signs of the Uvularia perfoliata yet; apparently will not bloom within ten days") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

A hummingbird in some lights the shade the throat was a clear bright scarlet, but in the sun it glowed with splendid metallic, fiery reflections. See  May 17, 1856 (" A splendid male hummingbird . . . This golden-green gem. Its burnished back looks as if covered with green scales dusted with gold. . . . turning toward me that splendid ruby on its breast, that glowing ruby.") May 15, 1855("Hear a hummingbird in the garden."); May 16, 1852 ("I hear a hummingbird about the columbines.").

Our first fall rain makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.

September 20. 

Sunday. Another mizzling day. 

P. M. — To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s. 

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. 

This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. 

Yet there has been no drought the past summer. Vegetation is unusually fresh. Methinks the grass in some shorn meadows is even greener than in the spring. You are soon wet through by the underwood if you enter the woods, — ferns, aralia, huckleberries, etc. 

Went through the lower side of the wood west of Peter’s. 

The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis, which spread out flat and of uniform height some eighteen (?) inches above the forest floor, are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing. 

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. 

The branches of the alternate cornel are spreading and flat, somewhat cyme-like, as its fruit. 

Beach plums are now perfectly ripe and unexpectedly good, as good as an average cultivated plum. I get a handful, dark purple with a bloom, as big as a good-sized grape and but little more oblong, about three quarters of an inch broad and a very little longer. 

I got a handkerchief full of elder-berries, though I am rather late about it, for the birds appear to have greatly thinned the cymes. 

A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there. 

A pitch pine and birch wood is rapidly springing up between the Beck Stow Wood and the soft white pine grove. It is now just high and thick enough to be noticed as a young wood-lot, if not mowed down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1857

First fall rain. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night");   September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon."); September 25, 1860 ("Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon.")

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. See December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")  See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified. ")

September 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. September 20

Our first fall rain makes 

a dividing line between 

the summer and fall. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Our first fall rain

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-570920

A distant view of the possible

July 29 

Wednesday. I noticed there [Telos Lake] Aralia racemosa, and Aster macrophyllus in bloom, with bluish rays and quite fragrant (!), like some medicinal herb, so that I doubted at first if it were that. . . . 

I found on the edge of this clearing the Cirsium muticum, or swamp thistle, abundantly in bloom. I think we scared up a black partridge just beyond. . . . 

I am interested in an indistinct prospect, a distant view, a mere suggestion often, revealing an almost wholly new world to me. I rejoice to get, and am apt to present, a new view. But I find it impossible to present my view to most people. 

In effect, it would seem that they do not wish to take a new view in any case. Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. 

I am willing to pass for a fool in my often desperate, perhaps foolish, efforts to persuade them to lift the veil from off the possible and future, which they hold down with both their hands, before their eyes. 

The most valuable communication or news consists of hints and suggestions. When a truth comes to be known and accepted, it begins to be bad taste to repeat it. Every individual constitution is a probe employed in a new direction, and a wise man will attend to each one's report.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1857

