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

August 24.

August 24, 2019

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

Portulaca oleracea, purslane, with its yellow blossoms.

Chelone glabra.

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

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

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

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

Rattlesnake grass is ripe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lobelia pallida still.

Pointed cleavers or clivers (Galium asprellum).

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

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

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

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

Elderberries are ripe.

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

The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down. See July 16, 1851 ("The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch. I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.");  August 14, 1853 ("Methinks the reign of the milkweeds is over"); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds")

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


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

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

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

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime.

August 31.

P. M. – To Moore's Swamp.

Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one.

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. 

August 31, 2020

The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. I am surprised at their luxuriance and profusion.

The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing one, i. e. goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head, with the great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus rising above it.

There are also intermixed Solidago stricta, erechthites (fire-weed), Aster puniceus and longifolius, Galium asprellum in great beds, thoroughwort, trumpet-weed, Polygonum Hydropiper, Epilobium molle, etc., etc.

There has been no such rank flowering up to this. One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.

The ground is quite mildewy, it is so shaded by them, cellar-like.

Raspberries still fresh.

I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp.

Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.

Saw a great black spider an inch long, with each of his legs an inch and three quarters long, on the outside of a balloon-shaped web, within which were young and a great bag.

Viola pedata out again.

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water.

Cirsium muticum, in Moore's Swamp behind Indian field, going out of flower; perhaps out three weeks.

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begun to be conspicuous.

A low aster by Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow like a Radula, but with narrower leaves and more numerous, and scales without herbaceous tips.

An orange-colored fungus.

Baird, in Patent Office Report, says, “In all deer, except, perhaps, the reindeer, if the male be castrated when the horns are in a state of perfection, these will never be shed; if the operation be performed when the head is bare, they will never be reproduced; and if done when the secretion is going on, a stunted, ill formed, permanent horn is the result.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1853


Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. See August 20, 1852 ("Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. "); August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long?"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now")

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. See July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. "); August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now?") See also August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .”); August 24, 1853(Goldenrods and asters);September 1, 1856 ("I think it stands about thus with asters and golden-rods now.”); September 24, 1856 (“Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods and asters now”); October 8, 1856 ("The following is the condition of the asters and goldenrods")

The great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus [Tall flat-top white aster] See August 1, 1856 ("Diplopappus umbellatus at Peter's wall."); August 24, 1853 ("D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds)"); August 24, 1859 ("Diplopappus umbellatus, how long?"); September 1, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen."); September 24, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, still abundant.")

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

Viola pedata out again. See August 12, 1858 (“Saw a Viola pedata blooming again.”); September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); October 23, 1853 (" The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us"); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”).

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water See August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season"); October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson.")  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti?  See August 11, 1854 ("Aster Tradescanti, two or three days in low ground; flowers smaller than A. dumosus, densely racemed, with short peduncles or branchlets, calyx-scales narrower and more pointed."); August 14, 1856 ("Aster tradescanti, apparently a day or two."); August 30, 1859 ("Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus"); September 1, 1854 (" The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime.");
September 7, 1858 ("and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescantia"); September 10, 1853("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees."): September 13, 1856 ("The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely, since I left, a week ago. Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers.");September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.");  September 21, 1858 (" Saw no Aster Tradescanti in this walk, but an abundance of A. multiflorus in its prime, in Salem and Marblehead."); September 27, 1856 ("The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the Tradescanti.");  October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover."); October 25, 1853 ("In some places along the water's edge the Aster Tradescanti lingers still, some flowers purple, others white. The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight."); November 2, 1853 (Tthough [Aster undulatus ] is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even Tradescanti.")

Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow. According to Ray Angelo. Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts   Brown’s Ditch  was located in part of the Deacon Reuben Brown farm in a wetland north of Sleepy Hollow asssociated with Moore’s Swamp.

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood

July 3

July 3, 2013

Elder is now in its prime.

Buttercups are almost gone.

Clover is blackened.

The umbelled pyrola, apparently yesterday, as well as the P. rotundifolia and the P. elliptica, or shin-leaf.

The P. secunda, or one-sided pyrola, is already out of bloom.

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.

Mountain laurel lingers in the woods still.

The chestnut behind my old house site is fully out, and apparently has been partly so for several days.

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.

Smooth sumach just opening and already resounding with bees.

