A Book of the Seasons: Sedges in Early Spring

For the first time I perceive this spring

that the year is a circle.

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

On the Cliff I find

after long and careful search

one sedge flowering.

April 7, 1854

March 2. Two or three tufts of carex have shot up in Hosmer’s cold spring ditch and been frost-bitten. March 2, 1860

March 3. Also, pretty near [John Hosmer's second] spring, I see a tuft of carex (?) whose stiff glaucous points have risen several inches above the surface. March 3, 1859

March 19. A common sedge which already begins to yellow the top of some tussocks. March 19, 1860

March 22.  The phenomena of an average March . . . a Vegetation fairly begins, – conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc . . . The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d) . . . lake grass; and perchance the gooseberry and lilac begin to show a little green. That is, one indigenous native flower blooms. (Vide if the early sedge does.) March 22, 1860

March 25.  Much of this peculiar yellowish color on the surface of the Clamshell plain is due to a little curled sedge or grass growing at short intervals, loosely covering the ground (with green mosses intermixed) in little tufts  like curled hair.  March 25, 1859

April 2.  Some of the earliest plants are now not started because covered with snow, as the stellaria and shepherd's-purse. Others, like the Carex Pennsylvanica, the crowfoot, saxifrage, callitriche, are either covered or recently uncovered. I think it must be partly owing to the want of rain, and not wholly to the snow, that the first three are so backward.  April 2, 1856

April 7. On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected.  April 7, 1854

April 7. Round the two-mile square. I see where the common great tufted sedge (Carex stricta) has started under the water on the meadows, now fast falling. April 7, 1861 

April 10.   At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen . . . As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger. April 10, 1855

April 11.  My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days (not yet quite generally), the highest only two inches, is probably Carex umbellata. April 11, 1860

April 17.  The sedge is shooting up in the meadows, erect, rigid, and sharp, a glaucous green unlike that of the grass on banks. April 17, 1858

April 18. Common saxifrage and also early sedge I am surprised to find abundantly out—both—considering their backwardness April 2d. Both must have been out some, i. e. four or five, days half-way down the face of the ledge.  April 18, 1856 

April 22. What is that grass with a yellow blossom which I find now on the Cliff? [Carex marginata, early sedge, the earliest grass that flowers.] . . . The early sedge grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the
grass. April 22, 1852

April 22. Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there. April 22, 1859 

 [See June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta.)]

April 24. Sitting on Lightning Hillside and looking over Heywood's meadow, am struck by the vivid greenness of the tips of the sedge just pushing up out of its dry tussocks in the water. I observed it here on the 22d. It is some six inches high or more. All the lower, or the greater, part of the tussock is brown and sere and prostrate withered blades of last year, while from the top spring up ranks of green life like a fire, from amid the withered blades. This new grass is green beneath, but yellow-tipped, perhaps on account of the recent snow or higher water. It is the renewal of life. The contrast of life with death, spring with winter, is nowhere more striking. April 24, 1859

April 26. The forward-rank sedge of Well Meadow which is so generally eaten (by rabbits, or possibly woodchucks), cropped close, is allied to that at Lee's Cliff, which is also extensively browsed now. I have found it difficult to get whole specimens. Certain tender early greens are thus extensively browsed now, in warm swamp-edges and under cliffs, — the bitter cress, the Carex varia (?) at Lee's, even skunk-cabbage. April 26, 1860

May 2. The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two. May 2, 1860

May 10. That early glaucous, sharp-pointed, erect sedge, grass like, by the riverside is now apparently in prime. Is it the Carex aquatilis? May 10, 1858

May 10. As I stand on Hunt’s Bridge, I notice . . . the glaucous green of Carex stricta tufts, and the light yellowish green of the very coarse sedges of the meadow. May 10, 1860

May 14. The early sedges, even in the meadows, have blossomed before you are aware of it, while their tufts and bases are still mainly brown. May 14, 1860

***

See also:

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Greening grasses and sedges

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

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

A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: Greening Grasses and Sedges

  

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

How imperceptibly 

the first springing takes place!  

Very few indeed, 

even of botanists, are

 aware of this growth.

March 3, 1859

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

March 2. Two or three tufts of carex have shot up in Hosmer’s cold spring ditch and been frost-bitten . . . The caltha leaves have grown decidedly. They make nearly a handful in one place, above the surface of the springy water, the leaves not yet quite flatted out, but curled up into a narrow ellipse. They barely peep above the water. March 2, 1860

March 3. I see in that ditch (call it Grassy Ditch) near John Hosmer's second spring south of Nut Meadow Brook much grass which has lately grown an inch or more and lies flat on the water. Is it the Glyceria fluitans? It is somewhat frost-bitten too. It fills the ditch like moss, as seen at a little distance. It must be a very springy ditch to be thus open entirely.  

