Botonizing up the Railroad

August 8.

5 A.M.  -- Up railroad. The nabalus, which may have been out one week elsewhere.  

Also rough hawkweed, and that large asterlike flower Diplopappus umbellatus, a day or two. 

Smooth speedwell again. 

Erechthites. 

Columbine again. 

The first watermelon. 

Aster patens and Aster laevis, both a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1853

The nabalus, which may have been out one week elsewhere. See note to September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime")

Also rough hawkweed. See July 21, 1851 ("The rough hawkweed, too, resembling in its flower the autumnal dandelion.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hawkweeds (hieracium)

That large asterlike flower Diplopappus. [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?"); See August 31, 1853 ("The great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus"); September 1, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen."); September 24, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, still abundant.")

Smooth speedwell again. See May 24, 1853 ("The smooth speedwell is in its prime now, whitening the sides of the back road . . . Its sweet little pansy like face looks up on all sides.")

Erechthites. See July 24, 1853 ("There is erechthites there [at Hubbard’s burnt meadow.], budded.") ; August 1, 1856 ("Erechthites, apparently two or three days, by Peter's Path, end of Cemetery, the middle flowers first.")

The first watermelon. See August 11, 1852 ("We had a ripe watermelon on the 7th."); August 19, 1851 ("Gathered our first watermelon to-day."); August 28, 1856 ("First watermelon.")

Aster patens and Aster laevis, both a day or two. July 13, 1856 ("Am surprised to see an Aster laevis, out a day or two, in road on sandy bank.") See July 19, 1854 ("I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens "); July 27, 1853 ("I notice to-day the first purplish aster... The afternoon of the year.”); August 10, 1853 (" I see again the Aster patens . . . though this has no branches nor minute leaves atop.") see also August 12, 1856 ("The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look.”); August 21, 1856 ("The commonest asters now are, 1st, the Radula; 2d, dumosus; 3d, patens; 4th, say puniceus; 5th, cordtfolius; 6th, macrophyllus; (these two a good while); 7th, say Tradescanti ; 8th, miser; 9th, longifolius; (these three quite rare yet); 10th, probably acuminatus, some time (not seen); 11th, undulatus; 12th, loevis; (these two scarcely to be seen yet)."); September 18, 1857 ("Going along the low path under Bartlett's Cliff, the Aster laevis flowers, when seen toward the sun, are very handsome, having a purple or lilac tint.")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

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

The air is of late cooler and clearer, autumnal.

September 2. 

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

The pontederia leaves are now decidedly brown or brownish, and this may be the effect of frost, since we have had some considerable in low places. Perhaps they occupy particularly cold places. 

The farmer is obliged to hide his melon-patch in the midst of his corn or potatoes, far away. I sometimes stumble on it as I am going across lots. I see one to day where the watermelons are intermixed with carrots in a carrot-bed, and so concealed by the general resemblance of leaf, etc., at a little distance. 

Going along Clamshell Hill, I look over the meadows. Now, after the first rain raising the river, the first assault on the summer's sluggishness, the air is of late cooler and clearer, autumnal, and the meadows and low grounds, which, of course, have been shorn, acquire a fresh yellowish green as in the spring. This is another phase of the second spring, of which the peeping of hylas by and by is another. 

I once did some surveying for a man who remarked, but not till the job was done, that he did not know when he should pay me. I did not pay much heed to this, though it was unusual, supposing that he meant to pay me some time or other. But after a while he sent to me a quart of red huckleberries, and this I thought was ominous and he distinguished me altogether too much by this gift, since I was not his particular friend. I saw it was the first installment, which would go a great way toward being the last. In course of years he paid a part of the debt in money, and that is the last I have heard of it. 

The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides. 

At Ledum Swamp the frosts have now touched the Polygonum Careyi pretty extensively, the leaves and stem, leaving the red spikes; also some erechthites and poke and the tenderest high blueberry shoots, their tips (from where the bushes were cut down). But the Woodwardia Virginica is not touched. (Vide back, August 23d.) 

Poke berries begin at Corner Spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1859

Now, after the first rain raising the river, the first assault on the summer's sluggishness, the air is of late cooler and clearer, autumnal. See September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably"); September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”); September 11, 1853 ("Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. . . .The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again.")

The meadows acquire a fresh yellowish green as in the spring. This is another phase of the second spring, of which the peeping of hylas by and by is another. See  August 4, 1853("The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring."); August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring."); September 14, 1852 ("The grass is very green after the rains, like a second spring,"); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds.")

But after a while he sent to me a quart of red huckleberries, and this I thought was ominous.See January 25, 1858 ("I am amused to see what airs men take upon themselves when they have money to pay me.")

