All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them.

June 13

Sunday.

3 p. m. — To Conantum.

A warm day.

It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes.

Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom.

The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks.

The Viburnum nudum.

The oblong- leaved sundew, but not its flower.

Do the bulbous arethusas last long? 

What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint.

The Dracama borealis (Bigelow) (Clintonia borealis (Gray)) amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome liliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous.

But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name the flowers after their governors as New York. Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.

Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods.

No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth.

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall.

The woolly aphides on alders whiten one's clothes now.

What is that palmate(?)-leaved water-plant by the Corner causeway? 

The buck-bean grows in Conant's meadow.

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings – All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.

Saw four cunning little woodchucks nibbling the short grass, about one third grown, that live under Conant's old house. Mistook one for a piece of rusty iron.

The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries.

The Smilax herbaeea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparently attracts flies (I find small gnats on it) like carrion. A very remarkable odor; a single minute flower in an umbel open will scent a whole room.

Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nostrils, etc., etc.

The compound-racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week.

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter.

The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets.

I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them.

Young robins peep.

I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dog wood and bunchberry: 

• one now in bloom, with rather small leaves with a smooth, silky feeling beneath, a greenish-gray spotted stem, in older stocks all gray (Cornus alternifolia? or sericea?); 

• the broad-leaved cornel in Laurel Glen, yet green in the bud (C. circinata?);

• the small-leaved cornel with a small cyme or corymb, as late to be [sic] as the last, in Potter's hedge and on high hills (C. paniculata);

• and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year.

Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights.

Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). C. found it June 12 at Clematis Brook.

Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant.

Captain Jonathan Carver commences his Travels with these words: 

"In June, 1766, I set out from Boston, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara, to Michillimackinac; a Fort situated between the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles. This being the uttermost of our factories towards the northwest, I considered it as the most convenient place from whence I could begin my intended progress, and enter at once into the Regions I designed to explore."

So he gives us no information respecting the intermediate country, nor much, I fear, about the country beyond.

Holbrook says the Emys picta is the first to be seen in the spring.

  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1852

Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York . . . If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. See August 31, 1851 (" I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them . . . But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love ")

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. See June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year"); June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. See July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? . . .  Are you abroad early , brushing the dews aside?"); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment . . .before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time."); Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”)

The Viburnum nudum. . . .The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. See August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields.")

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. See The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854 ("The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854"); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 13

Sweetness fills the air

reminding me – years ago,

strawberrying times.

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

Eighty-four berries, size of peas, three to six sided, closely wedged together on peduncles three quarters of an inch long.

August 2. 

Hobblebush August 2, 2019

Heavy, long-continued, but warm rain in the night, raising the river already eight or nine inches and disturbing the meadow haymakers. 

John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries. 

Sundown. — To Nawshawtuct. 

The waxwork berries are yellowing. 

I am not sure but the bunches of the smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned, the crimson contrasting with the green, the green berries showing a velvety crimson cheek. 

Geum Virginianum, white avens (June to August, Gray), still in bloom by the sassafras hedge, south side of hill, looks as if it might be a white cinquefoil, with small hook-prickled burs. Put it in June.

Mulgedium out. 

The green fruit of the carrion-flower forms dense, firm, spherical umbels (?) at the end of stems five or six inches long; umbels two inches in diameter, formed, one of them, of eighty-four berries, size of peas, three to six sided, closely wedged together on peduncles three quarters of an inch long. The whole feels hard and solid in the hand.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1853

The waxwork berries are yellowing. See August 9, 1854 ("Waxwork yellowing.")

The smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned. See July 24, 1852 (“The smooth sumach berries are red.”): July 31,1856 (“The smooth sumach is pretty generally crimson-berried on the Knoll”);  August 1, 1852 ("Sumach berries now generally red."); August 23, 1858("Smooth sumach berries all turned crimson.")

Geum Virginianum, white avens still in bloom with small hook-prickled burs. See  June 28, 1857 (“Geum Virginianum some time, apparently, past its prime ”); July 16, 1856 (“Geum Virginianum, apparently two or three days.”)

Mulgeium out. See July 24, 1859 ("Mulgedium, how long?"); August 7, 1856 ("Mulgedium, perhaps a fortnight. . . .One mulgedium at Corner Spring is at least ten feet high and hollow all the way. "); August 11, 1856 ("Measured a mulgedium, eight feet three inches long and hollow all the way."); August 12, 1856 ("The mulgedium in that swamp is very abundant and a very stately plant, so erect and soldier-like, in large companies, rising above all else, with its very regular long, sharp, elliptic head and bluish-white flowers.")