Also, pretty near the spring, I see a tuft of carex (?) whose stiff glaucous points have risen several inches above the surface. See two small water-bugs at the spring; none elsewhere. I see apparently some callitriche, fresh, in the spring. 

All the lower part of steep southern slopes of hills is now commonly bare, — though the snow may be pretty deep on the brow, — especially the springy bases where the skunk-cabbage, etc., grow. 

How imperceptibly the first springing takes place! 

In some still, muddy springs whose temperature is more equable than that of the brooks, while brooks and ditches are generally thickly frozen and concealed and the earth is covered with snow, and it is even cold, hard, and nipping winter weather, some fine grass which fills the water like a moss begins to lift its tiny spears or blades above the surface, which directly fall flat for half an inch or an inch along the surface, and on these (though many are frost-bitten) you may measure the length to which the spring has advanced, — has sprung. 

    Very few indeed, even of botanists, are aware of this growth. . . 

You may see (as March 2d) a little green crescent of caltha leaves, raised an inch or so above the water.  March 3, 1859

March 5.  The day before went to the Corner Spring to look at the tufts of green grass.  March 5, 1853  

March 5. I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them.  March 5, 1860

March 6. I see the skunk-cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close, amid the green grass, and what looks like the first probing of the skunk. The snow is now all off on meadow ground, in thick evergreen woods, and on the south sides of hills.  March 6, 1854

March 8. You cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days, perhaps some cress growing a little (?), certainly some pads, and various naturalized garden weeds steadily growing if not blooming, and apple buds sometimes expanding. Thus much of vegetable life or motion or growth is to be detected every winter. There is something of spring in all seasons. March 8, 1860

March 15.  I see in the ditches in Hubbard’s Close the fine green tips of spires of grass just rising above the surface of the water in one place, as if unwilling to trust itself to the frosty air. Favored by the warmth of the water and sheltered by the banks of the ditch, it has advanced thus far.  But generally I see only the flaccid and floating frost-bitten tops of grass which apparently started that warm spell in February.. .  It was the first green blush, as it were, — nay, it is purple or lake often, and a true blush, —of spring, of that Indian spring we had in February. An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present.  To be present at the instant when the springing grass at the bottoms of ditches lifts its spear above the surface and bathes in the spring air! Many a first faint crop mantling the pools thus early is mown down by the frost before the village suspects that vegetation has reawakened . . .  As usual at this date and earlier, there are a few square rods of green grass tufts at Brister’s springs, like a green fire under the pines and alders, and in one place an apparent growth of golden saxifrage.   March 15, 1857

March 17.  A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my great coat; almost like May heats. The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides — on the south side of the house.  The first tinge of green appears to be due to moisture more than to direct heat.   March 17, 1854

March 17.  No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but he will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before. 

Early as I have looked this year, perhaps the first unquestionable growth of an indigenous plant detected was the fine tips of grass blades which the frost had killed, floating pale and flaccid, though still attached to their stems, spotting the pools like a slight fall or flurry of dull-colored snowflakes After a few mild and sunny days, even in February, the grass in still muddy pools or ditches sheltered by the surrounding banks which reflect the heat upon it , ventures to lift the points of its green phalanx into the mild and flattering atmosphere, advances rapidly from the saffron even to the rosy tints of morning . But the following night comes the frost which with rude and ruthless hand ,sweeps the surface of the pool,  and the advancing morning pales into the dim light of earliest dawn. 

I thus detect the first approach of spring by finding here and there its scouts and vanguard which have been slain by the rear guard of retreating winter. March 17, 1857

March 19. The plants which have grown the most there — and they are very conspicuous now — are the forget-me-not , the Ranunculus repens (much more than any bulbosus), and a common sedge which already begins to yellow the top of some tussocks.  The lower part of the hill at Minott's is decidedly green now.  March 19, 1860

March 20. This is a slight, dripping, truly April-like rain. You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. More mist than rain; no wind, and the water perfectly smooth and dark, but ever and anon the cloud or mist thickens and darkens on one side, and there is a sudden rush of warm rain, which will start the grass . . . A. Buttrick said to-day that the black ducks come when the grass begins to grow in the meadows, i.e. in the water.  March 20, 1860

