Goldenrods and asters.

August 24.

Another cool, autumn-like morning, also quite foggy.

Rains a little in the forenoon and cloudy the rest of the day.

P. M. – To Saw Mill Brook via Trillium Woods.

A cool breeze blows this cloudy afternoon, and I wear a thicker coat.

The mulgedium by railroad is seven feet high, with great panicles of a regular, somewhat elliptic-lanceolate (?) form, two and a half feet long by ten inches.

The Prinos lævigatus berries begin to redden.

The farmers are beginning to clear out their ditches now.

Blue-stemmed goldenrod, apparently a few days in some places.

The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year are (I do not remember the order exactly):

• (1) stricta,
• (2) lanceolata,
• (3) arguta (?),
• (4) nemoralis,
• (5) bicolar,
• (6) odora,
• (7) altissima,
• (8) ulmifolia (?),
• (9) cæsia.

The 4th is the prevailing one and much the most abundant now.

The 1st perhaps next, though it may be getting old.

The altissima (7th) certainly next. It is just beginning to be abundant. Its tops a foot or more broad, with numerous recurved racemes on every side, with yellow and yellowing triangular points. It is the most conspicuous of all.

The bicolor (5th) next, though not conspicuous.

The 3d, 8th, 2d, and 6th perhaps never abundant.

The cæsia (9th) just begun. 

The asters and diplopappi are about in this order:

• (1) Radula,
• (2) D. cornifolius (?),
• (3) A. corymbosus,
• (4) patens,
• (5) lævis,
• (6) dumosus (?),
• (7) miser,
• (8) macrophyllus,
• (9) D. umbellatus,
• (10) A. acuminatus,
• (11) puniceus.

The patens (4), of various forms, some lilac, is the prevailing blue or bluish one now, middle sized and very abundant on dry hillsides and by wood paths; the lævis next.

The 1st, or Radula, is not abundant.

(These three are all the distinctly blue ones yet.) 

The dumosus is the prevailing white one, very abundant; miser mixed with it.

D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so.

But D. cornifolius, A. corymbosus, macrophyllus, and acuminatus are confined to particular localities.

Dumosus and patens (and perhaps lævis, not common enough) are the prevailing asters now. 

The common large osmunda (?) is already consider ably imbrowned, but the odorous dicksonia (?), which, like most ferns, blossoms later, is quite fresh.

This thin, flat, beautiful fern it is which I see green under the snow.? I am inclined to call it the lace fern.

(Peaches fairly begun.) 

It is a triangular web of fine lace-work surpassing all the works of art.

Solidago latifolia not yet.

I see roundish silvery slate-colored spots, surrounded by a light ring, near the base of the leaves of an aster (miser ?), one beneath another like the dropping of a bird, or as if some tincture had fallen from above.

Some of the leaves of the A. patens are red.

The alternate cornel berries, which are particularly apt to drop off early, are a dark, dull blue, not china-like.

I see those of maple-leaved viburnum merely yellowish now.

There grows by Saw Mill Brook a long firmer, thimble-shaped high blackberry with small grains, with more green ones still on it, which I think like the New Hampshire kind.

I see some black and some greenish light slate-colored fungi. This certainly is the season for fungi.

I see on the shrub oaks now caterpillars an inch and a half or more long, black with yellowish stripes, lying along the petioles, — thick living petioles. They have stripped off the leaves, leaving the acorns bare.

The Ambrina (Chenopodium, Bigelow) Botrys, Jerusalem-oak, a worm-seed, by R. W. E.' s heater piece. The whole plant is densely branched — branches spike-like-and appears full of seed. Has a pleasant, more distinct wormwood-like odor.

In a dry sprout-land (Ministerial Lot), what I will call Solidago puberula  will open in a day or two, — upright and similar to stricta in leaves, with a purple stem and smooth leaves, entire above, and a regular oblong appressed panicle.

Bidens chrysanthemoides, of a small size and earlier, by Turn pike, now in prime there.

I see cattle coming down from up-country. Why?

Yellow Bethlehem-star still.