The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom. See August 30, 1856 ("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”); August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”)

The Woodwardia Virginica is not touched. See September 6, 1858 ("At Ledum Pool edge, I find the Woodwardia Virginica fern, its fruit mostly turned deep reddish-brown")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet.

October 14, 2016

October 14. 

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. 

Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness, perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. [No.]

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close. 

Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. 

The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples. 

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. 

October 14, 2018

Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered erechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. 

In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to eight feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. 

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1856

Leaves are fast falling . . . perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. See October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing.")

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. See October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. . . ."); October 13, 1855 ("A thick carpet of white pine needles lies now lightly, half an inch or more in thickness, above the dark-reddish ones of last year."); October 15 1858 ("White pines are in the midst of their fall");  October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet.") See also The October Pine Fall

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones . . . See October 20, 1852 (" . . .tansy . . ."); October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out."); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .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.").

Dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies.

August 23. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. It has fallen outward on all sides ray-wise, and rests on the ground, forming perfectly regular circle, four feet in diameter and fifteen inches high, with a dark ash- colored centre, twenty inches in diameter, composed of the stems, then a wide circumference, one foot or more broad, of dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies. This is as regular as a wheel. So fair and pure and abundant. 

Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. 

White goldenrod, not long commonly. 

Decodon getting stale at Second Andromeda Pond. Often the end has rooted itself, and the whole forms a loop four feet long and twenty or more inches high in the middle, with numerous branches, making it rather troublesome to wade through. Where the stems bend down and rest on the water, they swell to several times their usual size and acquire that thick, soft bark, and put forth numerous roots; not the extreme point, but a space just short of it, while that starts up again. 

On R. W. E.'s hillside by railroad, burnt over by the engine in the spring, the erechthites has shot up abundantly, very tall and straight, some six or seven feet high. 

Those singular crowded and wrinkled dry galls, red and cream-color mingled, on white oak shrubs, with their grubs in them.

On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush. The flowers are not yet open, and if they were, perhaps he could not enter. He proceeds at once, head downwards, to the base of the tube, extracts the sweet there, and departs. Examining, I find that every flower has a small hole pierced through the tube, commonly through calyx and all, opposite the nectary. This does not hinder its opening. 

The Rape of the Flower! The bee knew where the sweet lay, and was unscrupulous in his mode of obtaining it. A certain violence tolerated by nature. 

Now for high blackberries, though the low are gone. At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid. 

On this Lespedeza Stuvei, a green locust an inch and three quarters long. 

The scent of decaying fungi in woods is quite offensive now in many places, like carrion even. I see many red ones eaten more or less in the paths, nibbled out on the edges. 

7 p. m. — The river has risen four inches since last night and now is one inch above the wall, and there is a little current there. Probably, then, the Assabet has begun to fall, — if this has not risen higher than that. 

J. Farmer says that he found that the gummed twig of a chimney swallow's nest, though it burned when held in a flame, went out immediately when taken out of it, and he thinks it owing to a peculiarity in the gum, rendering the twig partly fire-proof, so that they cannot be ignited by the sparks in a chimney. I suggested that these swallows had originally built in hollow trees, but it would be interesting to ascertain whether they constructed their nests in the same way and of the same material then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1856


I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. See August 23, 1858 (“I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green.”); July 17, 1852 ("The Antennaria margaritacea, pearly everlasting, is out")

Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes 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 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.")

The Rape of the Flower! See October 19, 1852 ("I see that the bees have gnawed round holes in [fringed gentian] sides to come at the nectar.")

A green locust an inch and three quarters long. See August 21, 1853 ("Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. "); August 27, 1860 ("See one of the shrilling green alder locusts on the under side of a grape leaf. Its body is about three quarters of an inch or less in length; antennae and all, two inches. “); September 6, 1857 ("I see one of those peculiarly green locusts with long and slender legs on a grass stem, which are often concealed by their color.")

The scent of decaying fungi in woods is quite offensive now . . .See September 10, 1854 ("Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all . . ."); August 14, 1853 ("there are countless great fungi of various forms and colors, the produce of the warm rains and muggy weather . . . and for most of my walk the air is tainted with a musty, carrion like odor, in some places very offensive"); August 16, 1853 ("Yesterday also in the Marlborough woods, perceived everywhere that offensive mustiness of decaying fungi. ")

The gummed twig of a chimney swallow's nest . . See July 29, 1856 ("Pratt gave me a chimney swallow's nest. . . firmly fastened together by a very conspicuous whitish semi-transparent glue,. . ."