The green fruit of the carrion-flower forms dense, firm, spherical umbels. See May 27, 1855 ("Carrion-flower a foot high."); June 11, 1859 ("Carrion-flower up a day or two."); June 16, 1858 ("Carrion-flower, how long? Not long."); August 24, 1858 ("Carrion flower fruit is blue; how long?"); September 3, 1856 ("One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster.") ; September 8, 1852 ("Carrion-flower berries ripe for some days").

My stub sail frightens a haymakers’ horse tied under a maple.

August 24.

August 24, 2018

Edward Hoar brings Cassia Chamoecrista from Greenport, L. I., which must have been out a good while. 

P. M. —Sail to Ball’s (?) Hill.

It is a strong but fitful northwest wind, stronger than before. Under my new sail the boat dashes off like a horse with the bits in his teeth. Coming into the main stream below the island, a sudden flaw strikes me, and in my efforts to keep the channel I run one side under, and so am compelled to beach my boat there and bail it. 

They are haying still in the Great Meadows; indeed, not half the grass is cut, I think. 

I am flattered because my stub sail frightens a haymakers’ horse tied under a maple while his masters are loading. His nostrils dilate; he snorts and tries to break loose. He eyes with terror this white wind steed. No wonder he is alarmed at my introducing such a competitor into the river meadows. Yet, large as my sail is, it being low I can scud down for miles through the very meadows in which dozens of haymakers are at work, and they may not detect me. 

The zizania is the greater part out of bloom; i. e., the yellowish-antlered (?) stamens are gone; the wind has blown them away. 

The Bidens Beckii has only begun a few days, it being rather high water. 

No hibiscus yet.

The white maples in a winding row along the river and the meadow’s edge are rounded hoary-white masses, as if they showed only the under sides of their leaves. Those which have been changed by water are less bright than a week ago. They now from this point (Abner Buttrick’s shore) are a pale lake, mingling very agreeably with the taller hoary-white ones. This little color in the hoary meadow edging is very exhilarating to behold and the most memorable phenomenon of the day. It is as when quarters of peach of this color are boiled with white apple-quarters. Is this anything like murrey color? In some other lights it is more red or scarlet. 

Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long? 

Looking up and down the river this sunny, breezy afternoon, I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts, some two miles below, toward Carlisle Bridge, and others still, further up the stream. They are up to their shoulders in the grassy sea, almost lost in it. I can just discern a few white specks in the shiny grass, where the most distant are at work. 

What an adventure, to get the hay from year to year from these miles on miles of river meadow! You see some carrying out the hay on poles, where it is too soft for cattle, and loaded carts are leaving the meadows for distant barns in the various towns that border on them. 

I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. 

Desmodium Marylandicum apparently in prime along this Ball’s (?) Hill low shore, and apparently another kind, Dillenii (??) or rigidum (??), the same. These and lespedezas now abound in dry places. 

Carrion flower fruit is blue; how long? 

Squirrels have eaten hazelnuts and pitch pine cones for some days. Now and of late we remember hazel bushes, —we become aware of such a fruit-bearing bush. They have their turn, and every clump and hedge seems composed of them. The burs begin to look red on their edges. 

I notice, in the river, opposite the end of the meadow path, great masses of ranunculus stems, etc., two or three feet through by a rod or more long, which look as if they had been washed or rolled aside by the wind and waves, amid the potamogeton. 

I have just read of a woodchuck that came to a boat on Long Island Sound to be taken in! 

Pipes (Equisetum limosum) are brown and half-withered along the river, where they have been injured by water.

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

The Bidens Beckii has only begun a few days, it being rather high water. See August 1, 1859 ("The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low."); August 2, 1856("Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts."); August 9, 1856 ("All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year."); August 11, 1853 ("The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii."); August 12, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally."); September 12, 1859 (" much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river");  September 14, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to  the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, "); September 18, 1856 ("On account of freshet I have seen no Bidens Beckii");  September 25, 1852 ("Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st"); October 20, 1856 ("Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii . . . this year,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

Bidens cernua Large-flowered bidens,
or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,
now abundant by riverside.
September 19, 1851

 a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —— the longest reach we have. See April 10, 1852("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."); April 24, 1852 ("The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles")

I look down a straight reach of water to see a part of earth so far away over the water that it appears islanded between two skies. If that place is real, then the places of my imagination are real. See August 23, 1851 ("Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge. There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture. When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted,")

I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts. See August 18, 1854 ("Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand.");  See also July 30, 1856 ("I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes."); August 3, 1859 ("The haymakers are quite busy on the Great Meadows, it being drier than usual. It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked. "); August 5, 1854 ("I find that we are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season, and almost every meadow or section of a meadow has its band of half a dozen mowers and rakers, either bending to their manly work with regular and graceful motion.")

