A Book of the Seasons: The Buff-edged Butterfly (Vanessa Antiopa.)

  

I would make a chart of our life,

know how its shores trend,

 that butterflies reappear and when, 

know why just this circle of creatures 

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

The same warm and placid day 

calls out men and butterflies.

March 28, 1858

That early black-winged

buff edged butterfly is the 

V. Antiopa.

April 11, 1853

March 20.   On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I was surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings. What does it do these frosty nights? Its chrysalis must have hung in some sunny nook of the rocks. Born to be food for some early bird. March 20, 1853

March 21. Saw two more of those large black and buff butterflies. The same degree of heat brings them out everywhere. March 21, 1853

March 22.   The phenomena of an average March are increasing warmth, melting the snow and ice and, gradually, the frost in the ground . . . Many insects and worms come forth and are active . . . Vanessa Antiopa out 29th. March 22, 1860

March 28.  At Lee's Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff-edged butterflies (Vanessa Antiopa) and pick up three dead or dying, two together, the edges of their wings gone. Several are fluttering over the dry rock debris under the cliff, in whose crevices probably they have wintered. Two of the three I pick up are not dead, though they will not fly. Verily their day is a short one. What has checked their frail life? Within, the buff edge is black with bright sky-blue spots, and the main part within is a purplish brown. Those little oblong spots on the black ground are light as you look directly down on them, but from one side they vary through violet to a crystalline rose-purple . . . The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa's wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray-brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves. March 28, 1857

March 28. In the sunny epigaea wood I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves before, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies. March 28, 1858

April 1.  See the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings.  April 1, 1852

April 2.   I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves. I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa. Though so little of the earth is bared, this frail creature has been warmed to life again. April 2, 1856

April 5.  As we ride along to Green's, we see many of the large butterfly, dark with buff-edged wings, and also small reddish ones, in the dry sprout-lands. The same warm and pleasant weather brings them out to flutter along the roadside in sprout-lands, that does the hawks to sail along the meadow-side and over the wood . . . You may see anything now — the buff-edged butterfly and many hawks — along the meadow; and hark! while I write down this field note, the shrill peep of the hylodes is borne to me from afar through the woods.  April 5, 1854

April 8.  The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. Afterward I see a small red one over the shore. April 8, 1855

April 9. You see the buff-edged . . . in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about. April 9, 1853

April 9.   The great butterflies, black with buff-edged wings, are fluttering about, and flies are buzzing over this rock. April 9, 1856

April 11. Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff-edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter. April 11, 1853

April 16. The orange-copper vanessa, middle-sized, is out, and a great many of the large buff-edged are fluttering over the leaves in wood-paths this warm afternoon. I am obliged to carry my great coat on my arm.  April 16, 1855

April 17.  It is unexpectedly very warm on lee side of hilltop just laid bare and covered with dry leaves and twigs. See my first Vanessa Antiopa.  April 17, 1860

April 21.  See the Vanessa Antiopa. C. has seen it a week or so. April 21, 1859

May 4. From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering. May 4, 1858.

June 14. I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots. June 14, 1854

 July 5. For some days I have seen great numbers of blackish spiny caterpillars stripping the black willows, some full-grown on June 30th and some now not more than three quarters of an inch long. When looking at a blackbird's nest I pricked my hand smartly on them several times; in fact the nest was pretty well protected by this chevaux-de-frise. Are they the caterpillars of the Vanessa Antiopa? Yes; according to Harris's description, they are. July 5, 1857

October 1. Water was prepared for ice, and C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring. October 1, 1860.

October 3.  See Vanessa Antiopa. October 3, 1860
 

November 1. A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. and probably warmer at two. The butterflies are out again, - probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa, and yellow-winged grasshoppers with blackish edges. November 1, 1860

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

A Book of 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

A Book of the Seasons: The Small Red Butterfly

 

For the first time I perceive this spring 

that the year is a circle . . .

I would  make a chart of our life,

know how its shores trend,

that butterflies reappear and when,

know why just this circle 

of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Small red butterfly

and the distant note of a

solitary toad.

March 31, 1860

Early butterflies

seem to be born of the leaves

on the forest floor.

