The civility of one's ancestors II.

May 8


P. M. – To Annursnack.

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

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

Nothing more proves the civility of one's ancestors.

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

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

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

Some thrashers are plainly better singers than others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

black birch catkins

May 9, 2015

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

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

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

Some hickory buds are nearly two inches long.

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

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

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2021

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

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

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

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

A powder-mill blown up

January 7

To Nawshawtuct. 

This is one of those pleasant winter mornings when you find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still the air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise, — though so fair, a healthy whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air, concealing the mountains, — the smokes go up from the village, you hear the cocks with immortal vigor, and the children shout on their way to school, and the sound made by the sonorousness in the earth. 

All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind. 

Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, —  a hawk or dove. The least touch or jar shakes them off, and it is difficult to bring the female catkins home in your pocket. They cover the snow like coarse bran. 

On breaking the male catkins, I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct, promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so sure a promise or prophecy of spring. These are frozen in December or earlier, — the anthers of spring, filled with their fertilizing dust. 

About ten minutes before 10 a. m., I heard a very loud sound, and felt a violent jar, which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle, which I knew must be either a powder-mill blown up or an earthquake. Not knowing but another and more violent might take place, I immediately ran down-stairs, but I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the powder-mills four miles distant. It was unfolding its volumes above, which made it widest there. In three or four minutes it had all risen and spread itself into a lengthening, somewhat copper-colored cloud parallel with the horizon from north to south, and about ten minutes after the explosion it passed over my head, being several miles long from north to south and distinctly dark and smoky toward the north, not nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky. 

I jumped into a man's wagon and rode toward the mills. In a few minutes more, I saw behind me, far in the east, a faint salmon-colored cloud carrying the news of the explosion to the sea, and perchance over [the] head of the absent proprietor. Arrived probably before half past ten. There were perhaps thirty or forty wagons there. 

The kernel-mill had blown up first, and killed three men who were in it, said to be turning a roller with a chisel. In three seconds after, one of the mixing-houses exploded. The kernel-house was swept away, and fragments, mostly but a foot or two in length, were strewn over the hills and meadows, as if sown, for thirty rods, and the slight snow then on the ground was for the most part melted around. The mixing-house, about ten rods west, was not so completely dispersed, for most of the machinery remained, a total wreck. 

The press-house, about twelve rods east, had two thirds [of] its boards off, and a mixing-house next westward from that which blew up had lost some boards on the east side. The boards fell out (i. e. of those buildings which did not blow up), the air within apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the explosions, and so, the powder being bared to the fiery particles in the air, another building explodes. The powder on the floor of the bared press-house was six inches deep in some places, and the crowd were thoughtlessly going into it. 

A few windows were broken thirty or forty rods off. Timber six inches square and eighteen feet long was thrown over a hill eighty feet high at least, — a dozen rods; thirty rods was about the limit of fragments. The drying-house, in which was a fire, was perhaps twenty-five rods distant and escaped. Every timber and piece of wood which was blown up was as black as if it had been dyed, except where it had broken on falling; other breakages were completely concealed by the color. I mistook what had been iron hoops in the woods for leather straps. 

Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees, where undoubtedly their bodies had been and left them. The bodies were naked and black, some limbs and bowels here and there, and a head at a distance from its trunk. The feet were bare; the hair singed to a crisp. 

I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. 

Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time. 

Brown thinks my red-headed bird of the winter the lesser redpoll. He has that fall snowbird, he thinks the young of the purple finch. What is my pine knot of the sea? Knot, or ash-colored sandpiper? or phala- rope? Brown's pine knot looks too large and clumsy. He shows me the spirit duck of the Indians, of which Peabody says the Indians call it by a word meaning spirit, "because of the wonderful quickness with which it disappears at the twang of a bow." 

I perceive (?) the increased length of the day on returning from my afternoon walk. Can it be? The sun sets only about five minutes later, and the day is about ten minutes longer.

Le Jeune thus describes the trees covered with ice in Canada in the winter of '35 and '36 (he appears to be at Quebec):  There was a great wind from the north east, accompanied by a rain which lasted a very long time, and by a cold great enough to freeze these waters as soon as they touched anything, so that, as this rain fell on the trees from the summit (cime) to the foot, there was formed (il s'y fit) a crystal of ice, which enchased both trunk (tige) and branches, so that for a very long time all our great woods appeared only a forest of crystal; for in truth the ice which clothed them universally everywhere (partout) was thicker than a testoon (epaisse de plus d'un teston); in a word all the bushes and all that was above the snow was environed on all sides and enchased in (avec) ice; the savages have told me that it does not happen often so (de meme)."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1853

Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight. See January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it") See also note to December 6, 1859 ("No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders").


Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time. See July 21, 1859 ("As you draw near the powder-mills, you see the hill behind bestrewn with the fragments of mills which have been blown up in past years, — the fragments of the millers having been removed, — and the canal is cluttered with the larger ruins. The very river makes greater haste past the dry-house, as it were for fear of accidents.") Nathan Pratt purchased a mill pond dam on the Assabet River and converted the former sawmill to a powder mill in 1835. The first explosion, in the first year the mills were operating, killed four men in 1836. The last three explosions in 1940 ended gunpowder production, and the dam at the original mill pond site is now being used to generate hydroelectricity for municipal Concord. The body of water created by the dam goes by the name Ripple Pond, and is located in Acton and Maynard.~ Wikipedea

I perceive  the increased length of the day.The sun sets only about five minutes later, and the day is about ten minutes longer. See January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was."); January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”); January 25, 1855 ("For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.)

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 7

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

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, express more life than most trees

March 6. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Yellow Birch Swamp. 

We go through the swamp near Bee-Tree, or Oak, Ridge, listening for blackbirds or robins and, in the old orchards, for bluebirds. 

Found between two of the little birches in the path (where they grow densely), in Indigo-bird Sprout-land, a small nest suspended between one and two feet above the ground, between two of the little birches. This is where I have seen the indigo-bird in summer, and the nest apparently answers to Wilson's account of that bird's, being fastened with saliva to the birch on each side. 

Wilson says it is "built in a low bush . . . suspended between two twigs, one passing up each side." This is about the diameter of a hair-bird's nest within, composed chiefly of fine bark-shreds looking like grass and one or two strips of grape-vine bark, and very securely fastened to the birch on each side by a whitish silk or cobweb and saliva. It is thin, the lining being prob ably gone. 

There is a very picturesque large black oak on the  the Bee-Tree Ridge, of this form: 

The genista is not evergreen, having turned brown, though it is still quite leafy. I could not find a single green shoot. It is correctly represented in Loudon's "Arboretum," in '44, as "a deciduous under-shrub." Yet in his "Encyclopaedia," in '55, it is represented as "an evergreen shrub." 

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, — for it branches soon, — was two feet three inches in circumference.

Cut off a barberry on which I counted some twenty-six rings, the broadest diameter being about three and a half inches. Both these were on the west side the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, are very pretty. Like the alders, with their reddish catkins, they express more life than most trees. Most trees look completely at rest, if not dead, now, but these look as if the sap must be already flowing in them, — and in winter as well. 

In woodland roads you see where the trees which were bent down by ice, and obstructed the way, were cut off the past winter; their tops lie on one side.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1859

Yellow Birch Swamp.  This is also known as Fever-bush Swamp, Rattlesnake Fern Swamp and Botrychium Swamp,   See note to July 13, 1857 ("Rattlesnake Fern Swamp'); February 18, 1854 ("Yellow Birch Swamp"); July 10, 1857 ("He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom, about the bass in Fever-bush Swamp.”); September 2, 1857 ("In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood "); September 16, 1857 ("Botrychium Swamp"); .May 4, 1859 ("Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Botrychium, Swamp.");.

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the groundwas two feet three inches in circumference. See September 2, 1857 ("Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference.")

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides. See May 8, 1853 ("The catkins of the black birch gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance.") 

The alders, with their reddish catkins. See March 6, 1853 ("the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen;")

See also: A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:

• Listening for the bluebird
• Catkins expanding

The canoe, yellow, and black birches in bloom.

black birch catkins
May 9, 2015

May 17. 

P. M. — Round Walden.

Gold-thread is abundantly out at Trillium Woods. 

The yellow birch catkins, now fully out or a little past prime, are very handsome now, numerous clusters of rich golden catkins hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. It is like some great chandelier hung high over the underwood.

So, too, with the canoe birch. Such black as I see is not quite so forward yet. 

The canoe, yellow, and black birches are among the handsomest trees when in bloom. The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hanging straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined, the leaves not being enough expanded to conceal them in the least. They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. What nymphs are they? 

What was that peculiar spawn on a submerged alder stem seen the 13th? It looked like a fresh light-colored fungus, flattish and circular, a third of an inch over, and waving in the water, but, taken out, hung down longer. In the midst of this jelly were minute eggs. 

I just notice the fertile sweet-fern bloom on tall plants, where the sterile catkins are falling off above it. Most plants have none. 

Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk.

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

The yellow birch catkins . . .hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds.  See May 18, 1857 ("The yellow birches are in full bloom, and many catkins strew the ground. They are four or five inches long when in bloom. They begin to shed their pollen at the base of the catkin, as, I think, other birches do. "); May 5, 1859 (“ You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. These are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind, — a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf”); Compare  May 13, 1852 (“The white birch with its golden tassels three inches long, hanging directly down, amid the just expanding yellowish-green leaves, their perpendicularity contrasting with the direction of the branches. Geometry mixed with nature.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Yellow Birch 

They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. See May 17, 1852 (“ dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.”); also May 17, 1852 (“The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.”); May 17, 1854 (“the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light”)

Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk. See January 19, 1854 ("The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it");;  February 19, 1854 (“the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”) ; June 2, 1855 (“that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia”)