The Mystery of the odorless sternothaerus .

June 16. 

June 16, 2018
(Avesong)

P. M. – To Staples's Meadow Wood. 

It is pleasant to paddle over the meadows now, at this time of flood, and look down on the various meadow plants, for you can see more distinctly quite to the bottom than ever. 

A few sedges are very common and prominent, one, the tallest and earliest, now gone and going to seed, which I do not make out, also the Carex scoparia and the C. stellulata. 

How will the water affect these plants, standing thus long over them? 

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it, — beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, caterpillars, etc. How many must have been destroyed!

No doubt thousands of birds' nests have been destroyed by the flood, – blackbirds', bobolinks', song sparrows', etc. I see a robin's nest high above the water with the young just dead and the old bird in the water, apparently killed by the abundance of rain, and after ward I see a fresh song sparrow's nest which has been flooded and destroyed. 

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. 

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. I brought the last here April 30th. It is now a little perch about an inch and a quarter long; it was then about a quarter of an inch long. I can now see the transverse bars a rod off. It is swimming actively round and round the pool, but avoids the quite shallow water of the edges, so it does not get landlocked or lost in the weedy overflowed edges. I put twenty or thirty into this pool in all. They grow very fast, then, at last. 

Carrion-flower, how long? Not long. 

How agreeable and wholesome the fragrance of the low blackberry blossom, reminding me of all the rosaceous fruit bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity! It is one of the most deliciously fragrant flowers, reminding of wholesome fruits. 

I see a yellow-spotted turtle digging its hole at midafternoon, but, like the last of this species I saw, it changed its place after I saw it, and I did not get an egg; it is so wary. Some turtles must lay in pretty low fields, or else make a much longer excursion than I think they do, the water in which they dwell is so far from high land. 

Among the geraniums which now spot the wood or sprout-land paths, I see some with very broad, short, rounded petals, making a smaller but full round flower. 

The Salix nigra appears to be quite done.

Edward Emerson, Edward Bartlett, and Storrow Higginson come to ask me the names of some eggs to-night. 

They have the egg of the warbling vireo, – much like the pepe's, but smaller. [Or is it not yellow-throated vireo's P Vide nest. From a maple near Hemlocks, Asset.]

They tell of a hen-hawk's nest seen the 6th, with two eggs. 

They have also, undoubtedly, the egg of the purple finch, seen first two or three weeks ago, and they bring me two nests and one egg. Both these nests were in small fir trees, one by the Lee house (that was), Joe Barrett's, and the other in the New Burying-Ground. 

The last appeared to have been spoiled by the rain, and was against the main stem and contained four fresh eggs, they say, the 14th; the other had five eggs two days earlier; both near the top. The egg is a little more than three quarters of an inch long by nearly five eighths at the bigger end, and so of another from the other nest, rather more slender, — a tapering pale bluish-green egg, with blackish-brown and also dull slate-colored spots and streaks about the larger end and a few very fine spots on the other parts. 

The Lee nest is somewhat like a hair-bird's, though larger. They are both about four inches wide, outside to out side, and two and a half high, two and a quarter to two and a half [in] diameter within, and one and a quarter to one and a half deep. 

The Lee house one (which had the egg in it) is composed externally of many small weed stems — apparently lepidium, lechea — and root-fibres, and the inner part is very thick and substantial, of root-fibres and bark-shreds and a little cow’s hair, lined with much horsehair. 

The other is a little less substantial, externally of pinweed and apparently hypericum stems and root-fibres and within of root-fibres lined with much fine and soft bark-shreds. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest, one of several which he found in maple trees, twenty or thirty feet from ground, in a swamp near Copan, and in this he found an addled egg. The mass of twigs which was its foundation were too loose and bulky to be brought away, — half a wheelbarrow-load, at least, chiefly maple, eighteen inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. The rest or inner portion of the nest, which part is ten or twelve inches in diameter, about two inches thick, and slightly concave, is composed almost wholly of coarse strips of grape-vine bark, with some finer, apparently maple, bark-shreds and some hair and hog's bristles, perhaps of carrion carried to its young heretofore; and the under part is loosely earthy to some extent.

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

The head of every sedge that now rises above the surface is swarming with insects which have taken refuge from the flood on it. See August 25, 1856 (“Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. . . . They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight.”)

