Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea.

July 8. 

P. M. — To Laurel Glen. 

A chewink's nest with four young just hatched, at the bottom of the pyrola hollow and grove, where it is so dry, about seven feet southwest of a white pine. 

Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings. 

Chimaphila umbellata, apparently a day or two. 

I find the Pyrola secunda only on the point of expanding. 

Hear apparently redstarts there, — so they must have nests near, — also pine warblers and till tilts. 

Later. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

The Gaylussacia dumosa is now in prime at least. 


The drosera, round and spatulate leafed, is very abundant and handsome on the sphagnum in the open spaces, amid the Andromeda calyculata and polifolia. 

Pogonia ophioglossoides
(Portsmouth Public Library)

Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower. 

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia, which she saw very abundantly in bloom on the Blue Hills (Bigelow's locality) on the 29th of June. Says she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1857

A white pine stump . . . was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings. See November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon, -- ninety-five feet long, nine and ten-twelfths in circumference at butt. . .. From Vermont.”); November 1, 1860 ("Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land [cut] four years ago. One, having 164 rings, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635.”)

I find the Pyrola secunda only on the point of expanding. See March 7, 1855 ("The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone.”)

Hear apparently redstarts there, — so they must have nests near . . . See July 13, 1856 (“Saw and heard two or three redstarts at Redstart Woods, where they probably have nests. ”); June 23, 1855 ("Probably a redstart’s nest on a white oak sapling, twelve feet up, on forks against stem. Have it. See young redstarts about.”)
 
The drosera, round and spatulate leafed, is very abundant . . .See July 13,, 1856 ("Hubbard's meadow — . . . Drosera longifolia and also rotundifolia, some time.”)

Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower:

• The snakemouth orchid or rose pogonia is  distinctive orchid, with a pink flower and a single clasping leaf half way up the stem. The specific name (ophioglossoides) refers to the fact that Adder's tongue ferns (Ophioglossum), have a similar single leaf half way up the stem. ~ GoBotany

•  P. ophioglossoides. Snake-mouthed Arethusa, from which genus it was taken; stem nearly a foot high, with a single flower, nodding and pale-purple, and one oval-lanceolate leaf, and a leafy bract near the flower; lip fimbriate; swamps; July. The flower resembles a snake's head, whence its specific name. ~ Reports on the herbaceous plants and on the quadrupeds of Massachusetts 199(1840).

Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia.  Long leaved bluet (Houstonia) ~ Gobotany

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia . . .See note to May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. . . ")

We find only the world we look for.

July 2

Partridge-berry in bloom

(Mitchella repens)

July 2, 2017

(avesong)

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

Flannery says that there was a frost this morning in Moore's Swamp on the Bedford road, where he has potatoes. He observed something white on the potatoes about 3.30 a. m. and, stooping, breathed on and melted it. Minott says he has known a frost every month in the year, but at this season it would be a black frost, which bites harder than a white one. 

The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. This is commonly an inconspicuous bush, eight to twelve inches high, half prostrate over the sphagnum in which it grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc., but sometimes twenty inches high quite on the edge of the swamp. It has a very large and peculiar bell-shaped flower, with prominent ribs and a rosaceous tinge, and is not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. 

The flower deserves a more particular description than Gray gives it. But Bigelow says well of its corolla that it is "remarkable for its distinct, five angled form." Its segments are a little recurved. The calyx-segments are acute and pink at last; the racemes, elongated, about one inch long, one-sided; the corolla, narrowed at the mouth, but very wide above; the calyx, with its segments, pedicels, and the whole raceme (and indeed the leaves somewhat), glandular-hairy. 

Calla palustris (with its convolute point like the cultivated) at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. 

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. 

July 2, 2017

I hear many Maryland yellow-throats about the edge of this swamp, and even [?] near their nests. Indeed, I find one or two old ones suspended much like a red-wing's amid the water andromeda. They are quite small and of such material as this bird chooses. 

I see amid the Andromeda Polifolia pure bright crimson leaves, and, looking closely, find that in many instances one branch, affected by a kind of disease, bears very handsome light-crimson leaves, two or three times as wide as usual, of the usual white color beneath, which contrast strangely with the slender green and glaucous ones on the contiguous branches. 

The water andromeda has similar crimson leaves, only proportionally larger and coarser, showing the dots. These are very common. Those of the Polifolia far more delicate. 

Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1857

The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. . . . not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. See June 25, 1857 ("To Gowing's Swamp. . . . Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.”):

• Dwarf huckleberry (Gaylussacia bigeloviana or Gaylussacia dumosa is a northern plant that occurs in bogs and fens. Its delicate, bell-like flowers tinged in pink mature into juicy black fruits, which are eaten by ruffed grouse, quail, turkeys, foxes, and squirrels.~ GoBotany

 See also   August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”);August 8, 1858 (“the Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella . . . the only inedible species of  Vaccinieoe that I know in this town”)

It grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc. See August 30, 1856 "(I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe.")

Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. See May 29, 1856 (“Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.”); June 19, 1856 ("Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed:. . . the Calla palustris”); June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp.”); August 29, 1857 ("I find the calla [in Owl-Nest Swamp] going to seed, but still the seed is green.”); May 29, 1858 ("At Calla Swamp. . .Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest") The Owl-Nest Swamp , Bateman Pond Swamp and Calla Swamp are the same,  being the bog located south of Bateman’s Pond.

~ Calla (bog arum, marsh calla, wild calla, water-arum) is a genus of flowering plant containing the single species Calla palustris. Not to be confused with species from tropical Africa in a separate genus, often termed "calla lilies”.~ Wikipedia

One or two old yellow-throat nests quite small and of such material as this bird chooses.See note to June 7, 1857 (“A nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end.”)

Looking closely, find that in many instances one branch, affected by a kind of disease, bears very handsome light-crimson leaves . . .See April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. .... It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”)

Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. 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. See March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. “); March 29, 1853 (“It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”); 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.”) November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); December 11, 1855; ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. 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. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); September 2, 1856; ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”); September 9, 1858 (“A man sees only what concerns him.”); 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. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); 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 an object

not seen as we find only

the world we look for.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We find only the world we look for. 

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

I turn to listen to a hermit thrush by the Fisher Pond

The partridge-berry in bloom, a  pretty fringed flower in pairs.

The black throated blue sings at the view.

Hemlock cones form near the end of new branchlets.

Jane finds a miniature acorn, a tiny Hickory nut 

and a hop hornbeam flower on the forest floor.

We are out for five hours in mid-afternoon the sun just slanting through the trees as we come home at 6:30. The rain of the past week has washed all the trails clear of leaves and we improve natures work along the way,  first cutting up climb across the neighbors land to the double chair it is hot and still, then down around the Fisher pond and back up over the ridge detouring to the porcupine tree then bushwhacking side-hill towards the view.

Jane puts a blanket down for the dogs but ends up on it  herself it's like a beach she says without the water or the sand. Clouds float in the sky it seems clear and dry straight overhead we stay a long time listening to the black throated blue at the view 

We go down the long way deep into the big house swamp now overgrown with nettles that Jane clears out it is full of water and wet all the way out to our land and beyond.  we cross the stream by the fort (east side) and there's as much water there as I have seen. Sunlight slanting through the trees making spots on the cliffs as we walk out the Boulder trail home

I turn to listen 

to a hermit thrush by the 

Kendall-Fisher Pond.

Clouds float in the sky 

a long time listening to 

the black throated blue 

We are out five hours 

the sun just slanting through the 

trees as we come home.

zphx 20170702

Two Mountain-ash.

June 25.

 

June 25, 2017

Most of the mountain-ash trees on the street are the European, as Prichard's, Whiting's, etc. (Pyrus Aucuparia is the European). The American ones in Cheney's (from Winchendon) row have only opened within a day or two; that American one in Mrs. Hoar's yard, apparently a week. The fruit of the European one is as large as small peas already.

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp.

 

June 25, 2017 

White pine effete.

Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1857

The mountain-ash trees. See June 12, 1857 ("The American mountain-ash not yet out . . . Nuttall says its leaves are at last very smooth. I have hitherto observed the Pyrus aucuparia, or European, at Prichard's, Whiting's, etc.”)

White pine effete. See June 25, 1852 (“I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete.");  June 25, 1858 ("The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers, like an excrement.”) and note to June 21, 1856 (“Much pine pollen is washed up on the northwest side of the pond.”); July 1, 1852 ("The path by the wood-side is red with the effete staminiferous flowers of the white pine.")

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

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 © 2009-2021

The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe.

August 17. 

P. M. — Walked with Minot Pratt behind his house. 

Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still with red or scarlet calyx-lobes to the seed, roadside this side H. Shattuck's.

Aster miser some time, turned purple. A. longifolius not long.

Hieracium Canadense. 

Pratt describes finding one or two small yellowish plants on the edge of his field under the hill, like a polygala, but twice as large, stiff, and points of the flowers turned down [?]; leaf clover-like, three-foliate. Russell had suggested genista. 

He has in his garden the mountain fringe (Adlumia cirrhosa), which grows in Maine and he thought in the western part of this State. 