A. miser (?), with purplish disk and elliptic-lanceolate leaves, serrate in middle, may be as early as dumosuus.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1853


The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year .(1) stricta,(2) lanceolata,(3) arguta (?),(4) nemoralis etc. . . .The asters are about in this order:(1) Radula,(2) D. cornifolius (?), (3) A. corymbosus, etc.. Compare August 24, 1851 ("The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters, and johnswort, — though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign."):  August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta. . .; 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom. . . .The commonest asters now are, 1st, the Radula; 2d, dumosus; 3d, patens etc. ); August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: Solidagos, especially large three-ribbed, nemoralis, tall rough, etc.; Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus")

This certainly is the season for fungi.See September 10, 1854 ("Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season for Fungi

The farmers are beginning to clear out their ditches now. See August 21, 1859 ("Many are ditching."); August 28, 1854 ("The farmers improve this dry spell to cut ditches and dig mud in the meadows and pond-holes. I see their black heaps in many places. ")

D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so. See August 24, 1859 ("Aster puniceus and Diplopappus umbellatus, how long? ")

A long firmer, thimble-shaped high blackberry with small grains. See August 24, 1859 ("The small sempervirens blackberry in prime in one place. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

I see cattle coming down from up-country. Why? See September 6, 1859 ("Hear the sounds nowadays — the lowing, tramp, and calls of the drivers — of cows coming down from up-country."); September 20, 1852 ("Droves of cattle have for some time been coming down from up-country"); October 28, 1858 ("Cattle coming down from up country.") See also note to April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country.")

Holding a white pine needle in my hand.

September 25. 

September 25, 2019

P. M. — To Emerson's Cliff. 

Holding a white pine needle in my hand, and turning it in a favorable light, as I sit upon this cliff, I perceive that each of its three edges is notched or serrated with minute forward-pointing bristles. 

So much does Nature avoid an unbroken line that even this slender leaf is serrated; though, to my surprise, neither Gray nor Bigelow mention it. Loudon, however, says, "Scabrous and inconspicuously serrated on the margin; spreading in summer, but in winter contracted, and lying close to the branches." 

Fine and smooth as it looks, it is serrated after all. This is its concealed wildness, by which it connects itself with the wilder oaks. 

Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days. 

Moles work in meadows.  

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white. Also some dicksonia is about equally white. These especially are the white ones. There is another, largish, and more generally decayed than either of these, with large serrated segments, rather far apart, — perhaps the Asplenium Filix-foemina (?). The first may be called now the white fern, — with rather small entirish and flat segments close together. 

In shade is the laboratory of white. Color is produced in the sun. 

The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown there. The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. 

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. 

At 2 p. m. the river is sixteen and three quarters inches above my hub[?] by boat. 

Nabalus albus still common, though much past prime. Though concealed amid trees, I find three humble-bees on one. As when Antaeus touched the earth, so when the mountaineer scents the fern, he bounds up like a chamois, or mountain goat, with renewed strength. There is no French perfumery about it. It has not been tampered with by any perfumer to their majesties. It is the fragrance of those plants whose impressions we see on our coal. Beware of the cultivation that eradicates it. 

The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered, probably by the frosts of the 15th and 16th, looking almost as white as the corn; and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. The same frosts that kill and whiten the corn whiten many grasses thus.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1859

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white. Also some dicksonia...perhaps the Asplenium Filix-foemina. See July 17, 1857 ("Aspidium Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filix-foemina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited")

The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. See note to September 24, 1859 ("The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown.") See also 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. See September 30, 1859 ("The terminal shield fern is one of the handsomest. The most decidedly evergreen are the last, polypody, Aspidium marginale, and Aspidium spinulosum of Woodis Swamp and Brister's . . . Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."); October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum.. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”); November 17, 1858 ("As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed).
• Asplenium trichomanes.
• A. ebeneum.
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common).
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern andA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum

 I sit on this cliff

 turning a white pine needle 

 in a favorable light.

Nature's Moods

September 24. 

P. M. — To Melvin's Preserve.

Was that a flock of grackles on the meadow? I have not seen half a dozen blackbirds, methinks, for a month. 

I have many affairs to attend to, and feel hurried these days. Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. 

September 24, 2013

It is not by a compromise, it is not by a timid and feeble repentance, that a man will save his soul and live, at last. He has got to conquer a clear field, letting Repentance & Co. go. That 's a well-meaning but weak firm that has assumed the debts of an old and worthless one. You are to fight in a field where no allowances will be made, no courteous bowing to one-handed knights. You are expected to do your duty, not in spite of every thing but one, but in spite of everything. 

See a green snake. 

Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns. I stand on the elevated road, looking down into it. The trees are very tall and slender, without branches for a long distance. All the ground, which is perfectly level, is covered and concealed, as are the bases of the trees, with the tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. It is a very pretty sight, these northern trees springing out of a ground work of ferns. It is like pictures of the tropics, except that here the palms are the undergrowth. You could not have arranged a nosegay more tastefully. It is a rich groundwork, out of which the maples and pines spring. 

But outside the wood and by the roadside, where they are exposed, these ferns are withered, shrivelled, and brown, for they are tenderer than the dicksonia. The fern, especially if large, is so foreign and tropical that these remind me of artificial groundworks set in sand, to set off other plants. These ferns (like brakes) begin to decay, i. e. to turn yellow or brown and ripen, as here, before they are necessarily frost-bitten. Theirs is another change and decay, like that of the brake and sarsaparilla in the woods and swamps, only later, while the exposed ones are killed before they have passed through all their changes. The exposed ones attained to a brighter yellow early and were then killed; the shaded ones pass through various stages of rich, commonly pale brown, as here, and last much longer. The brown ones are the most interesting. 

Going along this old Carlisle road, — road for walkers, for berry-pickers, and no more worldly travellers; road for Melvin and Clark, not for the sheriff nor butcher nor the baker's jingling cart; road where all wild things and fruits abound, where there are countless rocks to jar those who venture there in wagons; which no jockey, no wheelwright in his right mind, drives over, no little spidery gigs and Flying Childers; road which leads to and through a great but not famous garden, zoological and botanical garden, at whose gate you never arrive, — as I was going along there, I perceived the grateful scent of the dicksonia fern, now partly decayed, and it reminds me of all up-country with its springy mountainsides and unexhausted vigor. Is there any essence of dicksonia fern, I wonder? Surely that giant who, my neighbor expects, is to bound up the Alleghanies will have his handkerchief scented with that. In the lowest part of the road the dicksonia by the wall-sides is more than half frost-bitten and withered, — a sober Quaker-color, brown crape! — though not so tender or early [?] as the cinnamon fern; but soon I rise to where they are more yellow and green, and so my route is varied. On the higher places there are very handsome tufts of it, all yellowish out side and green within. The sweet fragrance of decay! 

When I wade through by narrow cow-paths, it is as if I had strayed into an ancient and decayed herb-garden. Proper for old ladies to scent their handkerchiefs with. Nature perfumes her garments with this essence now especially. She gives it to those who go a-barberrying and on dank autumnal walks. The essence of this as well as of new-mown hay, surely! The very scent of it, if you have a decayed frond in your chamber, will take you far up country in a twinkling. You would think you had gone after the cows there, or were lost on the mountains. It will make you as cool and well as a frog, — a wood frog, Rana sylvatica. It is the scent the earth yielded in the saurian period, before man was created and fell, before milk and water were invented, and the mints. Far wilder than they.

Rana sylvatica passed judgment on it, or rather that peculiar-scented Rana palustris. It was in his reign it was introduced. That is the scent of the Silurian Period precisely, and a modern beau may scent his handkerchief with it. Before man had come and the plants that chiefly serve him. There were no Rosacea nor mints then. So the earth smelled in the Silurian (?) Period, before man was created and any soil had been debauched with manure. The saurians had their handkerchiefs scented with it. For all the ages are represented still and you can smell them out. 

A man must attend to Nature closely for many years to know when, as well as where, to look for his objects, since he must always anticipate her a little. Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another. I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sports man knows when to look for plover. 

Though you may have sauntered near to heaven's gate, when at length you return toward the village you give up the enterprise a little, and you begin to fall into the old ruts of thought, like a regular roadster. Your thoughts very properly fail to report themselves to headquarters. Your thoughts turn toward night and the evening mail and become begrimed with dust, as if you were just going to put up at (with ?) the tavern, or even come to make an exchange with a brother clergyman here on the morrow. 

Some eyes cannot see, even through a spy-glass. I showed my spy-glass to a man whom I met this afternoon, who said that he wanted to see if he could look through it. I tried it carefully on him, but he failed. He said that he tried a lot lately on the muster-field but he never could see through them, somehow or other everything was all a blur. I asked him if he considered his eyes good. He answered that they were good to see far. They looked like two old-fashioned china saucers. He kept steadily chewing his quid all the while he talked and looked. This is the case with a great many, I suspect. Everything is in a blur to them. He enjoys the distinction of being the only man in the town who raises his own tobacco. Seeing is not in them. No focus will suit them. You wonder how the world looks to them, — if those are eyes which they have got, or bits of old china, familiar with soap suds. 