March 22.  The phenomena of an average March are increasing warmth, melting the snow and ice and. .. some greenness appearing on south bank . . .Vegetation fairly begins, – conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc., — and gradually many early herbaceous plants start . . . First perceptible greenness on south banks, 22d. The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d). . . and lake grass; and perchance the gooseberry and lilac begin to show a little green. That is, one indigenous native flower blooms. (Vide if the early sedge does.) March 22, 1860

March 24.  It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. March 24, 1855

March 25. The grass is dense and green as ever, and the caltha blooms in sheltered springy places, being protected from frosts in the night, probably, by a vapor arising from the warm water. March 25, 1860 

March 30.  There is a very perceptible greenness on our south bank now, but I cannot detect the slightest greenness on the south side of Lee’s Hill as I sail by it. It is a perfectly dead russet March 30, 1855

March 30.   In this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see . . . the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish; and the golden saxifrage, green and abundant . . .I can just see a little greening on our bare and dry south bank. In warm recesses and clefts in meadows and rocks in the midst of ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vegetation commences and steadily advances.March 30, 1856

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: 

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Signs of the Spring, greening grasses and sedges

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-sos-greening

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice.

April 11. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

The hills are now decidedly greened as seen a mile off, and the road or street sides pretty brightly so. 

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. 

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out, some killed by frost; probably a day or two at least. 

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. 

The early willow still in prime. Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? 

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). 

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. 

April 11, 2020

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days (not yet quite generally), the highest only two inches, is probably Carex umbellata.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1860

The hills are now decidedly greened. See  April 10, 1855 ("There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones.");April 17, 1856 ("There is a quite distinct tinge of green on the hillside seen from my window now."); April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups."); April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. . . .during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet") See also April 2, 1855 ("Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant" when a plant is moist or most alive. . . . The word, according to Webster, is from the Saxon grene, to grow, and hence is the color of herbage when growing. ")

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. See March 6, 1860 ("I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window")

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out. See April 11, 1853 ("The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning"); see also  April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. "); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open."); April 13, 1854 ('The red maple in a day or two. I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 18, 1856 ("Red maple stamens in some places project considerably, and it will probably blossom to-morrow if it is pleasant. "); April 22, 1855 ("Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge."); April 23, 1856 ("The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d."); April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ");April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("Red maples are past prime. I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees."); April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color."); April 29, 1859 ("Those red maples are reddest in which the fertile flowers prevail.")

The early willow still in prime. See  April 12, 1852 (“See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.”); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far. I notice that the sterile blossoms of that large-catkined early willow begin to open on the side of the catkin, like a tinge of golden light, gradually spreading and expanding over the whole surface and lifting their anthers far and wide.").

Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? See April 9, 1858 ("The staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.")

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. See April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath.") See also April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet." ) ; April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 13, 1855 ("Many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig."). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel.

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). See April 4, 1859 ("The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower"); April 13, 1858 ("Epigaea abundantly out, maybe four or five days.")/ See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. See April 16, 1855 ('Stow’s cold pond-hole is still full of ice though partly submerged, —the only pool in this state that I see.")

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days is probably Carex umbellata. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. );  April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger."); April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i.e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.");

A beautiful law of distribution.

April 22 

The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th. 

Arbor-vitae, how long? 

P. M. — In a fine rain, around Walden. 

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut just after entering, whose aments (which apparently here began to shed pollen yesterday) in scattered clusters at the ends of the bare twigs, but just begun to shed their pollen, not hanging loose and straight yet, but curved, are a very rich crimson, like some ripe fruit, as mulberries, seen against the sand. I cannot represent the number in a single cluster, but they are much the handsomest now before the crimson anthers have burst, and are all the more remarkable for the very open and bare habit of the tree. 

When setting the pines at Walden the last three days,

I was sung to by the field sparrow.

For music I heard their jingle from time to time.

That the music the pines were set to, and

I have no doubt they will build many a nest

under their shelter. 

It would seem as if such a field as this —

a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods,

with small pines scattered in it —

was well-nigh, if not quite, abandoned to

this one alone among the sparrows. 

The surface of the earth is portioned out among them.

By a beautiful law of distribution,

one creature does not too much interfere with another.

          I do not hear the song sparrow here. 

As the pines gradually increase,

and a wood-lot is formed,

these birds will withdraw to new pastures,

and the thrushes, etc., will take their place. 

[S]o my pines were established

by the song of the field sparrow.

They commonly place their nests here

under the shelter of a little pine in the field. 

As I planted there, wandering thoughts visited me, which I have now forgotten. My senses were busily suggesting them, though I was unconscious of their origin. 