Also wood geranium (G. dissectum (Big.)) from Fitzwilliam, though Gray seems to think that the Carolinianum has been mistaken for it. 

Rhus copallina already going to seed by the wall, apparently on what was W. E. C.'s ground. 

Saw again the red huckleberry and the white hardhack. The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripe. It is then red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted. I do not perceive any very marked peculiarity in the bush, unless that the recent twigs are red. The last year's a peculiar ochreous color and the red buds in the axils larger. It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 17, 1856

Hieracium Canadense. See July 25, 1856 ("The Hieracium Canadense grows by the road fence in Potter's hydrocotyle field, some seven or eight inches high, in dense tufts!"); August 1, 1854 ("Hieracium Canadense,apparently a day or two."); October 2, 1856 ("Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. "); see also August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)


Saw again the red huckleberry. ... The red huckleberry is as easily distinguished in the green state as when ripeT he red huckleberry is . . .red with a white cheek, often slightly pear-shaped, semitransparent with a lustre, very finely and indistinctly white-dotted.. . .It might be called Gaylussacia resinosa var. erythrocarpa. See Augusst 4 , 1856 ("and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities");  May 18, 1857 ("The red huckleberry looks more forward — blossom-buds more swollen — than those of common there."); June 7, 1857 ("Pratt has . . . Red huckleberry about same time. It is sticky like the black.") Compare August 2, 1853 ("John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries."); August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”); august 7, 1858 (" find huckleberries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them. These and also other roundish ones near by, and apparently huckleberries generally, are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass it looks like a resin which has exuded."); ,August 8, 1858 (I see [at Ledum  swamp][ especially near the pool, tall and slender huckleberry bushes of a peculiar kind. Some are seven feet high. They are, for the most part, three or four feet high, very slender and drooping, bent like grass to one side. The berries are round and glossy-black, with resinous dots, as usual, and in flattish-topped racemes, sometimes ten or twelve in a raceme, but generally more scattered. Call it, perhaps, the tall swamp huckleberry."")

Two ladies in a boat and a profusion of berries

August 4

P. M. — Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. 

Lespedeza violacea, perhaps the largest-leafed variety, leafets one inch by one third inch, petioled, well out on side of Blackberry Steep. 

Scare up a young apparently summer duck, floating amid the pads, and the same again, coming within gunshot. I think it young because it is not very shy. 

Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. 

Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year!

Fortunate that these cows in their pasture do not love them, but pass them by. The blackberries are already softening, and of all kinds there are many, many more than any or all creatures can gather. They are literally five or six species deep. 

• First, away down in the shade under all you find, still fresh, the great very light blue (i. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit; 
• then, next above, the still denser bunches and clusters of V. vacillans, of various varieties, firm and sweet, solid food; 
• and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities; 
• and over all runs rampant the low blackberry (Rubus Canadensis), weighing down the thicket with its wreaths of black fruit. 
• Also here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all. 

You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the biggest of the blackberries — as big as your thumb — and clutching here and there a handful of huckleberries or blueberries, but never, perchance, suspecting the delicious cool blue-bloomed ones under all.  This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets. 

Each patch, each bush, seems fuller and blacker than the last. Such a profusion, yet you see neither birds nor beasts eating them, unless ants and the huckleberry-bug! 

I carried my hands full of bushes to the boat, and, returning, the two ladies picked fully three pints from these alone, casting the bare bushes into the stream.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1856

Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies."); September 25, 1858 Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. See also September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons."); September 26, 1859 ("How feeble women, or rather ladies, are! They can not bear to be shined on, but generally carry a parasol to keep off the sun.")

Lespedeza violacea, perhaps the largest-leafed variety, . . . well out. See August 5, 1855 ("The common small violet lespedeza out, elliptic leaved, one inch long.”); August 13, 1856 (“In Bittern Cliff Woods that (apparently) very oblong elliptical leafed Lespedeza violacea, growing very loose and open on a few long petioles, one foot high by four or five inches wide.")

. . .the scarcity last year. .See August 7, 1855 ("To Tarbell Hill again with the Emersons, a-berrying. Very few berries this year.")

Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached. See August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn."); August 4, 1852 (“I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall.”); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. See 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 intermixed.") Compare July 26, 1854 ("Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, — large and dense clusters of Vaccinium vacillans, largest in most moist ground, sprinkled with the red ones not ripe; great high blueberries, some nearly as big as cranberries, of an agreeable acid; huckleberries of various kinds, some shining black, some dull-black, some blue; and low blackberries of two or more varieties. The broods of birds just matured find thus plenty to eat.")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Such a profusion

each patch each bush seems fuller – 

blacker than the last.

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