As I stood looking over a wall this afternoon at some splendid red sumach bushes, now in their prime, I saw Melvin the other side of the wall and hailed him.

 "What are you after there?" asked he. 

"After the same thing that you are, perhaps," answered I.

But I mistook, this time, for he said that he was looking amid the huckleberry bushes for some spectacles which a woman lost there in the summer. It was his mother, no doubt. 

Road — that old Carlisle one — that leaves towns behind; where you put off worldly thoughts; where you do not carry a watch, nor remember the proprietor; where the proprietor is the only trespasser, — looking after his apples ! — the only one who mistakes his calling there, whose title is not good; where fifty may be a-barberrying and you do not see one. It is an endless succession of glades where the barberries grow thickest, successive yards amid the barberry bushes where you do not see out. 

There I see Melvin and the robins, and many a nut-brown maid sashe-ing to the barberry bushes in hoops and crinoline, and none of them see me. The world-surrounding hoop! faery rings! Oh, the jolly cooper's trade it is the best of any! Carried to the furthest isles where civilized man penetrates. This the girdle they've put round the world! Saturn or Satan set the example. Large and small hogsheads, barrels, kegs, worn by the misses that go to that lone schoolhouse in the Pinkham notch. 

The lonely horse in its pasture is glad to see company, comes forward to be noticed and takes an apple from your hand. 

Others are called great roads, but this is greater than they all. The road is only laid out, offered to walkers, not accepted by the town and the travelling world. To be represented by a dotted line on charts, or drawn in lime-juice, undiscoverable to the uninitiated, to be held to a warm imagination. No guide-boards indicate it. No odometer would indicate the miles a wagon had run there. Rocks which the druids might have raised — if they could. 

There I go searching for malic acid of the right quality, with my tests. The process is simple. Place the fruit between your jaws and then endeavor to make your teeth meet. The very earth contains it. The Easterbrooks Country contains malic acid. 

To my senses the dicksonia fern has the most wild and primitive fragrance, quite unalloyed and untamable, such as no human institutions give out, — the early morning fragrance of the world, antediluvian, strength and hope imparting. They who scent it can never faint. It is ever a new and untried field where it grows, and only when we think original thoughts can we perceive it. If we keep that on [sic] our boudoir we shall be healthy and evergreen as hemlocks. Older than, but related to, strawberries. Before strawberries were, it was, and it will outlast them. Good for the trilobite and saurian in us; death to dandies. It yields its scent most morning and evening. Growing without manure; older than man; refreshing him; preserving his original strength and innocence. 

When the New Hampshire farmer, far from travelled roads, has cleared a space for his mountain home and conducted the springs of the mountain to his yard, already it grows about the sources of that spring, before any mint is planted in his garden. There his sheep and oxen and he too scent it, and he realizes that the world is new to him. There the pastures are rich, the cattle do not die of disease, and the men are strong and free. The wild original of strawberries and the rest. Nature, the earth herself, is the only panacea. They bury poisoned sheep up to the necks in earth to take the poison out of them. 

After four days cloud and rain we have fair weather. A great many have improved this first fair day to come a-barberrying to the Easterbrooks fields. These bushy fields are all alive with them, though I scarcely see one. 

I meet Melvin loaded down with barberries, in bags and baskets, so that he has to travel by stages and is glad to stop and talk with me. It is better to take thus what Nature offers, in her season, than to buy an extra dinner at Parker's. 

The sumach berries are probably past their beauty. 

Fever-bush berries are scarlet now, and also green.  They have a more spicy taste than any of our berries, carrying us in thought to the spice islands. Taste like lemon-peel. 

The panicled andromeda berries (?) begin to brown. 

The bayberry berries are apparently ripe, though not so gray as they will be, — more lead-colored. They bear sparingly here. Leaves not fallen nor changed, and I the more easily find the bushes amid the changed huckleberries, brakes, etc., by their greenness. 

The poke on Eb. Hubbard's hillside has been considerably frost-bitten before the berries are one-third ripe. It is in flower still. Great drooping cylindrical racemes of blackish-purple berries, six inches or more in length, tapering a little toward the end; great flat blackish and ripe berries at base, with green ones and flowers at the other end; all on brilliant purple or crimson-purple peduncle and pedicels. 