See The Maine Woods (“Wednesday, July 29. When we awoke it had done raining, though it was still cloudy. . . . We decided to cross the lake at once, before breakfast, or while we could; and before starting I took the bearing of the shore which we wished to strike, S. S. E. about three miles distant . . . After coasting eastward along this shore a mile or two, we breakfasted on a rocky point, the first convenient place that offered. It was well enough that we crossed thus early, for the waves now ran quite high, . . . Leaving a spacious bay, a northeasterly prolongation of Chamberlain Lake, on our left, we entered through a short strait into a small lake a couple of miles over, called on the map Telasinis, but the Indian had no distinct name for it, and thence into Telos Lake, which he called Paytaywecomgomoc, or Burnt-Ground Lake. . . . We landed on a rocky point on the northeast side, to look at some red pines (Pinus resinosa), the first we had noticed, and get some cones, for our few which grow in Concord do not bear any. The outlet from the lake into the East Branch of the Penobscot is an artificial one, and it was not very apparent where it was exactly . . . Here for the first time we found the raspberries really plenty, — that is, on passing the height of land between the Allegash and the East Branch of the Penobscot ; the same was true of the blueberries. . . .Telos Lake, the head of the St. John on this side, and Webster Pond, the head of the East Branch of the Penobscot, are only about a mile apart, and they are connected by a ravine, in which but little digging was required to make the water of the former, which is the highest, flow into the latter. . .Following a moist trail through the forest, we reached the head of Webster Pond about the same time with the Indian, notwithstanding the velocity with which he moved, our route being the most direct. The Indian name of Webster Stream, of which this pond is the source, is, according to him, Madunkchunk, i. e., Height of Land, and of the pond, Madunkchunk-gamooc, or Height of Land Pond. The latter was two or three miles long. We passed near a pine on its shore which had been splintered by lightning, perhaps the day before. This was the first proper East Branch Penobscot water that we came to. At the outlet of Webster Lake was another dam, at which we stopped and picked raspberries . . .An Indian at Oldtown had told us that we should be obliged to carry ten miles between Telos Lake on the St. John and Second Lake on the East Branch of the Penobscot . . . After this rough walking in the dark woods it was an agreeable change to glide down the rapid river in the canoe once more.. . .It was very exhilarating, and the perfection of traveling, quite unlike floating on our dead Concord River, the coasting down this inclined mirror, which was now and then gently winding, down a mountain, indeed, between two evergreen forests, edged with lofty dead white pines . . Coming to falls and rapids, our easy progress was suddenly terminated . . . This was the last of our boating for the day. . . .I saw there very fresh moose tracks, found a new goldenrod to me (perhaps Solidago thyrsoidea), and I passed one white pine log, which had lodged, in the forest near the edge of the stream, which was quite five feet in diameter at the butt. . . .Shortly after this I overtook the Indian at the edge of some burnt land, which extended three or four miles at least, beginning about three miles above Second Lake, which we were expecting to reach that night . . .It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, . . . The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”)



I noticed there Aralia racemosa. See July 31, 1857 ("I also saw here, or soon after, the red cohosh berries, ripe, (for the first time in my life); spikenard, etc..") See also  July 12, 1853 ("Spikenard, not quite yet"); July 17, 1857 ("Aralia racemosa, not in bloom") July 24, 1853 ("A spikenard just beyond the spring has already pretty large green berries, though a few floweru"); August 6, 1852 ("Aralia racemosa, how long ?"); September 4, 1856 ("Aralia racemosa berries just ripe . . . not edible. "); September 4, 1859 ("See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long.")

Aster macrophyllus in bloom, with bluish rays and quite fragrant (!) See July 22, 1852 ("The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles's Swamp."); See August 9, 1856 ("The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarse flat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter."); August 26, 1856 ("Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds.") September 9, 1856 [at Brattleboro] ("High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus")

Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. See June 2, 1857 ("We see the flashes called heat lightning in the north, and hear the distant thunder."); June 16, 1852 ("Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night.")

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

Heat lightning flashes

reveal distant horizons

to our twilight eyes.

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 ©  2009-2024

Botanizing Lee's Cliff, Bittern Cliff and Corner Spring

July 17.

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellowish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping. 

Hypericum corymbosum. 

Am caught in the rain and take shelter under the thick white pine by Lee's Cliff. 

I see thereunder an abundance of chimaphila in bloom. It is a beautiful flower, with its naked umbel of crystalline purplish-white flowers, their disks at an angle with the horizon. On its lower side a ring of purple (or crimson) scales at the base of its concave petals, around the large, green, sticky ovary. 

The Sagina procumbens continues to flower sparingly. It agrees with Gray's plate. 

I found yesterday, at and above the Hemlocks on the Assabet, the dicksonia, apparently in prime; Aspidium Noveboracense  Aspidium marginale, apparently in prime; Osmunda Claytoniana and cinnamomea, done. 

I find to-day, at Bittern Cliff and at Lee's, Asplenium ebeneum (the larger), apparently nearly in prime, and A. Trichomanes, apparently just begun. This very commonly occurs in tufts at the base of the last, like radical leaves to it. 

Rock Polypody & Maidenhair spleenwort
(Polypodium vulgare & AspidiumTrichomanes,)
September, 2018

At Lee's Cliff, Polypodium vulgare, not yet brown fruit. 

