Lycopodium dendroideum is just shedding pollen.

October 19.

October 19,2 019

C. says that he saw a loon at Walden the 15th. 

P. M.— To Lee's Cliff. 

The tupelo berries have all fallen; how long? 

Alternate cornel about bare. 

Hardhack half bare. 

Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare. 

The slippery elm is nearly bare, like the common near it. 

Cedar berries, how long? 14th at least; probably by the time they lost their leaves. There is one sizable tree west by north of Lee's Cliff, near the wall. 

Lycopodium dendroideum (not variety) is just shedding pollen near this cedar. 

I see asparagus in the woods there near the cedar, four or five feet high! 

Find the seedling archangelica grown about two feet high and still quite green and growing, though the full-grown plants are long since dead, root and stalk. This suggests that no doubt much of the radical spring greenness is of this character, — seedlings of biennials, and perhaps more of them a persistent or late growth from a perennial root, as crowfoot, whiteweed, five-finger, etc. 

The scent of the archangelica root is not agreeable to me. The scent of my fingers after having handled it reminds me strongly of the musquash and woodchuck, though the root itself does not; so its odor must be allied to theirs. 

I find at Lee's Cliff, on the shelves and sides of the rocks, a new fern, apparently Cystopteris fragilis, more than half decayed or withered, though some fresher and shorter fronds at the base of the others are still quite green. It curls up so in my hat that I have difficulty in examining it. It is abundant thereabouts. 

Paddling up the river the other day, those (probably canoe) birches on Mt. Misery on the edge of the hill a mile in front looked like little dark clouds, for I could not distinguish their white trunks against the sky. 

Though the dark-blue, or ripe, creeping juniper berries are chiefly on the lower part of the branches, I see fresh green ones on old wood as big as a pipe-stem and often directly opposite to purple ones (!). They are strangely mixed up. I am not sure but some of this year's berries are already ripe. 

See a black and rusty hedgehog (?) caterpillar in the path.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1859

The tupelo berries have all fallen. See September 30, 1854 ("I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries, . . .."); October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”)

Lycopodium dendroideum (not variety) is just shedding pollen near this cedar.  See September 24, 1857 ("I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round."); October 12, 1859 ("Now for lycopodiums (the dendroideum not yet apparently in bloom), the dendroideum and lucidulum, etc., — how vivid a green ! — lifting their heads above the moist fallen leaves.") October 17, 1857 ("The Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly greener amid the withered leaves."); November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October."); November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. "); November 7, 1858 ("I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen."); November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October."); November 15, 1858 ("The Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier)."); November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday); December 7, 1853 ("In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Lycopodium dendroideum,  (now 

Dendrolycopodium dendroideum) ~Wikipedia

C. says that he saw a loon at Walden the 15th. See October 8, 1852 ("As I was paddling along the north shore, after having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly a loon, sailing toward the middle, a few rods in front, set up his wild laugh")

Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare. See October 19, 1856 ("Witch-hazel is in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone.")

Find the seedling archangelica grown about two feet high and still quite green and growing, though the full-grown plants are long since dead. See September 4, 1856 ("Measured an archangelica stem (now of course dry) in Corner Spring Swamp, eight feet eight inches high, and seven and a quarter inches in circumference at ground. It is a somewhat zigzag stem with few joints and a broad umbelliferous top, so that it makes a great show. One of those plants that have their fall early")

We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

October 31. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Our currants bare; how long? 

The Italian poplars are now a dull greenish yellow, not nearly so fair as the few leaves that had turned some time ago. 

Some silvery abeles are the same color.  

I go over the Hubbard Bridge causeway. The young Salix alba osiers are just bare, or nearly so, and the yellow twigs accordingly begin to show. 

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. That warm weather of the 19th and 20th was, methinks, the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. 

I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff. 

Between the absolutely deciduous plants and the evergreens are all degrees, not only those which retain their withered leaves all winter, but those, commonly called evergreen, which, though slow to change, yet acquire at last a ruddy color while they keep their leaves, as the lambkill and water andromeda (?).

Get a good sight on Conantum of a sparrow (such as I have seen in flocks some time), which utters a sharp te te-te quickly repeated as it flies, sitting on a wall three or four rods off. I see that it is rather long and slender, is perhaps dusky-ash above with some black backward; has a pretty long black bill, a white ring about eye, white chin and line under check, a black (or dark) spotted breast and dirty cream-color beneath; legs long and slender and perhaps reddish-brown, two faint light bars on wings; but, what distinguishes it more, it keeps gently jerking or tossing its tail as it sits, and when a flock flies over you see the tails distinctly black beneath. Though I detected no yellow, yet I think from the note that it must be the shore lark (such as I saw March 24th) in their fall plumage. They are a common bird at this season, I think. 