The water-target appears to be in its prime, its flowers rising above the water. Remarkable for the thick jelly on its leaves and stem.

A smaller potamogeton is in flower there, — the small globose white flower. Why is it so often already torn up by the roots?

Poke a day or two in favorable places.

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now.

The Utricularia vulgaris now yellows low muddy water, as near the Lincoln bound by Walden.

The Vaccinium vacillans a day or two ripe.

Black huckleberries. 

Tansy on the causeway.

The Canada thistle.

The pinweeds have a reddish look, as if in flower. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1853

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood. See June 7, 1853 ("The oven-bird runs from her covered nest, so close to the ground under the lowest twigs and leaves, even the loose leaves on the ground, like a mouse, that I can not get a fair view of her. "); June 10, 1855 ("Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.  See June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”);  See also  June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year."");June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely.");  July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”)  and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now. See June 29, 1853 ("Jersey tea, just beginning.") and note to June 27, 1853 ("The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers") see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

I hear the sound of distant thunder. The perception of beauty. The succession of wildflowers; the history of a hillside.

June 21. 

June 21, 2020

Monday. 7 p.m. — To Cliffs via Hubbard Bathing-Place.

Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. 

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined! 

In flowers, as well as men, we demand a beauty pure and fragrant, which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no, or an offensive, odor expresses the character of too many mortals. 

The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. 

Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by. 

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. 

Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I was therefore encouraged when, going through a field this evening, I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. 

When, in bathing, I rush hastily into the river the clamshells cut my feet. It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. 

I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. 

It is a cool evening, past 8 o'clock.

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. 

What rich crops this dry hillside has yielded! First I saw the Viola pedata here, and then the lupines and the snapdragon covered it; and now the lupines are done and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. 

This small dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which to some extent cover it or possess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden would be better clothed, or with a more pleasing variety, from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. It is a warmly placed dry hillside beneath a wall, very thinly clad with grass. Such spots there are in nature, natural flower gardens. Of this succession I hardly know which to admire the most. 

It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year. First and last you have the colors of the rainbow and more, and the various fragrances, which it has not. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.

I hear neither toads nor bullfrogs at present; they want a warmer night. 

I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thunder, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. 

Thunder and lightning are remarkable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. The thunder is signal guns to us. 

The dwarf orchis (O. herbiola (Bigelow), Platanthera flava (Gray)) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable. 

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. 

Obtuse galium. 

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles. 

Found the single-flowered broom-rape in Love Lane, under the oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1852


The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.On the swamp-pink they are solid.")

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. Compare July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers, . . .the pogonia has a strong snaky odor."); see also July 2, 857 ("Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two. "); to July 7, 1856 ("the snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries. there [Gowings Swamp]");July 8, 1857 ("Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower."); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow. “)..Coompare Arethusa bulbosa, May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); June 10, 1854 (“The fragrance of the arethusa is like that of the lady's-slipper, or pleasanter.”).  See also  June 19, 1852 ("These are peculiar days when you find the purple orchis and the arethusa, too, in the meadows."); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions.See  June 25, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”) August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.)


Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. See November 18, 1857 ("I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. ")

I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. See  December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear "); January 17, 1852 (“As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.”); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been."); July 26, 1852 ("The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society."); December 11. 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind."); October 4, 1859 ("You have got to be in a different state from common.") Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. See June 21, 1854 ("(panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom")

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. See July 10, 1857 ("The tephrosia, which grows by Peter's road in the woods, is a very striking and interesting, if I may not say beautiful, flower, especially when, as here, it is seen in a cool and shady place, its clear rose purple contrasting very agreeably with yellowish white, rising from amidst a bed of finely pinnate leaves.")

A natural garden. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here. See June 30, 1852 (" Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, See May 16, 1853 ("At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop."); June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”)  See also June 16, 1860 ("Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side.”); June 16, 1854 ("Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us.”); June 17, 1852 ("A small thunder-shower comes up . . . We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. Also see note to June 9, 1860 ("We have half a dozen showers to-day, distinct summer showers from black clouds suddenly wafted up from the west and northeast; also some thunder and hail, - large white stones.")

The dwarf orchis Platanthera flava (Gray) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable.  See June 18, 1854 ("Platanthera flava at the Harrington Bathing - Place, possibly yesterday , — an unimportant yellowish - green spike of flowers.")