March 31, 1858

These days, when a soft west or

southwest wind blows and it is truly warm. . . —

these bring out the butterflies and the frogs,

and the marsh hawks which prey on the last.

Just so simple is every year.

April 5, 1854

March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . Many insects and worms come forth and are active — and the perla insects still about ice and water, — as tipula, grubs, and fuzzy caterpillars, minute hoppers on grass at springs; gnats, large and small, dance in air; the common and the green fly buzz outdoors; the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters;spiders shoot their webs, and at last gossamer floats; the honey- bee visits the skunk-cabbage; fishworms come up, sow-bugs wireworms etc.; various larvæ are seen in pools; small green and also brown grasshoppers begin to hop, small ants to stir ( 25th ) Vanessa Antiopa out 29th; cicindelas run on sand; and small reddish butterflies are seen in wood-paths, etc., etc., etc. March 22, 1860

March 31, 2013

March 31. In the wood-paths now I see many small red butterflies, I am not sure of what species, not seeing them still. The earliest butterflies seem to be born of the dry leaves on the forest floor. March 31, 1858

March 31. The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands, and I hear at mid-afternoon a very faint but positive ringing sound rising above the susurrus of the pines, —of the breeze  —which I think is the note of a distant and perhaps solitary toad. March 31, 1860

April 1. Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. April 1, 1852

April 8. The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. Afterward I see a small red one over the shore. April 8, 1855

April 9. Small reddish butterflies common. April 9, 1861

April 24. That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths.  April 24, 1855

April 29. The butterflies are now more numerous, red and blue-black or dark velvety. April 29, 1852

May 15. A red butterfly goes by. Methinks I have seen them before. May 15, 1853

May 19.  I have seen for a week a smaller and redder butterfly than the early red or reddish one. Its hind wings are chiefly dark or blackish. It is quite small. The forward wings, a pretty bright scarlet red with black spots. May 19, 1860

May 26 . I see the common small reddish butterflies. May 26, 1857

July 15. There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now. July 15, 1854

July 16. I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored. July 16, 1851

July 16. Many yellow butterflies and red on clover and yarrow. July 16, 1854

July 21. The forenoon is fuller of light. The butterflies on the flowers look like other and frequently larger flowers themselves. Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns . . . which the kingbird and the swallow twitter over, and the song sparrow sings on its rails; where the small red butterfly is at home on the yarrow, and no boys threaten it with imprisoning hat. There I can walk.  July 21, 1851

July 22.  Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies. July 22, 1852

July 22.  Observed, on the wild basil on Annursnack, small reddish butterflies which looked like a part of the plant. It has a singularly soft, velvety leaf. July 22, 1853

July 22. The butterflies at present are chiefly on the Canada thistle and the mayweed. I see on the last, in the road beyond Colburn Hill, a surprising number of the small reddish (small copper) butterflies, for a dozen rods. July 22, 1860

July 29. Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant than I have seen them before, especially the small reddish or coppery ones. 

I counted ten yesterday on a single Sericocarpus conyzoides. They were in singular harmony with the plant, as if they made a part of it. The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it. Being constantly in motion and, as they moved, opening and closing their wings to preserve their balance, they presented a very lifesome scene. To-day I see them on the early goldenrod (Solidago stricta). July 29, 1853

August 30. Now that flowers are rarer, almost every one of whatever species has bees or butterflies upon it. August 30, 1859

September 6. Solidago nemoralis is apparently in prime on Lupine Hill; some of it past. It is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it. September 6, 1858

September 14. Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. September 14, 1856

September 25. I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets.  September 25, 1851

September 30. The first thing was to find some flowers and catch some honey- bees . . .We  found a few of the Diplopappus linariifolius (savory-eaved aster ) and one or two small white (bushy?) asters, also A. undulatus and Solidago nemoralis rarely, on which they work in a sunny place; but there were only two or three bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies, yellow and small red, on them . . . Not a honey-bee could we find  September 30, 1852

See also:

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Buff-edged Butterfly;

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,The  Blue Butterfly in Spring;

Massachusetts Audubon Butterfly Species Atlas; and

Lewis Hyde, What Thoreau knew about Butterflies (Thoreau's "small red butterfl[y], I am not sure of what species"  – remains unidentified)

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

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

So many men in the fields haying now. Yellow butterflies in the road.