I see a middle-sized red oak side by side with a black one under Lee’s Cliff. The first is still pretty fresh, the latter completely withered. The withered leaves of the first are flat, apparently thin, and a yellowish brown;those of the black are much curled and a very different and dark brown, and look thicker. 

Barberry generally is thickly leaved and only some what yellowish or scarlet, say russet. 

I tasted some of the very small grapes on Blackberry Steep, such as I had a jelly made of. Though shrivelled, and therefore ripe, they are very acid and inedible. 

The slippery elm has a few scattered leaves on it, while the common close by is bare. So I think the former is later to fall. You may well call it bare. 

The cedar at Lee’s Cliff has apparently just fallen, — almost. 

As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.

Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. 

Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. 

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

To my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand, and so are the Lombardy poplars in our streets. The Salix alba, too, looks yellower at a distance now. Their dull-brown and green colors do not report them selves so far, while the yellow crescit eundo, and we see the sun reflected in it. 

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, and if I had been sent to find it, I should have thought it to be, as we say, like looking for a needle in a haymow. All summer, and it chances for so many years, it has been concealed to me; but now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 

Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity. It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. Thus it plays its part in the choir. I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under. The sailor sails, and the soldier marches, under a color which will report his virtue farthest, and the ship’s “private signals” must be such as can be distinguished at the greatest distance. The eye, which distinguishes and appreciates color, is itself the seat of color in the human body. 

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent. 

Of the three (?) mocker-nuts on Conantum top only the southernmost is bare, the rest are thickly leaved yet. 

The Viburnum Lentago is about bare. 

That hour-glass apple shrub near the old Conantum house is full of small yellow fruit. Thus it is with them. By the end of some October, when their leaves have fallen, you see them glowing with an abundance of wild fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds them. Such is their pursuit of knowledge through difficulties. Though they may have taken the hour-glass form, think not that their sands are run out. So is it with the rude, neglected genius from amid the country hills; he suffers many a check at first, browsed on by fate, springing in but a rocky pasture, the nursery of other creatures there, and he grows broad and strong, and scraggy and thorny, hopelessly stunted, you would say, and not like a sleek orchard tree all whose forces are husbanded and the precious early years not lost, and when at first, within this rind and hedge, the man shoots up, you see the thorny scrub of his youth about him, and he walks like an hour-glass, aspiring above, it is true, but held down and impeded by the rubbish of old difficulties overcome, and you seem to see his sands running out. But at length, thanks to his rude culture, he attains to his full stature, and every vestige of the thorny hedge which clung to his youth disappears, and he bears golden crops of Porters or Baldwins, whose fame will spread through all orchards for generations to come, while that thrifty orchard tree which was his competitor will, perchance, have long since ceased to bear its engrafted fruit and decayed.

The beach plum is withering green, say with the apple trees, which are half of them bare. 

Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1858

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. See October 31, 1853 ("t is a beautiful , warm and calm Indian- summer afternoon . . . I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day . . . the gossamer reaching across the causeway . . . streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light . . . They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge  parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. See October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ");October 25, 1858 ("[I]t is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood.")

It becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. … It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. Compare October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vaporous haze.")

The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.")


Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height. See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")

That fine slaty-blue butterfly – bigger than the small red – in wood-paths.

April 24

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond. 

Warm and quite a thick haze. Cannot see distant  hills, nor use my glass to advantage. 

The Equisetum arvense on the causeway sheds its green pollen, which looks like lint on the hand abundantly, and may have done so when I first saw it upon the 21st. 

Young caterpillars’ nests are just hatched on the wild cherry. Some are an inch in diameter, others just come out. The little creatures have crawled at once to the extremity of the twigs and commenced at once on the green buds just about to burst, eating holes into them. They do not come forth till the buds are about to burst. 

I see on the pitch pines at Thrush Alley that golden crested wren or the other, ashy-olive above and whitish beneath, with a white bar on wings, restlessly darting at insects like a flycatcher, —into the air after them. It is quite tame. A very neat bird, but does not sing now. 

I see a bee like a small bumble-bee go into a little hole under a leaf in the road, which apparently it has made, and come out again back foremost. 

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

I see a cone-bearing willow in dry woods, which will begin to leaf to-morrow, and apparently to show cones. 

Pyrus arbutifolia will begin to leaf to-morrow. Its buds are red while those of the shad-bush are green.

