You have now forgotten winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions.

August 24.

August 24, 2019

Mollugo verticillata, carpet-weed, flat, whorl-leaved weed in gardens, with small white flowers.

Portulaca oleracea, purslane, with its yellow blossoms.

Chelone glabra.

I have seen the small mulleins as big as a ninepence in the fields for a day or two? 

The weather is warmer again after a week or more of cool days. There is greater average warmth, but not such intolerable heats as in July.

The nights especially are more equably warm now, even when the day has been comparatively rather cool. There are few days now, fewer than in July, when you cannot lie at your length on the grass.

You have now forgotten winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions. Your life may be out-of-doors now mainly.

Rattlesnake grass is ripe.

The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down.

The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well over, many small flowers blossom now in the low grounds, having just reached their summer.  It is now dry enough, and they feel the heat their tenderness required.

The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters, and johnswort, — though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign.

The tansy is already getting stale; it is perhaps the first conspicuous yellow flower that passes from the stage.

In Hubbard's Swamp, where the blueberries, dangle berries, and especially the pyrus or choke-berries were so abundant last summer, there is now perhaps not one (unless a blueberry) to be found. Where the choke berries held on all last winter, the black and the red.

The common skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata), quite a handsome and middling - large blue flower.

Lobelia pallida still.

Pointed cleavers or clivers (Galium asprellum).

Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow? 

Did I find the dwarf tree-primrose in Hubbard's meadow to-day?

Stachys aspera, hedge-nettle or wound wort, a rather handsome purplish flower.

The capsules of the Iris versicolor, or blue flag, are now ready for humming [?].

Elderberries are ripe.

H. D. Thoreeau, Journal, August 24, 1851

The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down. See July 16, 1851 ("The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch. 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.");  August 14, 1853 ("Methinks the reign of the milkweeds is over"); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds")

The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well over, many small flowers blossom now. See June 17, 1854 (“Already the season of small fruits has arrived. .”) July 6, 1851 ("June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. . . . Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); July 7, 1852 ("And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds."); July 13, 1854 ("If there is an interregnum in the flowers, it is when berries begin");  August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming."); August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits".); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits?”);


You have now forgotten winter.  See July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity."); August 6, 1852 (" Summer gets to be an old story.")

Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow? See August 24, 1852 ("The Viburnum nudum shows now rich, variegated clusters amid its handsome, firm leaves, bright rosy-cheeked ones mingled with dark-purple.  All do not appear to turn purple.") See also note to September 11, 1851 ("The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod.")

Elderberries are ripe. See August 11, 1856 ("Elder-berries in a day or two."); August 15, 1852 ("Elder-berry ripe."); August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous."); August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush."); August 31, 1853 ("Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.")September 1, 1859 ("The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

Surprised to see frog spawn

September 1. 

P. M. — To Botrychium Swamp. 

Aster miser not long, but the leaves turned red. 

At the pool by the oaks behind Pratt’s, I see the Myriophyllum ambiguum still, and going to seed, greening the surface of the water. 

The Leersia oryzoides, false rice, or rice cut-grass, is abundant and in prime on the shore there. Also find it on the shore of Merrick’s pasture. It has very rough sheaths. 

Am surprised to see frog(?) spawn just laid, neither in spherical masses nor in a string, but flatted out thin on the surface, some eight or nine inches wide, — a small black spawn, white one side, as usual. 
I saw one or two R. fontinalis on the shore. Was it toad-spawn? 

Ranunculus repens

Ranunculus repens in bloom — as if begun again ? — at the violet wood-sorrel spring. 

Chelone glabra well out, how long? In the same meadow, Aster longifolius well out, not long. That meadow is white with the Eriophorum polystachyon, apparently var. augustifolium (?). Vide it pressed. 

On dry land, common, but apparently getting stale, Panicum clandestinum. 

Dangle-berries now ready for picking. 

At Botrychium Swamp, Nabalus altissimus. Of twenty plants (all in shade) only one out, apparently two or three days. Elsewhere,in open land, N. Fraseri, apparently several days, say five; but not a very rough one. 

Ledum Telephium, how long? 

In the evening, by the roadside, near R. W. E.’s gate, find a glow-worm of the common kind. Of two men, Dr. Bartlett and Charles Bowen, neither had ever seen it!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1858


Rice cut-grass. Thoreau’s notes it also  on August 28, 1854 and August 1, 1856 at Great Meadows, on August 24, 1859 at the roadside of Corner road by the brook, on August 26, 1859 in prime at Potter’s holes, and on August 26, 1860 in the old pad ditch by the path beyond Hubbard’s Grove. - vascular plants of concord

Ranunculus repens in bloom — as if begun again ? — at the violet wood-sorrel spring. See August 10, 1853 (“The Ranunculus repens numerously out about Britton's Spring.”)