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. See June 19, 1852 ("The orchis keeps well. One put in my hat this morning, and carried all day, will last fresh a day or two at home"); June 16, 1854 (" It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a wee") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem.See June 21, 1854 ("Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light."); See also June 12, 1853 ("A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.")

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town.

September 1

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

That reach in the road this side Britton's Camp might be called Nabalus Road, they are so abundant there. Some of them are fully six feet high, — a singularly tall and slender plant.

See, I think, my first tobacco-pipe this afternoon, now that they are about done, and have seen no pine- sap this year, abundant as both the above were last year. Like fungi, these plants are apparently scarce in a dry year, so that you might at first think them rare plants. This is a phenomenon of drought.

I see in different places small grubs splitting leaves now, and so marking them curiously with light brown or whitish on the green. Here are two at work in a Rhus Toxicodendron leaf. They appear to have been hatched within the leaf at the apex, and each has eaten upward on its own side of the midrib and equally fast, making a light-colored figure shaped like a column of smoke in the midst of the green. They perfectly split the leaf, making no visible puncture in it, even at the ribs or veins. Some creatures are so minute that they find food enough for them between the two sides of a thin leaf, without injuring the cuticle. The ox requires the meadows to be shorn for him, and cronches both blade and stalk, even of the coarsest grass, as corn; but these grubs do their browsing in narrower pastures, pastures not so wide as their own jaws, between fences (inviolable to them) of their own establishing, or along narrow lanes. There, secure from birds, they mine, and no harm can they do now that the green leaf has so commonly done its office.

If you would study the birds now, go where their food is, i. e. the berries, especially to the wild black cherries, elder-berries, poke berries, mountain-ash berries, and ere long the barberries, and for pigeons the acorns.

In the sprout-land behind Britton's Camp, I came to a small black cherry full of fruit, and then, for the first time for a long while, I see and hear cherry-birds — their shrill and fine seringo — and the note of robins, which of late are scarce. We sit near the tree and listen to the now unusual sounds of these birds, and from time to time one or two come dashing from out the sky toward this tree, till, seeing us, they whirl, disappointed, and perhaps alight on some neighboring twigs and wait till we are gone.

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles. If we stay long, they go off with a fling, to some other cherry tree, which they know of but we do not. The neighborhood of a wild cherry full of fruit is now, for the notes of birds, a little spring come back again, and when, a mile or two from this, I was plucking a basketful of elder-berries (for which it was rather early yet), there too, to my surprise, I came on a flock of golden robins and of bluebirds, apparently feeding on them.

Excepting the vacciniums, now past prime and drying up, the cherries and elder berries are the two prevailing fruits now. We had remarked on the general scarcity and silence of the birds, but when we came to the localities of these fruits, there again we found the berry-eating birds assembled, — young (?) orioles and bluebirds at the elder-berries.

Green white pine cones are thrown down. An unusual quantity of these have been stripped for some time past, and I see the ground about the bases of the trees strewn with them.

The spikenard berries in the shade at Saw Mill have but just begun to turn.

The Polygonatum biflorum with its row of bluish-green berries (the blue a bloom), pendulous from the axils of the recurved stem, apparently now in its prime.

Red choke-berry ripe.

Smooth sumach probably hardly ripe yet generally.

The fruit of the arum is the most remarkable that I see this afternoon, such its brilliancy, color, and form; perhaps in prime now. It is among the most easily detected now on the floor of the swamp, its bright- scarlet cone above the fallen and withered leaves and amid its own brown or whitish and withering leaves. Its own leaves and stem perhaps soft and decaying, while it is perfectly fresh and dazzling. It has the brightest gloss of any fruit I remember, and this makes the green ones about as remarkable as the scarlet. With, perchance, a part of the withered spathe still investing and veiling it. The scarlet fruit of the arum spots the swamp floor.

Now, also, bright-colored fungi of various colors on the swamp floor begin to compete with these fruits. I see a green one.

The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one. Are said to make a good dye. They fill your basket quickly, the cymes are so large and lie up so light.

The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon. Now, at 11 a. m., it makes quite a show, yet at 2 p. m. I do not notice it.

