I see tobacco-pipes now in the path.

July 31.

 P. M. — To Flint’s Pond.

I see much eriocaulon floating, with its mass of white roots uppermost, near the shore in Goose Pond. I suspect it may have been loosened up by the musquash, which either feeds on it, or merely makes its way through its dense mats. 

I also see small fishes, apparently shiners, four or five inches long, in this pond. Yet I have seen this almost all dried up.

I have smelled fungi in the thick woods for a week, though they are not very common. I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. 

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons. 

The anychia already shows green seed-vessels on its lower branches. 

Petty morel has begun to bloom in shady swamps, how long?

Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty). It was placed between many small upright shoots, against the main stem of the slender maple, and measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within. 

It is quite firm (except the external leaves falling off) the rim about three quarters of an inch thick,  and it is composed externally of leaves, apparently chiefly chestnut, very much decayed, beneath which, in the place of the grass and stubble of which most nests are composed, are apparently the midribs of the same leaves, whose whole pulp, etc., is gone, arranged as compactly and densely (in a curving manner) as grass or stubble could be, upon a core, not of mud, but a pale-brown composition quite firm and smooth (within), looking like inside of a cocoanut-shell, and apparently composed of decayed leaf pulp (?) which the bird has perhaps mixed and cemented with its saliva. This is about a quarter of an inch thick and about as regular as a half of a cocoanut-shell. 

Within this, the lower part is lined with considerable rather coarse black root-fibre and a very little fine stubble. From some particles of fine white sand, etc., on the pale brown composition of the nest, I thought it was obtained from the pond shore. This composition, viewed through a microscope, has almost a cellular structure.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, July 31, 1858

I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. See July 30, 1854 ("I have seen a few new fungi within a week. The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches."); August 10, 1858 ("I see many tobacco-pipes, now perhaps in their prime, ... bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them. Springing up in the shade with so little color, they look the more fragile and delicate.")

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons.  See July 31, 1860 ("At mid-afternoon I am caught in a deluging rain as I stand under a maple by the Assabet shore ")

The wood thrush’s nest of June 19th. See June 19, 1858 ("Storrow Higginson and other boys. . . showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there [at Flint's Pond] in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside.") See also  August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded.")

At the cleft rock by the hill just west of this swamp.

September 4.
P. M. – To Bateman’s Pond. 

Rudbeckia laciniata (?) by Dodge's Brook, north of the road; how long? 

Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen. 

The leaves of the light-colored spruce in the spruce swamp are erect like the white! 

Penetrating through the thicket of that swamp, I see a great many very straight and slender upright shoots, the slenderest and tallest that I ever saw. They are the Prinos laevigatus. I cut one and brought it home in a ring around my neck, — it was flexible enough for that, — and found it to be seven and a half feet long and quite straight, eleven fortieths of an inch in diameter at the ground and three fortieths  diameter at the other end, only the last foot or so of this year's growth. It had a light-grayish bark, rough dotted. Generally they were five or six feet high and not bigger than a pipe-stem anywhere. This comes of its growing in dense dark swamps, where it makes a good part of the underwood. 

At the cleft rock by the hill just west of this swamp, — call it Cornel Rock, – I found apparently Aspidium cristatum (?), q. v. 

That is an interesting spot. There is the handsomest and most perfect Cornus circinata there that I know, now apparently its fruit in prime, hardly light-blue but delicate bluish-white. It is the richest-looking of the cornels, with its large round leaf and showy cymes; a slender bush seven or eight feet high. 

There is quite a collection of rare plants there, – petty morel, Thalictrum dioicum, witch hazel, etc., Rhus radicans, maple-leaved viburnum, polypody, Polygonum dumetorum, anychia. There was a strawberry vine falling over the perpendicular face of the rock, - or more than perpendicular, — which hung down dangling in the air five feet, not yet reaching the bottom, with leaves at intervals of fifteen inches. Various rocks scattered about in these woods rising just to the surface with smooth rounded surfaces, showing a fine stratification on its edges. 

The sides of Cornus florida Ravine at Bateman’s Pond are a good place for ferns. There is a Woodsia Ilvensis, a new one to Concord. Petty morel in the ravine, and large cardinal-flowers. 

I see prenanthes radical leaf turned pale-yellow. Arum berries ripe. 