E. g., I first consciously found myself entertaining the thought of a carriage on the road, and directly after I was aware that I heard it. No doubt I had heard it before, or rather my ears had, but I was quite unconscious of it, — it was not a fact of my then state of existence; yet such was the force of habit, it affected my thoughts nevertheless, so double, if not treble, even, are we. 

Sometimes the senses bring us information quicker than we can receive it. Perhaps these thoughts which run in ruts by themselves while we are engaged in some routine may be called automatic. 

I distinctly entertained the idea of a carriage, without the slightest suspicion how it had originated or been suggested to my mind. I have no doubt at all that my ears had heard it, but my mind, just then preoccupied, had refused to attend to it. 

This suggests that most, if not all, indeed, of our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. 

April 22, 2019

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. 

I still see a large flock of grackles. 

Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there. 

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods, into which they swiftly scale, dodging to right and left and avoiding the twigs, yet without once flapping the wings after having launched themselves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1859

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut  whose aments are a very rich crimson. See April 3, 1853 ("The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation");  April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata . . .shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. There is a female on the left, on Warren's Path at Deep Cut.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen

A field as this — a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods, with small pines scattered in it — [is]abandoned to this one alone among the sparrows. See  April 19, 1860 ("Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

Our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. Compare November 18, 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.")

At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking. See June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta. On this the musquash there commonly makes its stools. A tall slender sedge with conspicuous brown staminate spikes") See also April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. See April 22, 1852 ("It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge . . . This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."); April 22, 1856 ("It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.")

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See April 22, 1852 ("Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun.

March 25. 

A rainy day. 

P. M.— To Clamshell. 

I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. 

Again I walk in the rain and see the rich yellowish browns of the moist banks. These Clamshell hills and neighboring promontories, though it is a dark and rainy day, reflect a certain yellowish light from the wet withered grass which is very grateful to my eyes, as also the darker more reddish browns, as the radical leaves of the Andropogon scoparius in low tufts here and there. (Its culms, where they stand, are quite light yellow.) 

Surely russet is not the name which describes the fields and hillsides now, whether wet or dry. There is not red enough in it. I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." 

On the south side of these warm hills, it may perhaps be called one of the fawn-colors, i. e. brown inclining to green. 

Much of this peculiar yellowish color on the surface of the Clamshell plain is due to a little curled sedge or grass growing at short intervals, loosely covering the ground (with green mosses intermixed) in little tufts  like curled hair. 

I saw yesterday, in Laurel Glen, where the early sedge had been grazed very close to the ground, and the same, perhaps digested, fine as green-paint dust, lay around. Was it the work of a mouse? 

Day before yesterday, in clear, dry weather, we had pale-brown or fawn-colored earth, i. e., a dry, withered grass blade [color]; to-day, a more yellow brown or tawny, the same being wet. The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. The earth is more truly russet in November, when there is more redness left in the withered and withering vegetation. Such is the change in the color of the bare portions of the earth (i. e. bare of trees and bushes) produced by rain. 

Also the oak leaves are much redder. In fair weather the light color of these objects was simply a light reflected from them, originating in the sun and sky; now it is a more proper and inward light, which attracts and confines our attention to moist sward itself. 

A snipe flies away from the moist Clamshell shore, uttering its cr-a-ack c-r-r-rack. 

I thought the other day, How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun. 

A score of my townsmen have been shooting and trapping musquash and mink of late. Some have got nothing else to do. If they should strike for higher wages now, instead of going to the clam-banks, as the Lynn shoemakers propose, they would go to shooting musquash. They are gone all day; early and late they scan the rising tide; stealthily they set their traps in remote swamps, avoiding one another. 

Am not I a trapper too, early and late scanning the rising flood, ranging by distant wood-sides, setting my traps in solitude, and baiting them as well as I know how, that I may catch life and light, that my intellectual part may taste some venison and be invigorated, that my nakedness may be clad in some wild, furry warmth? 

The color of spring hitherto, — I should say that in dry weather it was fawn-colored, in wet more yellowish or tawny. When wet, the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens and the mosses.

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

Lynn shoemakers. See Lynn Shoeworkers Strike ("On March 17th,  1860 a demonstration by 10,000 shoeworkers from Lynn, Salem, Marblehead, and other Essex County towns caused Lynn officials to call in police and militia units from Boston. . . by the end of March growing numbers of shoeworkers had returned to their jobs. By early April, the historic strike was over.")

I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker. See March 25, 1853 (“I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree. ”); March 25, 1856 (“There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. ”)  See also note to March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. When wet, the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens and the mosses. See March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . .. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields - withered grass lit by the sun - is the color of a teamster's coat. It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year");  March 16, 1859 ("This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time.")