Bought a pair of shoes the other day, and, observing that as usual they were only wooden-pegged at the toes, I required the seller to put in an extra row of iron pegs there while I waited for them. So he called to his boy to bring those zinc pegs, but I insisted on iron pegs and no zinc ones. He gave me considerable advice on the subject of shoes, but I suggested that even the wearer of shoes, of whom I was one, had an opportunity to learn some of their qualities. I have learned to respect my own opinion in this matter. As I do not use blacking and the seller often throws in a box of blacking when I buy a pair of shoes, they accumulate on my hands.

Saw this afternoon, on a leaf in the Saw Mill woodpath, a very brilliant beetle a quarter or a third of an inch in length with brilliant green and copper reflections. The same surface, or any part of the upper surface, of the bug was green from one point of view and burnished copper from another. Yet there was nothing in its form to recommend this bug.

You must be careful not to eat too many nuts. I one winter met a young man whose face was broken out into large pimples and sores, and when I inquired what was the matter, he answered that he and his wife were fond of shagbarks, and therefore he had bought a bushel of them, and they spent their winter evenings eating them, and this was the consequence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1859

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. See August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them."); August 29, 1854 ("Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds "); September 1, 1860: ("Cherries are especially birds' food, and . . . I shall think the birds have the best right to them..")

The fruit of the arum is the most remarkable that I see this afternoon, such its brilliancy, color, and form; perhaps in prime now. See August 22, 1852 ("The arum berries are mostly devoured, apparently by birds. . ..Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them."); September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground."); September 4, 1856 ("Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime.”); September 4, 1857 ("Arum berries ripe.”); September 24, 1856 ("Aarum berries still fresh"); September 28, 1856 ("The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide and rather flattish. . . . These singular vermilion-colored berries, about a hundred of them, surmount a purple bag on a peduncle six or eight inches long. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Arum Berries

The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now. See August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common."); September 2, 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore."); September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill")

Green white pine cones are thrown down.  See September 16, 1857("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down.")

Bought a pair of shoes the other day. See EDK August 9, 1860 (" Bot a pair of shoes for $1.25"); December 4, 1856 ("When I bought my boots yesterday, Hastings ran over his usual rigmarole.")

There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

. .. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago . There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe . If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first , and so know which formed first , you may presume that these will ripen soonest ; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root , as the oldest . Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any . Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them , like a fungus . These are as green as a leek through and through , and you'll find yourself in a pickle if you open one . Others have a dead dark green- ness , the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed , and these you may safely bet on . If the vine is quite green and lively , the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign . For fear we should not discover it before , this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness ( if not mealiness ) within . Of two otherwise similar , take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles , i . e . , which is hollowest . The old or ripe ones sing base ; the young , tenor or falsetto . Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within , but this is not to be allowed . Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated , suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose . It is very childish . One man told me that he could n't raise melons because his children would cut them all up . I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth , and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius ' . . .

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

The children have done 

bringing huckleberries to sell 

for nearly a week.

I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time

August 26. 

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. 

The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. 

The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is surmounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropiperoides. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. 

Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. 

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound.

 Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. 

The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. 

How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth is trodden, bordering on paths ! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. 

The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. 

The river is a little cooled by yesterday's rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. 

I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. 

Now for dangle-berries. 

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. 

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. 

I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this.

The Uvularia sessilifolia is for the most part turned yellow, with large green fruit, or even withered and brown. 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. 

I see a goldfinch eating the seeds of the coarse barn yard grass, perched on it. It then goes off with a cool twitter. 

Notice arrowhead leaves very curiously eaten by some insect. They are dotted all over in lines with small roundish white scales, — which your nail will remove, and then a scar is seen beneath, — as if some juice had exuded from each puncture and then hardened. 

The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog- days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct; saw-grass reveals its spikes in the shorn fields; sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. Farmers feel encouraged about their late potatoes and corn. Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. Meadow-haying is over. 

The first significant event (for a long time) was the frost of the 17th. That was the beginning of winter, the first summons to summer. Some of her forces succumbed to it. The second event was the rain of yesterday. 

My neighbor told me yesterday that about four inches of rain had fallen, for he sent his man for a pail that was left in the garden during the rain, and there was about four inches depth of water in it. I inquired if the pail had upright sides. "No," he said, "it was flaring ! ! " However, according to another, there was full four inches in a tub. 

Leersia or cut-grass in prime at Potter's holes. 