Already, long before sunset, I feel the dew falling in that cold calla swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1857

Rudbeckia laciniata (?) by Dodge's Brook, north of the road. . . See July 30, 1856 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week.”); August 18, 1852 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's”).

Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen. See August 31, 1856 (“The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now . . . “); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, . . ..”)

The Prinos laevigatus. See June 23, 1856 ("Prinos laevigatus common and just begun to bloom behind R’s house.”)  Smooth winterberry holly (Ilex laevigata) is a deciduous shrub which resembles the closely related common winterberry (Ilex verticillate).. It grows up to 4 m high, with oval leaves which are finely toothed along the edges and shiny on their upper surface (the common winterberry has dull leaves). There are separate male and female flowers, usually on separate plants, in the leaf axils. The staminate flowers occur singly or two together and are borne on long stalks, while the pistillate flowers are solitary and on shorter stalks. See also September 4, 1856  "The fever-bush is conspicuously flower-budded.”) and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”)

There is the handsomest and most perfect Cornus circinata there [the bog south of Bateman’s Pond] that I know. . .See September 6, 1856  [at Brattleboro] (“Cornus circinata berries, very light blue or bluish-white. ”)

Cornus florida Ravine at Bateman’s Pond . . .See May 18, 1857 (“ There is a large tree [Cornus florida] on the further side the ravine near Bateman's Pond and another by some beeches on the rocky hillside a quarter of a mile northeast.”)

There is quite a collection of rare plants there . . . Arum berries ripe. . . .Already, long before sunset, I feel the dew falling in that cold calla swamp. See September 4, 1856 ("Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime .”); 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 . . .”); June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”);  June 24, 1857 ("I think that this is a cold swamp, i. e. it is springy and shady, and the water feels more than usually cold to my feet.”); June 9, 1857 (“The calla is generally past prime and going to seed.  . . .The water in this Calla Swamp feels cold to my feet, and perhaps this is a peculiarity of it; on the north side a hill. . . .”)

And now the lark must look out for the mowers.

July 11. 

July11,  2016

P. M. — To Corner Spring and Cliffs. 

Haying is fairly begun, and for some days I have heard the sound of the mowing-machine, and now the lark must look out for the mowers. 

The flowering fern, which is so much larger in the copses, though much is brown and effete, is still perhaps in prime. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ripe. Their dark blue with a bloom is a color that surprises me. 

The cymbidium is really a splendid flower, with its spike two or three inches long,  of commonly three or five large, irregular, concave, star-shaped purple flowers, amid the cool green meadow-grass. It has an agreeable fragrance withal. 

I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp. Call it, perhaps, Cymbidium Meadow. They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit. 

Petty morel not yet, by the bars this side Corner Spring; nor is the helianthus there budded yet.

Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals half as long as whole corolla, apparently two or three days. 

The trumpet-weed is already as high as my head, with a rich glaucous bloom on its stem. 

Indeed, looking off into the vales from Fair Haven Hill, where a thin blue haze now rests almost universally, I see that the earth itself is invested with a glaucous bloom at this season like some fruits and rapidly growing stems. 

Thermometer at 93° + this afternoon. 

Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it (Rana palustris). There is a mortality among which has made them hop to this spring to die. 

There is an abundance of corydalis on the top of the Cliffs, but most of it is generally out of bloom, i. e. excepting a twig or two, and it is partly withered, not so fresh as that in our garden; but some in the shade is quite green and fresh and abundantly blooming still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1857

And now the lark must look out for the mowers. See July 11, 1854 ("I hear Conant's cradle cronching the rye behind the fringe of bushes in the Indian field. Reaping begun."); July 29, 1853 ("About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking and June 30,1851 ("The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening. "); July 16, 1851 ("The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound"); July 18, 1852 ("The larks and blackbirds and kingbirds are heard in the meadows."); July 26, 1853 ("Lark, too seen now, four or five together, sing as of yore"); July 26, 1856 ("I see young larks fly pretty well before me.")

Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp. See note to July 6, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus well ripe.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals. See note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

Thermometer at 93° + this afternoon. See July 2, 1855 ("At 2 P. M. — Thermometer north side of house ... 93°") 

Dead and dying frogs in Corner Spring (Rana palustris). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The   Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris or Lithobates palustris)

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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