The evergreen ferns are greener than ever, by contrast.

September 30.

Deer Leap September 30, 2019

P. M. — Up Assabet.

Ever since the unusually early and severe frost of the 16th, the evergreen ferns have been growing more and more distinct amid the fading and decaying and withering ones, and the sight of those suggests a cooler season. They are greener than ever, by contrast. 

The terminal shield fern is one of the handsomest. The most decidedly evergreen are the last, polypody, Aspidium marginale, and Aspidium spinulosum of Woodis Swamp and Brister's. 

Asplenium Filix foemina (?) is decaying, maybe a little later than the dicksonia, — the largish fern with long, narrow pinnules deeply cut and toothed, and reniform fruit-dots. 

Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens. 

As far as I know, the earliest to wither and fall are 

• the brake (mostly fallen), 
• the Osmunda cinnamomea (begun to be stripped of leaves), 
• 0. Claytoniana, 
• and 0. regalis (the above four generally a long time withered, or say since the 20th); 
• also (5th), as soon, the exposed onoclea; 
• then (6th) the dicksonia, 
• (7th) Aspidium Noveboracense, 
• (8th) Thelypteris, 
• (9th) Filix-foemina (the last four now fully half faded or decayed or withered). 

Those not seen are Adiantum pedatum, Woodwardia Virginica, Asplenium thelypteroides, Woodsia Ilvensis, Aspidium cristatum, Lygodium palmatum, Botrychium Virginicum. 

Some acorns (swamp white oak) are browned on the trees, and some bass berries. Most shrub oak acorns browned. 

The wild rice is almost entirely fallen or eaten, apparently by some insect, but I see some green and also black grains left.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 30, 1859

The evergreen ferns have been growing more and more distinct amid the fading and decaying and withering ones. The terminal shield fern is one of the handsomest. See September 25, 1859 ("The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody."); October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. . . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”); October 28, 1858 ("I now begin to notice the evergreen ferns, when the others are all withered or fallen."); October 29, 1858 (“Evergreen ferns, suddenly emerge as from obscurity . . . how much they require this brown and withered carpet to be spread under them for effect. Now, too, the light is let in to show them.”); October 31, 1857 (“I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?) . . . In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves.”); November 5, 1857 ("The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green.")

Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens. See 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).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.")

The wild rice is almost entirely fallen or eaten, but I see some green and also black grains left. See September 15, 1859 ("The grain of the wild rice is all green yet."); September 24, 1852 ("The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long.")

Some acorns (swamp white oak) are browned on the trees, and some bass berries. Most shrub oak acorns browned.  See September 30, 1854 ("Acorns are generally now turned brown and fallen or falling; the ground is strewn with them and in paths they are crushed by feet and wheels. The white oak ones are dark and the most glossy.") See also September 13, 1859 ("I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet. "); September 21, 1859 ("Acorns have been falling very sparingly ever since September 1, but are mostly wormy. They are as interesting now on the shrub oak (green) as ever."); September 26, 1854 ("Many swamp white oak acorns have turned brown on the trees."); September 28, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . . with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately."); September 29, 1854 ("Bass berries dry and brown"); October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. The . . .pretty fruit, varying in size, pointedness, and downiness, being now generally turned brown, with light, converging meridional lines. . . .Now is the time for shrub oak acorns.")

The fruit stems of the dogwood still hold on

January 27

I have just sawed a wheel an inch and three quarters thick off the end of (apparently) a stick of red oak in my pile. I count twenty-nine rings, and about the same number of rings, or divisions of some kind, with more or less distinctness, in the bark, which is about a quarter of an inch thick. 

Is not the whole number of rings contained in the bark of all trees which have a bark externally smooth? 

This stick has two centres of growth, each a little one side of the middle. I trace one easily to a limb which was cut off close to the tree about three and a half inches above the lower side of the section. The two centres are one inch apart on the lower side, two inches and five eighths on the upper side. 

There are three complete circles to the main one on the lower side, and ten on the upper side, before they coalesce; hence it was seven years closing up through an inch and three quarters of height. 

There is a rough ridge, confined to the bark only and about a quarter of an inch  high, extending from the crotch diagonally down the tree, apparently to a point over the true centre of growth. 

P. M.—Walk on the river from the old stone to Derby’s Bridge. 

It is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. 

The only other open places within the limits mentioned yesterday are in one or two places close under the bank, and concealed by it, where warm springs issue, the river, after freezing, having shrunk and the ice settled a foot or eighteen inches there, so that you can see water over its edge. 

The white maple at Derby’s Bridge measures fifteen feet in circumference at ground, including apparently a very large sucker, and ten feet five inches, at four feet above the ground, not including sucker, there free. 

The lodging snow of January 13th, just a fortnight ago, still adheres in deep and conspicuous ridges to large exposed trees, too stubborn to be shaken by the wind, showing from which side the storm came.

The fruit stems of the dogwood still hold on, and a little fruit. 

See what I think are bass nuts on the snow on the river, at Derby’s railroad bridge, probably from up-stream.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1856

Open forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. See January 26, 1856 ("[The river is not open], excepting the small space against Merrick’s below the Rock (now closed), since January 7th, when it closed at the Hubbard Bath, or nearly three weeks, —a long time, methinks, for it to be frozen so solidly.");  January 30, 1856 ("As I walked above the old stone bridge on the 27th, I saw where the river had recently been open under the wooded bank on the west side; and recent sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory, and also the ends of saplings and limbs of trees which had been bent down by the ice, were frozen in. In some places some water stood above the ice, and as I stood there, I saw and heard it gurgle up through a crevice and spread over the ice. This was the influence of Loring’s Brook, far above.”);  February 1, 1856 ("This has been a memorable January for snow and cold . . . The river has been closed up from end to end, with the exception of one or two insignificant openings on a few days . . . We have completely forgotten the summer. There has been no January thaw"); February 22, 1856 ([T]he river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet, excepting directly under this upper stone bridge and probably at mouth of Loring’s Brook. I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s, but it was too thick to be melted); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th…That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Bass nuts.  See April 8, 1856 ("Found beneath the surface, on the sphagnum, near wrinkled shells, a little like nutmegs, perhaps bass nuts, collected after a freshet by mice! ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The fruit stems of the dogwood still hold on

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