Lichens from dry ash and leather-color turn a lively olive-green.

March 3

P. M. —To Fair Haven Hill. 

3 p.m., 24° in shade. 

The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes and thence down the trunk to the ground, except in one place where the hole was made in the south side of the tree, where it is melted and is flowing a little. Generally, then, when the thermometer is thus low, say below freezing-point, it does not thaw in the auger-holes. 

There is no expanding of buds of any kind, nor early birds, to be seen. 

Nature was thus premature — anticipated her own revolutions — with respect to the sap of trees, the buds (spiraea at least), and birds. The warm spell ended with February 26th. 

The crust of yesterday's snow has been converted by the sun and wind into flakes of thin ice from two or three inches to a foot in diameter, scattered like a mackerel sky over the pastures, as if all the snow had been blown out from beneath. Much of this thin ice is partly opaque and has a glutinous look even, reminding me of frozen glue. Probably it has much dust mixed with it. 

I go along below the north end of the Cliffs. The rocks in the usual place are buttressed with icy columns, for water in almost imperceptible quantity is trickling down the rocks. 

It is interesting to see how the dry black or ash-colored umbilicaria, which get a little moisture when the snow melts and trickles down along a seam or shallow channel of the rock, become relaxed and turn olive-green and enjoy their spring, while a few inches on each side of this gutter or depression in the face of the rock they are dry and crisp as ever. Perhaps the greater part of this puny rill is drunk up by the herbage on its brink. 

These are among the consequences of the slight robin snow of yesterday. It is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers, the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny trickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks where patches of umbilicaria lichens grow, of rank growth, but now thirsty and dry as bones and hornets' nests, dry as shells, which crackle under your feet. 

The more fortunate of these, which stand by the moistened seams or gutters of the rock, luxuriate in the grateful moisture — as in their spring. Their rigid nerves relax, they unbend and droop like limber infancy, and from dry ash and leather-color turn a lively olive-green. 

You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive-green of the lichens alone. Here and there, too, the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cockscomb lichen, and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock. 

Skating yesterday and to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1857

The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up. See note to February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's.”)

There is no expanding of buds of any kind, nor early birds, to be seen. Compare March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”)

Nature . . . anticipated her own revolutions. See April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?")

Great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock. See February 14, 1852 ("icicles . . .hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes."); January 11, 1854 ("Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes.”)

Moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cockscomb lichen, See January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);  February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens . . .really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); March 6, 1856 ("The snow is softening . Methinks the lichens are a little greener for it . "); See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau   The Lichens and the lichenst

March 3.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau March 3

Lichens from dry ash 

and leather-color turn a 

lively olive-green. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Lichens turnng green

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

Fields bristle with a myriad of crystal spears.

December 26.

After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had. 

The sun comes out at 9 A. M. and lights up the ice-incrusted trees, but it is pretty warm and the ice rapidly melts. 

I go to Walden 'via the almshouse and up the railroad. 

Trees seen in the West against the dark cloud, the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as frostwork, and their outlines very perfectly and distinctly revealed, with recurved twigs. 

The walls and fences are encased, and the fields bristle with a myriad of crystal spears. 

Already the wind is rising and a brattling is heard overhead in the street. 

The sun, shining down a gorge over the woods at Brister’s Hill, reveals a wonderfully brilliant as well as seemingly solid and diversified region in the air. 

The ice is from an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick about the twigs and pine-needles, only half as thick commonly on one side. Their heads are bowed; their plumes and needles are stiff, as if preserved under glass for the inspection of posterity. 

Thus is our now especially slow-footed river laid up not merely on the meadows, but on the twigs and leaves of the trees, on the needles of the pines. 

The pines thus weighed down are sharp-pointed at top and remind me of firs and even hemlocks, their drooping boughs being wrapped about them like the folds of a cloak or a shawl. The crust is already strewn with bits of the green needles which have been broken ofl. Frequently the whole top stands up bare, while the middle and lower branches are drooping and massed together, resting on one another. 

But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting. 

Here are asters, savory-leaved, whose flat imbricated calyxes, three quarters of an inch over, are surmounted and inclosed in a perfectly transparent icebutton, like a glass knob, through which you see the reflections of the brown calyx. These are very common. 

Each little blue-curls calyx has a spherical button like those brass ones on little boys’ jackets, — little sprigs on them, —and the pennyroyal has still smaller spheres, more regularly arranged about its stem, chandelier-wise, and still smells through the ice. 

The finest grasses support the most wonderful burdens of ice and most branched on their minute threads. These weeds are spread and arched over into the snow again, — countless little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice, which you break with a tinkling crash at each step. 

The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all, for the scarlet is increased and multiplied by reflection through the bubbles and hemispherical surfaces of the crust, as if it covered some vermilion grain thickly strewn. 