That first frost on the 17th was the first stroke of winter aiming at the scalp of summer. Like a stealthy and insidious aboriginal enemy, it made its assault just before daylight in some deep and far-away hollow and then silently withdrew. Few have seen the drooping plants, but the news of this stroke circulates rapidly through the village. Men communicate it with a tone of warning. The foe is gone by sunrise, but some fearful neighbors who have visited their potato and cranberry patches report this stroke. The implacable and irresistible foe to all this tender greenness is not far off, nor can we be sure, any month in the year, that some scout from his low camp may not strike down the tenderest of the children of summer. 

The earliest and latest frosts are not distinguishable. This foe will go on steadily increasing in strength and boldness, till his white camps will be pitched over all the fields, and we shall be compelled to take refuge in our strongholds, with some of summer's withered spoils stored up in barns, maintaining ourselves and our herds on the seeds and roots and withered grass which we have embarned. Men in anticipation of this time have been busily collecting and curing the green blades all the country over, while they have still some nutriment in them. Cattle and horses have been dragging homeward their winter's food.

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side, Drosera Flat, not out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1859


Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe. See note to August 23, 1856 (Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. ")
  
Cornus sericea berries See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. See August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays"); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")

One of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders. See September 12, 1858 ("They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum. See August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.") 

[Northern bog-clubmoss is by far the most common species of bog-clubmoss in New England.  The tops of the erect shoots are distinctively widened. Its diminutive size, thin horizontal shoots, and entire trophophylls (sterile leaves) quickly distinguish most populations; it frequently occurs in the absence of other species or hybrids. ~ GoBotany]

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

A botanist in pursuit of grasses tramples down oaks in his walk.

September 9. 

P. M. — To Waban Cliff. 

A very hot day, — 90°, as I hear. Yesterday was hot, too. 

Now it is about time to gather elder-berries. 

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. 

What is that short squeaking note heard from time to time from amid the weeds on the west side the river at Hubbard’s Bath? 

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There especially stands the brown-headed wool-grass. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks.

(Was it the note of the last I heard?)

Heard a short plover-like note from a bird flying high across the river. 

Watched a little dipper some ten rods off with my glass, but I could see no white on the breast. It was all black and brownish, and head not enlarged. Who knows how many little dippers are sailing and sedulously diving now along the edge of the pickerel-weed and the button-bushes on our river, unsuspected by most? 

This hot September afternoon all may be quiet amid the weeds, but the dipper, and the bittern, and the yellow legs, and the blue heron, and the rail are silently feeding there. At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water. 

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncaceoa and Gramineoe; even; i. e., I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. 

How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk. 

Bidens cernua, how long?


The river is about at its height to-day or yesterday. Much bur-reed and heart-leaf is floating and washed up, apparently the first important contribution to the river wrack. The sportsman will paddle a boat now five or six miles, and wade in water up to his knees, being out all day without his dinner, and think himself amply compensated if he bags two or three yellow-legs. The most persistent and sacrificing endeavors are necessary to success in any direction. 

Woodbine scarlet, like a brilliant scarf on high, wrapped around the stem of a green tree. By a blush betrays where it hangs upon an elm. 

I find an abundance of beaked hazelnuts at Blackberry Steep, one to three burs together, but, gathering them, I get my fingers full of fine shining bristles, while the common hazel burs are either smooth or covered with a softer glandular down; i. e., its horns are brazen tipped. 

Under the rocks near the slippery elm, the Gymnostichum Hystrix, bottle-brush grass, hedgehog grass, long done. 

Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there. They kept up a peculiar note. My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana. 

R. says that he has caught pigeons which had ripe grapes in their crops long before any were ripe here, and that they came from the south west. 

We live in the same world with the Orientals, far off as they may seem. Nature is the same here to a chemist’s tests. 

The weeping willow (Salix Babylonica) will grow here. The peach, too, has been transplanted, and is agreeable to our palates. So are their poetry and philosophy near and agreeable to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1858

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants. A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. See  November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.".); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye."); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye."); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.") July 2, 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”); October 13, 1857 (“We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there.”); November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them”) Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”)

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. See September 4, 1856 (“Viola pedata again.”); September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”); September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.”)

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks. See Walden (“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”); Walking (“A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”); January 22, 1852 (“I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)