Those thorns by Shattuck's barn, now nearly leafless, have hard green fruit as usual. 

The shrub oak is apparently the most fertile of our oaks. I count two hundred and sixty-six acorns on a branch just two feet long. Many of the cups are freshly empty now, showing a pretty circular pink scar at the bottom, where the acorn adhered. They are of various forms and sizes on different shrubs; are now turning dark-brown and showing their converging meridional light-brown lines. 

Never fear for striped squirrels in our shrub oak land.

Am surprised to find, by Botrychium Swamp, a Rhus radicans which is quite a tree by itself. It is about nine feet high by nine in width, growing in the midst of a clump of barberry bushes, which it overhangs. It is now at the height of its change, very handsome, scarlet and yellow, and I did not at first know what it was. I found it to consist of three or four branches, each nearly two inches thick and covered with those shaggy fibres, and these are twined round some long-since rotted barberry stems, and around one another, and now make a sizable-looking trunk, which rises to the height of four feet before it branches, and then spreads widely every way like an oak. It was, no doubt, indebted to the barberry for support at first, but now its very branches are much larger than that, and it far overtops and over spreads all the barberry stems.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1859

Great works of art have endless leisure for a background . . . Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. See September 17, 1839 ("If the setting sun seems to hurry him to improve the day while it lasts, the chant of the crickets fails not to reassure him, even-measured as of old, teaching him to take his own time henceforth forever. The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step. As the wise is not anxious that time wait for him, neither does he wait for it.") July 19, 1851 ("This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me?"); January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short"); May 9, 1852 ("Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons. It is impossible to remember a week ago."); December 28, 1852 ("A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?"); Walden, An artist in the city of Kouroo ("In an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter. ")

The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. See September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered."); September 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither."); September 25, 1859 ("The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown. . . in harmony with the twilight of the swamp"); September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever."); October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds"); October 2, 1857 ("They are now generally imbrowned or crisp. In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent"); October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.");  October 6, 1858 ("Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw, ");October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns . . .have acquired their November aspect")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

He enjoys the distinction of being the only man in the town who raises his own tobacco. See September 22, 1859 ("Temple, . . .thinks he is the only one who has cultivated any in C[oncord]. of late years.")

There I see Melvin and the robins, and many a nut-brown maid sashe-ing to the barberry bushes. See October 20, 1857 ("What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! . . . the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit, resorted to by men and beasts; Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins, these, at least, were attracted thither this afternoon")

I meet Melvin loaded down with barberries, in bags and baskets. See September 18, 1856 ("I get a full peck from about three bushes.”); September 25, 1855 (We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes”). October 1, 1853 (" Got three pecks of barberries.")

This is the case with 

a great many, I suspect – 

Everything a blur. 

tinyurl.com/HDThaste

The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now

October 15. 

October 15, 2018

The balm-of-Gileads are half bare. 

I see a few red maples still bright, but they are commonly yellow ones. [no] 

White pines are in the midst of their fall. 

The Lombardy poplars are still quite green and cool. 

Large rock maples are now perhaps in their prime,— later than I supposed, —though some small ones have begun to fall. Some that were green a week ago are now changed. 

The large white oak by path north of Sleepy Hollow is now all red and at height. 

Perhaps half the white ash trees are yellow, and if the mulberry ones were dulled (?) a week ago, the yellow ones, me thinks, are fresher or brighter than ever, but fast falling. 

White birches, though they have lost many leaves, are still, perhaps, as soft a yellow as ever, a fine yellow imbrication seen against the greener forest. They change gradually and last long. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

White oaks are rapidly withering, — the outer leaves.

The small black oaks, too, are beginning to wither and turn brown. Small red oaks, at least, and small scarlet ones, are apparently in their prime in sprout-lands and young woods. The large leaves of the red oaks are still fresh, of mingled reddish or scarlet, yellow, and green, striking for the size of the leaf, but not so uniformly dark and brilliant as the scarlet. The black oak is yellowish, a half-decayed or brownish yellow, and already becoming brown and crisp, though not so much so as the white. The scarlet is the most brilliant of the oaks, finely fingered, especially noticeable in sprout-lands and young woods. The larger ones are still altogether green, or show a deep cool green in their recesses. 

If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks; the next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon ?) red, are the white oaks; then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green; and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak. 