And the brown cup lichens stand in their midst. The whole rough bark, too, is encased.

Already a squirrel has perforated the crust above the mouth of his burrow, here and there by the side of the path, and left some empty acorn shells on the snow. He has shovelled out this morning before the snow was frozen on his door-step. 

Now, at 10 A. M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace.

Particularly are we attracted in the winter by greenness and signs of growth, as the green and white shoots of grass and weeds, pulled or floating on the water, and also by color, as cockspur lichens and crimson birds, etc. 

Thorny bushes look more thorny than ever; each thorn is prolonged and exaggerated. 

Some boys have come out to a wood-side hill to coast. It must be sport to them, lying on their stomachs, to hear their sled crouching the crystalled weeds when they have reached the more weedy pasture below.

4 P. M. — Up railroad. 

Since the sun has risen higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. On the trees it is now considerably dissipated, but rather owing to the wind than the sun. 

The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs, etc. The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles off in the horizon, is of sharp points.  

It has grown cold, and the crust bears. The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are. 

The sun is gone before five. 

Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none, only some small pink-dun (?) clouds. In the east still larger ones, which after sunset turned to pale slate.

In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them. 

I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1855

But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting. See December 26, 1853 ("All weeds, with their seeds, rising dark above the snow, are now remarkably conspicuous, which before were not observed against the dark earth.”); November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.”); December 6, 1856  ("Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage.”); February 6, 1857 ("Insignificant weeds and stubble along the railroad causeway and elsewhere are now made very conspicuous, both by their increased size and bristling stiffness and their whiteness.”)

First snow.

November 24.

P. M. - To Easterbrooks's. 

Under the two white oaks by the second wall south east of my house, on the east side the wall, I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, — frequently more than a dozen on the short sward within a square foot, each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. 

But many have had their radicle broken or eaten off, and many have it now dead and withered. 

So far as my observation goes there, by far the greatest number of white oak acorns were destroyed by decaying (whether in consequence of frost or wet), both before and soon after falling. 

Not nearly so many have been carried off by squirrels and birds or consumed by grubs, though the number of acorns of all kinds lying under the trees is now comparatively small to what it was early in October. 

It is true these two trees are exceptions and I do not find sound ones nearly as numerous under others. Nevertheless, the sound white oak acorns are not so generally and entirely picked up as I supposed. 

However, there are a great many more shells or cups than acorns under the trees; even under these two trees, I think, there are not more than a third as many of any kind sound or hollow — as there were, and generally those that remain are a very small fraction of what there were. 

It will be worth the while to see how many of these sprouted acorns are left and are sound in the spring. 

It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted, — though I have not seen the chestnut oak and little chinquapin at all. 

It remains to be seen how many of the above will be picked up by squirrels, etc., or destroyed by frost and grubs in the winter.




The first spitting of snow — a flurry or squall – from out a gray or slate-colored cloud that came up from the west. This consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. 

These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind. The plowed fields were for a short time whitened with them. 

The green moss about the bases of trees was very prettily spotted white with them, and also the large beds of cladonia in the pastures. They come to contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, which you had not noticed before. Striking against the trunks of the trees on the west side they fell and accumulated in a white line at the base. 

Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. 

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that we could not not see a hill half a mile off for an hour. 

The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. 

The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. Methinks the winter gives them more liberty, like a night. 

I see where a boy has set a box trap and baited it with half an apple, and, a mile off, come across a snare set for a rabbit or partridge in a cow-path in a pitch pine wood near where the rabbits have nibbled the apples which strew the wet ground. How pitiable that the most that many see of a rabbit should be the snare that some boy has set for one! 




The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. 

We do not think much of table-fruits. They are especially for aldermen and epicures. They do not feed the imagination. That would starve on them. These wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination. 

The south may keep her pineapples, and we will be content with our strawberries. 



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1860 

I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted.  See October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”); October 8, 1860 ("I find a great many white oak acorns already sprouted, although they are but half fallen, and can easily believe that they sometimes sprout before they fall. It is a good year for them."); October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall."); October 13, 1860 ("This is a white oak year"); October 29, 1860 ("At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled. The good appear to be all sprouted now."); and note to November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)

The first spitting of snow. The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. See November 24, 1858 ("There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. ") See also November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”) and note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen, ")

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that for an hour we could not see a hill half a mile off. See January 30, 1856 ("It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.”); December 14, 1859( Snow-storms might be classified. . . .Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it.”)

The plowed fields were for a short time whitened. See November 24, 1858 (“Plowed ground is quite white”); See also  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now."); December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

Snow pellets . . .contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, not noticed before. See December 26, 1855 ("The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all ”)

The first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. See November 24, 1858 ("When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig,") See also November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess. ”); November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.")

The winter gives them more liberty, like a night. See December 8, 1850 ("The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)