Aspidium Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filix-foemina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited; also an almost thrice pinnate fern with a very chaffy stipe, in prime, already yellowish above, somewhat A. cristatum-like, some of the dots confluent. 

 
Ampelopsis out of bloom at Lee's. 

Aralia racemosa, not in bloom, at Corner Spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1857


Hypericum corymbosum. See July 21, 1856 ("Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two."); July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The Sagina procumbens . . .agrees with Gray's plate. See Asa Gray, The Genera of the Plants of the United States

I see thereunder [Lee's Cliff] an abundance of chimaphila in bloom..See July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”); July 8, 1857 ("Chimaphila umbellata, apparently a day or two. ");   July 12, 1857 ("The Chimaphila umbellata flower-buds make a very pretty umbel, of half a dozen small purple balls surmounted by a green calyx. They contrast prettily with the glossy green leaves."); July 24, 1856 ("Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellatais quite done there. Leaves just shooting up.” ) ; November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

Asplenium ebeneum (the larger), apparently nearly in prime, and A. Trichomanes, apparently just begun. See April 6, 1858 (“The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled.”); August 30, 1853 (“The dwarf spleenwort grows in the sharp angles of the rocks in the side of Lee's Cliff, its small fronds spreading in curved rays, its matted roots coming away in triangular masses, moulded by the rock. The ebony spleenwort stands upright against the rocks.”); October 28, 1857 (“Both aspleniums and the small botrychium are still fresh, as if they were evergreen. The latter sheds pollen. The former are most fresh under the shelter of rocks.”); November 18, 1858 ("I go along under the east side of Lee's Cliff, looking at the evergreen ferns . . .    How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin.") See also September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."); November 17, 1858 ("As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed). Asplenium trichomanes. A. ebeneum. Aspidium spinulosum (?) large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th. A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond. A. marginale (common). A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort

Aralia racemosa, not in bloom . . .See September 4, 1856  ("Aralia racemosa berries just ripe . . . not edible. ")

They trouble me by getting into my shoes.

September 4. 

P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. 

What are those small yellow birds with two white bars on wings, about the oak at Hubbard's Grove?

Aralia racemosa berries just ripe, at tall helianthus by bass beyond William Wheeler's; not edible. 

Indian hemp out of bloom. 

Butterflies in road a day or two. 

The crackling flight of grasshoppers. The grass also is all alive with them, and they trouble me by getting into my shoes, which are loose, and obliging me to empty them occasionally. 

Measured an archangelica stem (now of course dry) in Corner Spring Swamp, eight feet eight inches high, and seven and a quarter inches in circumference at ground. It is a somewhat zigzag stem with few joints and a broad umbelliferous top, so that it makes a great show. One of those plants that have their fall early. 

There are many splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime, forming a dense ovate head on a short peduncle; the individual berries of various sizes, between pear and mitre and club form, flattened against each other on a singular (now purple and white) core, which is hollow. What rank and venomous luxuriance in this swamp sprout-land! 

Viola pedata again. 

I see where squirrels have eaten green sweet viburnum berries on the wall, together with hazelnuts. The former, gathered red, turn dark purple and shrivelled, like raisins, in the house, and are edible, but chiefly seed. 

The fever-bush is conspicuously flower-budded. Even its spicy leaves have been cut by the tailor bee, and circular pieces taken out. He was, perhaps, attracted by its smoothness and soundness. 

Large puffballs, sometime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1856

Indian hemp out of bloom. See note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain . . .”)

Butterflies in road a day or two. See September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”)

Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime . . .See September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground . . .”)

Viola pedata again. See August 12, 1858 (“Saw a Viola pedata blooming again.”); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression."); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.”)

He was, perhaps, attracted by its smoothness and soundness. . . . See August 11, 1852 ("I am attracted by the clear dark-green leaves of the fever-bush.”); August 19, 1852 (The clear dark-green leaves of the fever-bush overhang the stream.”)

I see a deep full river on which vessels may float.

August 12. 

11 a. m. — To Hill. 

The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour. 