July 22.

P. M. – To Annursnack.

The Chenopodium hybridum (?); at least its leaves are dark-green, rhomboidal, and heart-shaped.

The orchis and spikenard at Azalea Brook are not yet open.

The early roses are now about done, — the sweet briar quite, I think.

I see sometimes houstonias still.

The elodea out.

Boehmeria not yet.

On one account, at least, I enjoy walking in the fields less at this season than at any other; there are so many men in the fields haying now.

Observed, on the wild basil on Annursnack, small reddish butterflies which looked like a part of the plant. It has a singularly soft, velvety leaf.

Smooth sumach berries crimson there.

There is a kind of low blackberry which does not bear large fruit but very dense clusters, by wall-sides, shaded by the vine or other plants often, of clammy and strong-tasted berries.

Yellow butterflies in the road.

I find the Campanula Americana of the West naturalized in our garden.

Also a silene (?) without visibly viscid stem and with swollen joints; apparently the snapdragon catchfly otherwise. Leaves opposite, sessile, lanceolate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1853

There are so many men in the fields haying now. Compare July 22, 1854 ("The hottest night, — the last. It was almost impossible to pursue any work out-of- doors yesterday. There were but few men to be seen out.") 

On the wild basil . . . small reddish butterflies which looked like a part of the plant. See July 22, 1852 ("Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies"): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

The orchis and spikenard at Azalea Brook are not yet open. See July 12, 1853 ("Spikenard, not quite yet.The green-flowered lanceolate-leafed orchis at Azalea Brook will soon flower.") The locally rare Spikenard (Aralia racemosa) that Thoreau saw near Azalea brook still persisted in 2007.~ Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts(and in Lincoln, Massachusetts) & Other Botanical Sites in Concord compiled by Ray Angelo./ See also May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora")

Yellow butterflies in the road. See July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road”); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed");   July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road."); July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places."); September 3, 1854 ("Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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 beauty of some butterflies, - dark steel blue with a light - blue edge.

July 4

July 4, 2013

The cotton-grass at Beck Stow's.

Is it different from the early one? High blueberries begin.

The oval-leaved drosera in bloom.

Campanula aparinoides.

I see now a later (?) rose in lower, wetter ground.

Polygala sanguinea.

The weeds are now so thick in the river — potamogetons, heart - leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, eel - grass, etc., etc. — as almost to con ceal the stream and seriously to obstruct the passage of my boat.

Polygonum sagittatum.

The cymbidium now perhaps in its prime.

I am attracted by the peculiar glaucous leaves of the rhodora.

Noli-me tangere.

The beauty of some butterflies, - dark steel blue with a light-blue edge.

Circæa, some time, the small one, at Corner Spring.

Parsnips.

The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely.

The gall on the leaves of the slippery elm is like fruit.

The greater plantain, a few days.

The fine feathery tail of the Equisetum sylvaticum (?) nowadays in damp woods, near Corner Spring.

The Potamogeton hybridus (?) in fruit and flower ; though the spike is cylindrical like P. heterophyllus, yet the petioles are shorter than the float ing leaves.

What is the apparently wholly immersed potamogeton, upright with linear-lanceolate leaves? (No flower nor fruit now.)

Also what is that small upright, round, tapering plant, three inches high, at bottom of river, with apparently bristle-formed leaves arranged alternately crosswise, visibly cellular?

At Lee's Cliff, under the slippery elm, Parietaria Pennsylvanica, American pellitory, in flower, and near by Anychia dichotoma, forked chickweed (Queria [sic]) also in flower.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 4, 1853

The beauty of some butterflies, - dark steel blue with a light - blue edge.See July 16, 1853 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored")

Prelude of the toad.

March 31. 

Surveying again for Ed. Hoar the wood land adjoining his farm. 

A yet warmer day. A very thick haze, concealing mountains and all distant objects like a smoke, with a strong but warm southwest wind. Your outside coat is soon left on the ground in the woods, where it first becomes quite intolerable. 