Two sternothaerus which I smell of have no scent to-day. See April 1, 1858 ("I see six Sternothaerus odoratus in the river thus early. . . .. I took up and smelt of five of these, and they emitted none of their peculiar scent!”); May 1, 1858 ("Two sternothaeruses which I catch emit no scent yet.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus )

Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. See April 3, 1858 (“When returning, we discovered, on the south side of the river, just at the old crossing-place from the Great Meadows, north of the ludwigia pool, a curious kind of spawn.”); ; April 7, 1858 ("I brought home ... two kinds of spawn in a pail. ...  I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope.”);April 14, 1858 (“At Ed. Hoar's in the evening.. . .. with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body.”); April 16, 1858("My fish ova in a tumbler has gradually expanded till it is some three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and for more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, hardly still enough to be observed with a microscope. Their tails, eyes, pectoral fins, etc., were early developed and conspicuous. . . .This morning I set them in the sun, and, looking again soon after, found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg.”); April 30, 1858 (“I carry the rest of my little fishes, fifteen or twenty, to the cold pool in Hubbard's ground. They are about a quarter-inch long still, and have scarcely increased in length. ”)

Edward Bartlett brings me a crow's nest. See April 29, 1859 ("E. Bartlett has found a crow's nest with four eggs a little developed in a tall white pine in the grove east of Beck Stow's")

June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16

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

Do I perceive the shadows lengthen already?

September 8. 

Grapes ripe on the Assabet for some days.

September 8, 2017

Gentiana saponaria out. 

Carrion-flower berries ripe for some days. 

Polygala verticillata still, on left side of road beyond Lee place. I put it with the other polygalas in July. 

Do I perceive the shadows lengthen already?

September 8, 2017

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 8, 1852

Grapes ripe on the Assabet for some days. See note to September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.")

Gentiana saponaria out. See September 6, 1857 ("Soapwort gentian, out not long"); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now."); September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

Carrion-flower berries ripe. See September 3, 1856  ("One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster.")


Polygala verticillata still, on left side of road. . .See September 10, 1856 ("Near the site of the old Bellows Fort, saw completely purple Polygala verticillata abundant in road.")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

. . .left side of road beyond Lee place. See February 15, 1857 ("When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i. e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester.")

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup.

September 3. 

September 3

P. M. — To Hubbard's Swamp for Viburnum nudum berries. 

The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. 

I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown and muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drifting pad which he partly sinks. 

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. It is chiefly stone, and its taste is like that of tar (!), methinks, far from palatable. 

So many plants, the indigenous and the bewildering variety of exotics, you see in conservatories and nurserymen's catalogues, or read of in English books, and the Royal Society did not make one of them, and knows no more about them than you! All truly indigenous and wild on this earth. I know of no mark that betrays an introduced plant, as none but the gardener can tell what flower has strayed from its parterre; but where the seed will germinate and the plant spring and grow, there it is at home. 

Weeds are uncultivated herbaceous plants which do not bear handsome flowers. 

Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian. 

Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. 

If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. 

A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea. 

One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster. 

Castile-soap galls are crowding the more legitimate acorn on the shrub oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1856

Autumn sheen. . . See September 2, 1856 ("Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves”)

Attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. See  September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . . It behooves me to go a-berrying in this sense once a year at least. “)

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. . . methinks, far from palatable. See September 24,1854 ("On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups . . .”)

Painted tortoises with . . . fresh clean black scales . . . See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”)

Castile-soap galls . . . September 4, 1854 (“In the wood-paths I find a great many of the Castile-soap galls, more or less fresh. . . .”)

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.

June 11. 

P. M. — To Owl Swamp. 

Lambkill flower. 

Carrion-flower up a day or two. 

Panicum latifolium (not out) grows by riverside at Dakin's Brook. 

Ferns generally were killed by the frost of last month, e. g. brakes, cinnamon fern, flowering and sensitive ferns, and no doubt others. I smell the strong sour scent of their decaying. 

Galium triflorum, how long? 

In one grove pitch pine shoots are from seven to nine tenths as long as last year's growth. 

When I return, about 5 p. m., the shad-flies swarm over the river in considerable numbers, but there are very few at sundown.

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.





H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1859

Lambkill flower. See June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings.All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.");June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year, — and sometimes those of the year before are two inches lower.");  June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Panicum latifolium (not out) grows by riverside at Dakin's Brook. See June 25, 1858 ("Just south the wall at Bittern Cliff, the Panicum latifolium, hardly yet, with some leaves almost an inch and a half wide.")

Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage. ")