The river is now at a standstill, some three feet above its usual level. The pickerel-weed is all covered, and lilies, and much of the button-bush and mikania. It is as great an accident as can befall these flowers. It is novel to behold this great, full tide in which you perceive some current by the eddies, in which no snarl of weeds is seen. So different from that Potamogeton River, where you caught a crab at every stroke of the oar, and farmers drove their hay-carts across. Instead of watery gleaming fields of potamogetons in which the boatman was entangled, and drifting vallisneria on which the dragon-flies alighted, I see a deep full river on which vessels may float, and I feel at a distance from terra firma when on its bosom. 

P. M. — To Moore's Swamp.

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. 

The mulgedium in that swamp is very abundant and a very stately plant, so erect and soldier-like, in large companies, rising above all else, with its very regular long, sharp, elliptic head and bluish-white flowers. 

Again I examine that very strict solidago, which perhaps I must call wand-stemmed. Perhaps it is only a swamp variety of S. stricta, yet the leaves are thicker and darker(?)-green, and the upper commonly broader, often elliptic, pointed, less recurved and not wavy. Stem and head is now commonly much more strict and branches more erect, and racemes less one-sided, but in larger and maturer ones they are at length recurving and forming a pyramid like S. stricta. Rays are fewer and broader, five or six; stem reddish, with apparently more branchlets or leafets in axils.

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. It has very short but not margined petioles; leaves narrower than yesterday's, and rough beneath as well as above. The outer scales of involucre a little the longest; but I think this of little importance, for the involucre of the H. divaricatus is very variable, hardly two alike; rays about ten. In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath. The bruised leaves of these helianthuses are rather fragrant. 

It is thick, smoky, dog-day weather again. 

Bradford speaks of the dog's-tooth violet as a plant which disappears early. 

The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look. 

Snake-head, or chelone. 

On the edge of the ditch opposite the spring, Epilobium coloratum, and also what I must call E. palustre of Willdenow and Pursh and Eaton. It is smooth or smoothish, leaves somewhat toothed or subdenticulate, peduncle one inch long, flowers white. 

The most interesting domes I behold are not those of Oriental temples and palaces, but of the toadstools. On this knoll in the swamp they are little pyramids of Cheops or Cholula, which also stand on the plain, very delicately shaded off. They have burst their brown tunics as they expanded, leaving only a clear-brown apex, and on every side these swelling roofs or domes are patched and shingled with the fragments, delicately shaded off thus into every tint of brown to the edge. As if this creation of a night would thus imitate the weather-stains of centuries. Toads' temples. So charming is gradation! 

Gerardia pedicularia, how long? 

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! Tall rough goldenrods, erechthites, poke, Aster Radula, dogwood, etc., etc. It looks as if the potatoes which grew there would be poisonous. 

An arrowhead in Peter's Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! Perchance it was, for some of the paths we travel are much older than we think, especially some which the colored race in our midst still use, for they are nearest to the Indian trails.

The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat. The leaves of Sericocarpus conyzoides are fragrant when bruised. Black cherries ripe. 

Saw the primrose open at sundown. The corolla burst part way open and unfolded rapidly; the sepals flew back with a smart spring. In a minute or two the corolla was opened flat and seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. 

Lespedeza capitata, not long. The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.

The late rains have tried the roofs severely. Tenants have complained to their landlords, and now I see carpenters setting up their staging and preparing to shingle on various sides.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1856

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. See August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
Saw the primrose open at sundown. . . . seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. See July 5, 1856 ("The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. . . . freshly out in the cool of the evening at sundown, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.”)

Snake-head, or chelone: The name of the genus Chelone comes from the Greek word meaning a tortoise, from the resemblance of the corolla to a tortoise-head. Snake-head. Turtle-head. Turtle-bloom. Shell flower. Not the snake-head arethusa of July 7, 1856.  See August 1, 1852  ("Chelone glabra [white turtlehead] just out.”)

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . See August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . ., which I will call the tall rough sunflower; opened say August 1st”); August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.”); August 13, 1858 ("The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th.")  GoBotany lists:

Helianthus annuus, common sunflower
Helianthus divaricatus, woodland sunflower
Helianthus strumosus, pale-leaved sunflower

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! See August 31, 1853 (The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. . . .One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.")