The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands, and I hear at midafternoon a very faint but positive ringing sound rising above the susurrus of the pines, — of the breeze, — which I think is the note of a distant and perhaps solitary toad; not loud and ringing, as it will be. 

Toward night I hear it more distinctly, and am more confident about it. I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to the sound of the winds thus each year a little in advance of the unquestionable note of the toad. Of constant sounds in the warmer parts of warm days there now begins to be added to the rustling or crashing, waterfall-like sound of the wind this faintest imaginable prelude of the toad. 

I often draw my companion's attention to it, and he fails to hear it at all, it is so slight a departure from the previous monotony of March. This morning you walked in the warm sprout-land, the strong but warm southwest wind blowing, and you heard no sound but the dry and mechanical susurrus of the wood; now there is mingled with or added to it, to be detected only by the sharpest ears, this first and faintest imaginable voice. 

I heard this under Mt. Misery. Probably they come forth earlier under the warm slopes of that hill. 

The pewee sings in earnest, the first I have heard; and at even I hear the first real robin's song. 

I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees, when it is shaded again. These fires are a perfectly regular phenomenon of this season. 

Many refer to them this thick haze, but, though in the evening I smell the smoke (no doubt) of the Concord fire, I think that the haze generally is owing to the warm southwest wind having its vapor condensed by our cooler air. 

An engine sent from town and a crowd of boys; and I hear that one man had to swim across a pond to escape being burnt. 

One tells me he found the saxifrage out at Lee's Cliff this afternoon, and another, Ellen Emerson, saw a yellow or little brown snake, evidently either the Coluber ordinatus or else amænus, probably the first.

Sit without fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1860

 

The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands. See  March 31, 1858 (“In the wood-paths now I see many small red butterflies”); April 8, 1855 (“Afterward I see a small red one over the shore.”); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

Your outside coat is soon left on the ground in the woods, where it first becomes quite intolerable. See  March 31, 1855 ("I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home.") See also  March 15, 1852 ("This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day.. . .My life partakes of infinity."); April 5, 1854 ("Whatever year it may be, I am surveying, perhaps, in the woods; I have taken off my outside coat, perhaps for the first time, and hung it on a tree; . . .; when I hear a single, short, well- known stertorous croak from some pool half filled with dry leaves.")

I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to the sound of the winds thus each year a little in advance of the unquestionable note of the toad. See  April 5, 1860 (" I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. . . .It merely gives a slightly more ringing or sonorous sound to the general rustling of inanimate nature. "); April 13, 1853 ("First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice."); April 13, 1858 ("Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M."); April 15, 1856 (" I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year"); May 1, 1857 ("There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

The pewee sings in earnest, the first I have heard. See  March 16, 1854 ("The first phoebe near the water is heard. ");  March 29, 1858 ("Hear a phoebe early in the morning over the street.");  March 30, 1851 ("Spring is already upon us.  . . . The pewee is heard, and the lark. "); April  1, 1857. (" Up Assabet . . .Hear a phoebe"); April 1, 1859("At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phoebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-VEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

At even I hear the first real robin's song. See  March 31, 1852 ("The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear.");  See also March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet. "); April  1, 1857.  ("Already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song."); April 1, 1852 ("I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

A yellow or little brown snake, evidently either the Coluber ordinatus or else amænus, probably the first. See October 18, 1858 (“Noticed a little snake, eight or nine inches long, in the rut in the road in the Lincoln woods. It was brown above with a paler-brown dorsal stripe, which was bounded on each side by a row of dark-brown or blackish dots one eighth inch apart, the opposite rows alternating; beneath, light cream-color or yellowish white. Evidently Storer’s Coluber ordinatus.”); October 29, 1857 (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”); October 11, 1856 (“It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back.”); September 9, 1857 ("It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”); April 29, 1858 (“A little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”)  

Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. See April 2, 1860 ("Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st. I smelled the burnt ground a quarter of a mile off. It was a very severe burn, the ground as black as a chimney-back. The fire is said to have begun by an Irishman burning brush near Wild' s house in the south part of Acton, and ran north and northeast some two miles before the southwest wind, crossing Fort Pond Brook. I walked more than a mile along it and could not see to either end, and crossed it in two places. A thousand acres must have been burned.")