The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. See that white and that black oak,  side by side, young trees, the first that peculiar dull crimson (or salmon) red, with crisped edges, the second a brownish and greenish yellow, much sun still in its leaves. Looking at a young white oak, you see two distinct colors, the brighter or glossier red of the upper surfaces of the inner leaves, as yet not much affected by frost and wind, contrasting with the paler but still crimson tinged under sides of the outmost leaves, blown up by the wind and perhaps partly crisped.

I notice thorn bushes in sprout-lands quite bare. 

The lower leaves of huckleberry bushes and young wild black cherries fall first, but for the most part the upper leaves of apple trees. 

The high blueberries are still a bright or red scarlet.

Goldenrods now pretty generally show their dirty-white pappus together with the still yellow scales, the last preserving some semblance of the flowers. 

Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods. 

Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets. 

Some large dicksonias on the moist hillside there are quite green yet, though nearly prostrate in a large close patch slanting down the hill, and with some faded nearly white. 

The yellow lily in the brook by the Turnpike is still expanding fresh leaves with wrinkled edges, as in the spring. 

The Salix humilis falls, exposing its great cones like a fruit. 

On the sandy slope of the cut, close by the pond, I notice the chips which some Indian fletcher has made. Yet our poets and philosophers regret that we have no antiquities in America, no ruins to remind us of the past. Hardly can the wind blow away the surface anywhere, exposing the spotless sand, even though the thickest woods have recently stood there, but these little stone chips made by some aboriginal fletcher are revealed. 

With them, too, this time, as often, I find the White man’s arm, a conical bullet, still marked by the groove of the rifle, which has been roughened or rucked up like a thimble on the side by which it struck the sand. As if, by some [un]explained sympathy and attraction, the Indian’s and the white man’s arrowheads sought the same grave at last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1858

The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. See October 15, 1859 ("The oaks generally are very fair now at a distance . . . As the shadows of these cold clouds flit across the landscape, the red banners of distant forests are lit up or disappear like the colors of a thousand regiments")

White pines are in the midst of their fall. See October 14, 1856 (“Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet”); October 16, 1854 (“The pines, too, have fallen.”); October 16, 1855 (“How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground!”); October 16,1857 (“A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen.”)

Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets. See October 15, 1856 ("The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft."); October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns surrounding the swamp have just lost their leafets, except the terminal ones.")

October 15.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau October 15

The colors of the

oaks are far more distinct now

than they were before.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now

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/hdt581015

Bleached and faded corn stands quite white in the twilight.

October 6. 

October 6, 2018

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Flint’s Pond. 

Now, methinks, the autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. 

In the streets, the young sugar maples make the most show. The street is never more splendid. As I look up the street from the Mill-Dam, they look like painted screens standing before the houses to celebrate a gala-day. One half of each tree glows with a delicate scarlet. 

But only one of the large maples on the Common is yet on fire. The butternuts on the street are with, or a little later than, the walnuts. The three-thorned acacias have turned (one half) a peculiarly clear bright and delicate yellow, peculiar also for the smallness of the leaf. 

Asparagus-beds are a soft mass of yellow and green. Buttonwoods have no bright colors, but are a brownish and yellowish green, some what curled and crisp and looking the worse for the wear. 

Stand where half a dozen large elms droop over a house. It is as if you stood within a ripe pumpkin rind, and you feel as mellow as if you were the pulp.

In Saw Mill Brook Path, and in most wood-paths, the Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path. 

The Rhus Toxicodendron leaves are completely changed and of very various colors, pale yellow to deep scarlet and delicate. The leaf-stalks are commonly drooping, being bent short downward near the base in a peculiar manner. 

Several species of ferns are faded quite white in the swamp, — dicksonia and another, and some brakes, — for in moist woods and swamps they are preserved longer than in dry places. 

Solidago latifolia in bloom still, but always sparingly. 

Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw, perfect in outline, falling over each way from the centre, of a very neat drab color, quaker-like, fit to adorn an Oriental drawing-room. 

The evergreens seem positively greener, owing to the browning of other leaves. 

I should not suspect that the white birches had changed so much and lost so many leaves, if I did not see them against the unchanged pitch pines on the hillside. 

I notice Hieracium paniculatum and scabrum in dark, low wood-paths, turned a hoary white. 

The medeola leaves are a pale straw-color with a crimson centre; perhaps getting stale now. 

The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves. 

Leaves now have fairly begun to rustle under foot in wood-paths, especially in chestnut woods, scaring the ducks as you approach the ponds. And what is that common scent there so much like fragrant everlasting? 