Aster longifolius well out. See September 1, 1856 ("A. longifolius, hardly one seen yet.”)

At Botrychium Swamp, Nabalus altissimus. Of twenty plants (all in shade) only one out.  See September 8, 1856 ("Along this path observed the Nabalus altissimus, flowers in a long panicle of axillary and terminal branches, small-flowered, now in prime.”)

Find a glow-worm of the common kind. Of two men, Dr. Bartlett and Charles Bowen, neither had ever seen it! See January 15, 1858 ("Dr. Durkee . . .has not seen the common glow-worm . . . Showed to Agassiz, Gould, and Jackson, and it was new to them.”)

I see a deep full river on which vessels may float.

August 12 

11 a. m. — To Hill. 

The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour. 

The river is now at a standstill, some three feet above its usual level. The pickerel-weed is all covered, and lilies, and much of the button-bush and mikania. It is as great an accident as can befall these flowers. It is novel to behold this great, full tide in which you perceive some current by the eddies, in which no snarl of weeds is seen. So different from that Potamogeton River, where you caught a crab at every stroke of the oar, and farmers drove their hay-carts across. Instead of watery gleaming fields of potamogetons in which the boatman was entangled, and drifting vallisneria on which the dragon-flies alighted, I see a deep full river on which vessels may float, and I feel at a distance from terra firma when on its bosom. 

P. M. — To Moore's Swamp.

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. 

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. 

Again I examine that very strict solidago, which perhaps I must call wand-stemmed. Perhaps it is only a swamp variety of S. stricta, yet the leaves are thicker and darker(?)-green, and the upper commonly broader, often elliptic, pointed, less recurved and not wavy. Stem and head is now commonly much more strict and branches more erect, and racemes less one-sided, but in larger and maturer ones they are at length recurving and forming a pyramid like S. stricta. Rays are fewer and broader, five or six; stem reddish, with apparently more branchlets or leafets in axils.

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. It has very short but not margined petioles; leaves narrower than yesterday's, and rough beneath as well as above. The outer scales of involucre a little the longest; but I think this of little importance, for the involucre of the H. divaricatus is very variable, hardly two alike; rays about ten. In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath. The bruised leaves of these helianthuses are rather fragrant. 

It is thick, smoky, dog-day weather again. 

Bradford speaks of the dog's-tooth violet as a plant which disappears early. 

The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look. 

Snake-head, or chelone. 

On the edge of the ditch opposite the spring, Epilobium coloratum, and also what I must call E. palustre of Willdenow and Pursh and Eaton. It is smooth or smoothish, leaves somewhat toothed or subdenticulate, peduncle one inch long, flowers white. 

The most interesting domes I behold are not those of Oriental temples and palaces, but of the toadstools. On this knoll in the swamp they are little pyramids of Cheops or Cholula, which also stand on the plain, very delicately shaded off. They have burst their brown tunics as they expanded, leaving only a clear-brown apex, and on every side these swelling roofs or domes are patched and shingled with the fragments, delicately shaded off thus into every tint of brown to the edge. As if this creation of a night would thus imitate the weather-stains of centuries. Toads' temples. So charming is gradation! 

Gerardia pedicularia, how long? 

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! Tall rough goldenrods, erechthites, poke, Aster Radula, dogwood, etc., etc. It looks as if the potatoes which grew there would be poisonous. 

An arrowhead in Peter's Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! Perchance it was, for some of the paths we travel are much older than we think, especially some which the colored race in our midst still use, for they are nearest to the Indian trails.

The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat. The leaves of Sericocarpus conyzoides are fragrant when bruised. Black cherries ripe. 

Saw the primrose open at sundown. The corolla burst part way open and unfolded rapidly; the sepals flew back with a smart spring. In a minute or two the corolla was opened flat and seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. 

Lespedeza capitata, not long. 

The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.

The late rains have tried the roofs severely. Tenants have complained to their landlords, and now I see carpenters setting up their staging and preparing to shingle on various sides.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1856

The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour . . . The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent. See August 3, 1852 ("The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.  . . . Hypericum mutilum, probably last part of July."); August 3, 1856 ("Sarothra apparently now in prime.");   August 19, 1856 (I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. M. Apparently they did not bear the dry, hot weather of July so well. They are apparently now in prime, but the Sarothra is not open at this hour . . . The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like."); August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season"); August 30, 1856("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”);  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. See August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")

An arrowhead in Peter's Path. How many times I have found an arrowhead by that path, as if that had been an Indian trail! See  April 3, 1852 ("I am going over the hills in the rear of the windmill site and along Peter's path. This path through the rolling stubble-fields, with the woods rather distant and the horizon distant . . .i s the only walk of the kind that we have in Concord."); November 9, 1852 ("All around Walden, both in the thickest wood and where the wood has been cut off, there can be traced a meandering narrow shelf on the steep hillside, the footpath worn by the feet of Indian hunters, and still occasionally trodden by the white man, probably as old as the race of man here. And the same trail may be found encircling all our ponds."); February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line.”)