These fires are a perfectly regular phenomenon of this season. See March 29, 1858 ("I saw, on the hillside far across the meadow by Holbrook's clearing, what I at first took for a red flag or handkerchief carried along on a pole, just above the woods. It was a fire in the woods, and I saw the top of the flashing flames above the tree-tops. The woods are in a state of tinder, and the smoker and sportsman and the burner must be careful now."); April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry."); April 9, 1856 ("Now look out for fires in the woods, for the leaves are never so dry and ready to burn as now. The snow is no sooner gone, —nay, it may still cover the north and west sides of hills, — when a day or two’s sun and wind will prepare the leaves to catch at the least spark."); April 21, 1859 ("Put out a fire in the woods, the Brister lot.");April 5, 1860  ("We heard of fires in the woods in various towns, and more or less distant, on the same days that they occurred here, — the last of March and first of April. The newspapers reported many. The same cause everywhere produced the same effect.") See also February 8, 1858 ("Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring.")

One tells me he found the saxifrage out at Lee's Cliff this afternoon. See April 3, 1853("To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it.. . . under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. "); April 27, 1852 ("On Conantum Cliffs I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. It is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

Sit without fire. See April 30, 1859 (" The warmest afternoon yet. Sat in sun without fire this forenoon."); May 2, 1858 ("Sit without fire to-day and yesterday."); May 3, 1857 ("To-day we sit without fire.")

A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible.

July 22. 

This morning, though perfectly fair except a haziness in the east, which prevented any splendor, the birds do not sing as yesterday. They appear to make distinctions which we cannot appreciate, and perhaps sing with most animation on the finest mornings. 

1 p. m. — Lee's Bridge, via Conantum; return by Clematis Brook. 

There men in the fields are at work thus indefatigably, more or less honestly getting bread for men. The writer should be employed with at least equal industry to an analogous though higher end.

Flocks of yellow-breasted, russet-backed female bobolinks are seen flitting stragglingly across the meadows. The bobolink loses his song as he loses his colors. 

Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies. It is not an uninteresting plant. I probably put it down a little too early. 

Is that a slender bellflower with entire leaves by the Corner road? 

The green berries of the arum are seen, and the now reddish fruit of the trillium, and the round green-pea-sized green berries of the axil-flowering Solomon's-seal. 

Farmers have commenced their meadow-haying. 

The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles's Swamp. 

Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata? Eupatorium sessilifolium now whitish. 

A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible. We have more of the furnace-like heat to-day, after all. 

The Rhus glabra flowers are covered with bees, large yellowish wasps, and butterflies; they are all alive with them. How much account insects make of some flowers! There are other botanists than I. 

The Asclepias syriaca is going to seed. Here is a kingfisher frequenting the Corner Brook Pond. They find out such places. 

Huckleberrying and blackberrying have commenced. 

The round-leafed sundew. Monotropa uniflora, Indian- pipe. 

Solidago Canadensis (?) almost out.

Either a smooth Polygonum hydropiperoides or a white P. amphibium var. terrestre. 

The spear thistle. [Cirsium lanceolatum.]

Galium circcezans, wild liquorice, in Baker Farm Swamp. 

What is that minute whitish flower with an upright thread-like stem and thread-like linear leaves, with a kind of interrupted spike or raceme of small, whitish, erect, bell-like flowers, the corolla divided by a stout partition, from which projects the style, with three distinct segments in the edge of the bell each side of the partition? [Canada snapdragon.] 

Also found a very small narrow-leaved whitish aster (?).[Erigeron Canadensis.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1852

Flocks of yellow-breasted, russet-backed female bobolinks are seen flitting stragglingly across the meadows See August 15, 1852 (" I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Bobolink

The green berries of the arum are seen. See September 28, 1856 ("The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide ")

The now reddish fruit of the trillium. See August 19, 1852 ("The trillium berries, six-sided, one inch in diameter, like varnished and stained cherry wood, glossy red, crystalline and ingrained, concealed under its green leaves in shady swamps. ")

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.")

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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