The smooth sumachs, which are in their prime, or perhaps a little past, are, methinks, the most uniform and intense scarlet of any shrub or tree. They stand perfectly distinct amid the pines, with slender spreading arms, their leafets drooping and somewhat curled though fresh. Yet, high-colored as they are, from their attitude and drooping, like scarfs, on rather bare and dark stems, they have a funereal effect, as if you were walking in the cemetery of a people who mourned in scarlet. 

Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. 

The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight — in the fields. No greenness there has the frost and sun left. Seen against the dark earth. 

My phosphorescent wood still glows a little, though it has lain on my stove all day, and, being wet, it is much improved still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1858

Autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally. See October 6, 1857 (“We are not prepared to believe that the earth is now so parti-colored, and would present to a bird's eye such distinct masses of bright color. A great painter is at work.”); October 23, 1857 ("I can find no bright leaves now in the woods.")

The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. See September 20, 1852 ("Aster undulatus, or variable aster, with a large head of middle-sized blue flowers."); October 2, 1859 ("The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce."); October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus"); October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides."); November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom");November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet.") 
 

Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. See October 3, 1857 ("Asters, and still more goldenrods, look quite rare now.") Compare  October 3, 1852 ("The Aster undulates is common and fresh, also the Solidago nemoralis of Gray.”)

Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish. See  October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

Where half a dozen large elms droop over a houseit is as if you stood within a ripe pumpkin rind. See October 9, 1857 ("As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself”)

The medeola leaves are a pale straw-color with a crimson centre; perhaps getting stale now.. See May 25, 1852 ("Medeola or cucumber-root in bud, with its two-storied whorl of leaves. "); July 24, 1853 ("The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries"); August 27, 1851 ("The Medeola Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green fruit"); September 2, 1853 ("The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves.");October 14, 1859 (" Medeola probably fallen several weeks.")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cucumber Root (medeola)

The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves. See August 31, 1857 ("At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings"); September 11, 1859 ("I see tall tupelos, all dotted with the now ripe (apparently in prime) small oval purple berries, two or three together on the end of slender peduncles, amid the reddening leaves. This fruit is very acid and has a large stone, but I see several robins on the trees, which appear to have been attracted by it."); 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 19, 1859 ("The tupelo berries have all fallen") [Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist]

Leaves now have fairly begun to rustle under foot in wood-paths, scaring the ducks as you approach the ponds. See October 10, 1851 ("You make a great noise now walking in the woods.”); October 22, 1857 (“As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing. However, Nature in this may have intended some kindness to the ducks, which are now loitering hereabouts on their migration south ward, mostly young and inexperienced birds, for, as they are feeding [in] Goose Pond, for instance, the rustling of the leaves betrays the approach of the sports man and his dog, or other foe; so perhaps the leaves on the ground protect them more than when on the trees. ”); and note to October 22, 1854 ("Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods.”)

I notice Hieracium paniculatum and scabrum in dark, low wood-paths, turned a hoary white. See August 6, 1856 ("Hieracium scabrous.”) See July 21, 1851 ("The rough hawkweed, too, resembling in its flower the autumnal dandelion.”); August21, 1851 ("Hieracium paniculatum, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)

The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight . . . seen against the dark earth. See October 1, 1851 ("I go through Wheeler's corn-field in the twilight, where the stalks are bleached almost white, and his tops are still stacked along the edge of the field. The moon is not far up above the southwestern horizon. Looking west at this hour, the earth is an unvaried, undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin.") See also September 17, 1852 ("The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields."); October 8, 1858 ("Fine pasture grass seen in the sun, begins to.look faded and bleached like the corn."); October 10, 1857 ("See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks of cornstalks and the standing corn."); October 12, 1858 ("The coarse grass of the riverside . . . is bleached as white as corn."); October 28, 1853 ("Just saw in the garden, in the drizzling rain, little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds.")

My phosphorescent wood.  See October 4, 1858 ("I saw on the sidewalk something bright like fire.");
October 5, 1858 ("My phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky.")

October 6. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 6

Medeola leaves 

 are a pale straw-color with 

a crimson centre;

Bleached and faded corn

stands quite white in the twilight

against the dark earth.

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 Bleached and faded corn stands quite white in the twilight.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581006 

The comet makes a great show these nights.