The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat. See July 7, 1853 ("Sarsaparilla berries are ripe."); July 16, 1864 ("Aralia nudicaulis berries well ripe."); July 19, 1856 (“On Linnaea Hills, sarsaparilla berries.”); August 6, 1852 ("The bristly aralia [Aralia hispida] berries are ripe; like the sarsaparilla, a blue black."); September 4, 1856 ("Aralia racemosa [Spikenard ] berries just ripe . . . not edible. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) and Wildflowers of the Adirondacks:Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis)

Saw the primrose open at sundown . . . seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. See July 5, 1856 ("The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. . . . freshly out in the cool of the evening at sundown, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.”)

Snake-head, or chelone: The name of the genus Chelone comes from the Greek word meaning a tortoise, from the resemblance of the corolla to a tortoise-head. Snake-head. Turtle-head. Turtle-bloom. Shell flower. Not the snake-head arethusa of July 7, 1856.  See August 1, 1852  ("Chelone glabra [white turtlehead] just out.”)

Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus. See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.”);   August 11, 1856  ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, this side Corner Spring, which I will call the tall rough sunflower; opened say August 1st (?). (I saw it out the 7th.) It does not correspond exactly to any described."); August 29, 1856 ("The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th."); September 2, 1856  ("A short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. Hearing that one had found another kind, it occurred to me that I had seen a taller one than usual lately, but not so distinctly did I remember this as to name it to him or even fully remember it myself. (I rather remembered it afterward.) But within that hour my genius conducted me to where I had seen the tall plants, and it was the other man's new kind. The next day I found a third kind, miles from there, and, a few days after, a fourth in another direction.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus.  

Note GoBotany lists:

• Helianthus annuus, common sunflower
• Helianthus divaricatus, woodland sunflower
• Helianthus decapetalus, thin-leaved sunflower
• Helianthus strumosus, pale-leaved (rough) sunflower

What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! See August 31, 1853 (The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. . . .One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.")

The pewee sings yet.

August 1

August 1, 2014

The berries of what I have called the alternate-leaved cornel [dogwood] are now ripe, a very dark blue – blue-black – and round, but dropping off prematurely, leaving handsome red cymes, which adorn the trees from a distance. 

Chelone glabra [white turtlehead] just out. 

Is not that the small-flowered hypericum?

Singing birds are scarce. I have not heard the catbird or the thrush for a long time. The pewee sings yet.

Early apples are ripe, and the sopsivine scents my handkerchief before I have perceived any odor from the orchards. 

Find a long, dense spike of the Orchis psycodes. Much later this than the great orchis. The same, only smaller and denser, not high-colored enough.

The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower. May it not stand for the character of August?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  August 1, 1852

The berries of what I have called the alternate-leaved cornel are now ripe. See August 2, 1854 ("How interesting the small alternate cornel trees with often a flat top, a peculiar ribbed and green leaf, and pretty red stems supporting its harmless blue berries inclined to drop off.");August 3, 1856 ("Cornus alternifolia berries ripe, as I go from Holden Swamp shore to Miles Swamp. They are in open cymes, dull-blue, somewhat depressed globular, tipped with the persistent styles, yet already, as usual, mostly fallen. But handsomer far are the pretty (bare) red peduncles and pedicels, like fairy fingers spread. They make a show at a distance of a dozen rods even. Something light and open about this tree, but a sort of witch's tree nevertheless. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Alternate-leafed dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)

Singing birds are scarce . . .The pewee sings yet. See August 6, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent. "); August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late."); September 5, 1858 (" I hear two or more wood pewees this afternoon, but had not before for a fortnight or more. The pewee days are over for some time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Find a long, dense spike of the Orchis psycodes. See August 2, 1852 ("It is a new era with the flowers when the small purple fringed orchis, as now, is found in shady swamps standing along the brooks. It appears to be alone of its class. Not to be overlooked, it has so much flower, ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

The small rough sunflower tells of August heats. See note to  August 1, 1855 ("Small rough sunflower a day or two"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus

August 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 1.

No catbird or thrush.

The singing birds are scarce but

the pewee sings yet. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The pewee sings yet.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-520801