I can find no red cedar in bloom, but it will undoubtedly shed pollen to-morrow. It is on the point of it. I am not sure that the white cedar is any earlier. 

The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich. The next day they shed an abundance of pollen in the house. It is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon. 

It would be very pleasant to make a collection of these powders,—like dry ground paints. They would be the right kind of chemicals to have. 

I see the black birch stumps, where they have cut by Flint’s Pond the past winter, completely covered with a greasy-looking pinkish-colored cream, yet without any particular taste or smell,—what the sap has turned to. 

The Salix alba begins to leaf. 

Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1855

Young caterpillars’ nests are just hatched on the wild cherry. See April 24, 1856 ("old caterpillar-nests which now lie on the ground under wild cherry trees ”)

I see on the pitch pines at Thrush Alley that golden crested wren or the other, See April 26, 1855 (“Going over Ponkawtasset, hear a golden-crested wren, — the robin’s note, etc., —in the tops of the high wood”); April 27, 1855 (“Few birds are heard this cold and windy morning. Hear a partridge drum before 6 A. M., also a golden-crested wren.”); May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren,. . . I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”).  See also May 7, 1854 ("A ruby-crested wren. . .Saw its ruby crest and heard its harsh note. (This was the same I have called golden-crowned ; and so described by W[ilson], I should say, except that I saw its ruby crest. . . ..Have I seen the two?)”);  May 11, 1854 (“I am in a little doubt about the wrens (I do not refer to the snuff -colored one), whether I have seen more than one. All that makes me doubt is that I saw a ruby, or perhaps it might be called fiery, crest on the last — not golden.”); December 25, 1859 ("I can see a brilliant crown, evidently the golden-crested wren, which I have not made out before.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Ruby-crowned or crested wren. [Thoreau first misidentified the ruby-cowned as a warbler and also misidentified the ruby-crowned as the golden-crowned.  He was put in doubt when  he saw a red crest on what he had been calling the golden-crested wren, and did not truly identify a golden-crested wren until  Christmas 1859.]

That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths. See April 19, 1860 ("See the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves."); April 28, 1856 (“A fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early!”); April 30, 1859 ("That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun"); May 4, 1858 (“See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. ”); See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Blue Butterfly in Spring; A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

I can find no red cedar in bloom, but it will undoubtedly shed pollen to-morrow. See April 25, 1854 ("The red cedar has fairly begun to-day; maybe the first yesterday. Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. As I approach the red cedars now, I perceive a delicious strawberry-like fragrance in the air, like that from the arbor-vita.")    See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

Black birch stumps . . . cut by Flint’s Pond the past winter . . . covered with a greasy-looking pinkish-colored cream.  See June 29, 1854 ("All the large black birches on Hubbard's Hill have just been cut down, — half a dozen or more. The two largest measure two feet seven inches in diameter on the stump at a foot from the ground; the others, five or six inches less. The inner bark there about five eighths of an inch."). . See also  April 23, 1856 ("The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall, and a few small bees, flies, etc., are attracted by it.")

The Salix alba begins to leaf. See April 27, 1854 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf, and the catkins are three quarters of an inch long.");   April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."):  April 30, 1859 ("Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out

Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week.  See March 14 1858 ("I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance . . .which is an evidence of spring . . . They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents."); April 17, 1854 ("There are but few F. hyemalis about now; they appear to have gone north mostly on the advent of warmer weather about the 5th of April. "); April 17, 1855 ("I believe I see a tree sparrow still, but I do not remember an F. hyemalis for two days. ");  April 23, 1859 ("I have not noticed a hyemalis of late.");  May 4, 1855 ("See no gulls, nor F. hyemalis nor tree sparrows now."; )May 6, 1854 ("Is not that the true spring when the F. hyemalis and tree sparrows are with us singing in the cold mornings with the song sparrows, and ducks and gulls are about?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

That fine slaty-blue 

butterfly – bigger than the 

small red – in wood-paths. 

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, That fine slaty-blue butterfly in wood-paths.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550424

The invisible moon

January 7.

It is a dark day, the heavens shut out with dense snow clouds and the trees wetting me with the melting snow, when going through Brown's wood on Fair Haven, which they are cutting off, and suddenly looking through the woods between the stems of the trees, I think I see an extensive fire in the western horizon. 

It is a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud.

Later this evening, walking to Lincoln to lecture in a driving snow-storm, the invisible moon gives light
through the thickest of it.


How richly the snow lays on the cedar!


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1852

I think I see an extensive fire in the western horizon. It is a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud. See January 6, 1854 ("There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset . . . of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin's pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard's skin.")

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