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

March 12. 

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

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

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

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

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


Railroad to Walden, 3 P. M.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Abundant fine and light seed, buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere.

May 20. 

A strong, cold west wind. 60° at 2 P. M. 

To Walden. 

The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the stricta.

Mouse-ear down at last. 

Scirpus planifolius — how long? — apparently in prime in woods about the bottom of the long south bay of Walden, say two rods southwest. 

Judging from Hind's Report of his survey of the region between the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers, the prevailing trees — and they are small — are aspens and willows, which, if let alone, i. e., if the prairies were not burned by the Indians, might at last make a soil for nobler forests. 

No wonder that these small trees are so widely dispersed; their abundant fine and light seed, being buoyed up and wafted far through the atmosphere, speedily clothe the burnt tracts of British America. Heavy-seeded trees are slow to spread themselves, but both air and water combine to transport the seeds of these trees.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1860

The Carex vulgaris is more glaucous than the stricta. See May 10, 1860 ("A sedge darker than the stricta and not in tufts, quite short. Is it the C. vulgaris? Its leading spikes are effete. ")

Scirpus planifolius  apparently in prime. See May 11, 1859 ("Scirpus planifolius in bloom on Smith's wooded hill, side of Saw Mill Brook.")

Mouse-ear down at last. See May 26, 1855 ("Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass.")

No wonder that these small trees are so widely dispersed, See  December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there."); February 14, 1856 ("I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the rail road causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence. Some twelve years ago, when that causeway was built through the meadows, there were no willows there or near there, but now, just at the foot of the sand-bank, where it meets the meadow, and on the line of the fence, quite a dense willow hedge has planted itself. [T]he seeds have been blown hither from a distance, and lodged against the foot of the bank, just as the snow-drift accumulates there. "); March 2, 1856 ("How unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds.");  May 26, 1857 ("Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy"); July 9, 1857 ("I think I see how this [willow]tree is propagated by its seeds. Its countless minute brown seeds, just perceptible to the naked eye in the midst of their cotton, are wafted with the cotton to the water, — most abundantly about a fortnight ago, — and there they drift . . ."); October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")

The last three have been true March days for wind.

March 4

Sunday. 2 P. M. – To Conantum via Clamshell. 

Thermometer 44; very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds. One spits a · little rain, but mostly clear. The frost is all out of the upper part of the garden. These wind-clouds come up and disappear fast, and have a more or less perpendicular fibre. 

Sit under Lupine Promontory again, to see the ripples. The wind is too strong, the waves run too high and incessantly, to allow the distinct puffs or gusts that drop from over the hill to be seen distinctly enough on tumultuous surface. Yet it is interesting. It spreads and runs as a bird spreads its tail suddenly, or it is as if a gust fell on a head of dark hair and made dimples or “crowns” in it, or it is as when dust before a brisk sweeper curls along over a floor. 

There is much less of that yellowish anchor ice than on the 2d. Cakes of it successively rise, being separated by warmth from the bottom, and are driven off to the leeward shore. In some places that shore is lined with such cakes now, which have risen and been blown clear across the meadow and river, — large masses. Some portions of them are singularly saturated, of a yellowish or clay-color, and an uneven upper surface, with a finely divided perpendicular grain, looking (in form) just like some kinds of fungi (that commonly yellowish kind). There strike against one another and make a pleasant musical, or tinkling, sound. 

Some of the ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar. 

That reddish-purple tinge in the meadow ripples appears to be owing to a reflection in some cases from the somewhat russet bottom. 

I see some curled dock, just started. 

The earth is never lighter - colored than now, — the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the winter, — especially, methinks, where the sheep's fescue grows(?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water. 

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. 

I see a bush of the early willow — by wall far in front of the C. Miles house — whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure. The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look, and the catkins show some redness within. Many of the scales as usual had fallen. 

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. 

I notice, where (ice or) snow has recently melted, a very thin dirty-white web like a dense cobweb, left flat on the grass, such as I saw some years ago. 

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. The channel is already open a little way at the upper end of the pond. This pond at its outlet contracts gradually into the river, so that you could hardly tell where the pond left off and the river began. I see that the ice at present extends that way only so far as I last year assumed that the pond did. In this sense the river hence to the Hubbard Bridge is pond-like compared with the portion below. 

See two apparently sternothærus eggs dropped in a slight hollow in the grass, evidently imperfectly planted by the turtle; still whole. 

The last three have been true March days for wind. 

The handsome and neat brown (pale-brown yet distinct on the lighter withered sod) of the lechea is now conspicuous as a shading in the drying fields.

See no ducks to-day, though much water. Nights too cold? 

Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1860

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. See March 30, 1852 (" From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was.") See also February 28, 1857 ("Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. ");. March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later"); March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.").

I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure.  See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather"); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"): March 22, 1855 (" I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago "); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs"); March 5, 1859 (" I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet ."). See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. See March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward.  

  

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

 Aspen down a quarter of an inch out. See February 6, 1856 (" The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds"); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins.")

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, True March days for wind. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600304

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.")

Bricking up a new well

April 18.

Cold, and still a strong wind. 46 at 2 P. M. 

The Salix discolor peels well; also the aspen (early) has begun to peel. 

As i go by the site of Staples' new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well and are bricking it up. 

Melvin, with a bundle of apple scions in his hand, is sitting close by looking over into the well from time to time. Humphrey Buttrick is at the bottom, bricking up the well.

Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce. Clark, who had been mining lately in California and who dug the well, is passing down bricks to Buttrick. Clark has heard a partridge drum.

Melvin says he fears that, the water being so low, the snipes would be overtaken by it and their nests broken up when it rose. He says Josh Haynes told him that he found woodcock's nest, and afterward he sailed over the nest in a boat, an yet, when the water went down, the bird went on and hatched the eggs.

I see that they have dug twenty four feet through  sand and have some four feet of water in the well.

Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom.  

I find that the side-hill just below the Dutch house is more loose and sandy than half a dozen years ago, and I attribute it to the hens wallowing in the earth and dusting themselves, and also pecking the grass and preventing its growing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1860