October 5

Donati's Comet, Oxford, 7:30 p.m., 5 Oct. 1858

I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns, and they are divided by a light line. They are eating seeds of the Amaranthus hybridus, etc. 

8 A. M. — I go to Hubbard’s Close to see when the fringed gentians open. They begin to open in the sun about 8.30 A. M., or say 9. 

Chewink note still. Grackles in flocks. Phebe note of Chickadee often these days. 

Much green is indispensable for maples, hickories, birches, etc., to contrast with, as of pines, oaks, alders, etc. The former are fairest when seen against these. The maples, being in their prime, say yesterday, before the pines, are conspicuously parti-colored. 

P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. 

White pines in low ground and swamps are the first to change. Some of these have lost many needles. Some on dry ground have so far changed as to be quite handsome, but most only so far as to make the misty glaucous (green) leaves more soft and indefinite. 

The fever-bush is in the height of its change and is a showy clear lemon yellow, contrasting with its scarlet berries. The yellow birch is apparently at the height of its change, clear yellow like the black. I think I saw a white ash which was all turned clear yellowish, and no mulberry, in the Botrychium Swamp. 

Looking on the Great Meadows from beyond Nathan Barrett’s, the wool-grass, where uncut, is very rich brown, contrasting with the clear green of the portions which are mown; all rectangular. The staghorn sumach apparently in the prime of its change. 

In the evening I am glad to find that my phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky. 

The comet makes a great show these nights. Its tail is at least as long as the whole of the Great Dipper, to whose handle, till within a night or two, it reached, in a great curve, and we plainly see stars through it. [It finally reaches between one fourth and one third from the horizon to the zenith.]

Huckleberry bushes generally red, but dull Indian red, not scarlet. 

The red maples are generally past their prime (of color). They are duller or faded. Their first fires, like those of genius, are brightest. In some places on the edges of swamps many of their tops are bare and smoky. 

October 5, 2019

The dicksonia fern is for the most part quite crisp and brown along the walls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 5, 1858

The comet makes a great show these nights. See September 23 , 1858 (Saw the comet very bright in the northwest. "); November 1, 1858 ("Here are all the friends I ever had or shall have . . .They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. ") see also Comet Donali (first observed it on June 2, 1858. After the Great Comet of 1811, it was the most brilliant comet that appeared in the 19th century. It was also the first comet to be photographed.)

I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns.  See August 25, 1859 ("quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden"); September 1, 1854 ("Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden"); September 16, 1854 (“I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.”); September 27, 1858 ("What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns?”); October 7, 1860 (“Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow

8 A. M. — I go to Hubbard’s Close to see when the fringed gentians open. See September 12, 1854 (" I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian."); September 14, 1855 ("To Hubbard's Close. I see no fringed gentian yet.");  September 14, 1856 (" To Hubbard's Close. Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.");  September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday; was (some of it) withered then, says Edith Emerson."); October 1, 1858 ("The fringed gentians are now in prime. . . .They who see them closed, or in the afternoon only, do not suspect their beauty.”); October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered"); .October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively"); October 18, 1857 ("The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.");  October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom"); November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

 

Phebe note of Chickadee often these days. See  October 4, 1859 (" I hear. . . the sweet phe-be of the chickadee"); October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen.”);  October 10, 1856 ("The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard ");  October 20, 1856  ("The chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The fever-bush is in the height of its change and is a showy clear lemon yellow, contrasting with its scarlet berries. See September 24, 1859 ("Fever-bush berries are scarlet now, and also green. They have a more spicy taste than any of our berries, carrying us in thought to the spice islands. Taste like lemon-peel."); October 4, 1857 (“Fever-bush has begun to yellow.”); October 15, 1859 ("The fever-bush is for the most part bare, and I see no berries.")

The dicksonia fern is for the most part quite crisp and brown along the walls. See October 4, 1859 ("How interesting now, by wall-sides and on open springy hillsides, the large, straggling tufts of the dicksonia fern . . .. Long, handsome lanceolate green fronds, pointing in every direction, recurved and full of fruit, intermixed with yellowish and sere brown and shrivelled ones. . . .Their lingering greenness so much the more noticeable now that the leaves (generally) have changed. They affect us as if they were evergreen, such persistent life and greenness in the midst of their own decay") See also September 30, 1859 (" The evergreen ferns have been growing more and more distinct amid the fading and decaying and withering ones,")

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