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.")

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours,

August 26. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows. 

The Solidago arguta is apparently in its prime. 

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. 

The Juncus effusus, a long [time] withered (the upper part). 

The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. 

Aster loevis, how long? 

Two interesting tall purplish grasses appear to be the prevailing ones now in dry and sterile neglected fields and hillsides, — Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, and apparently Andropogon scoparius, purple wool grass, though the last appears to have three awns like an Aristida. 

The first is a very tall and slender-culmed grass,with four or five purple finger-like spikes, raying upward from the top. It is very abundant on the hillside behind Peter’s. The other is also quite slender, two to three or four feet high, growing in tufts and somewhat curving, also commonly purple and with pretty purple stigmas like the last, and it has purple anthers. When out of bloom, its appressed spikes are re curving and have a whitish hairy or fuzzy look. 

These are the prevailing conspicuous flowers where I walk this afternoon in dry ground. 

I have sympathy with them because they are despised by the farmer and occupy sterile and neglected soil. They also by their rich purple reflections or tinges seem to express the ripeness of the year. It is high-colored like ripe grapes, and expresses a maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August sun could have thus burnished these culms and leaves. 

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. You often see the bare sand between them. I walk encouraged between the tufts of purple wool grass, over the sandy fields by the shrub oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries. 

These two are almost the first grasses that I have learned to distinguish. I did not know by how many friends I was surrounded. The purple of their culms excites me like that of the pokeweed stems. 

Think what refuge there is for me before August is over, from college commencements and society that isolates me! I can skulk amid the tufts of purple wood grass on the borders of the Great Fields! Wherever I walk this afternoon the purple-fingered grass stands like a guide-board and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have lately travelled. 

A man shall, perchance, rush by and trample down plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut and cured many tons of them for his cattle. Yet, perchance, if he ever favorably attend to them, he may be overcome by their beauty. 

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain! 

I have walked these Great Fields so many Augusts and never yet distinctly recognized these purple companions that I have there. I have brushed against them and trampled them down, for sooth, and now at last they have, as it were, risen up and blessed me. 

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses which the farmer says are of no account to him find some compensation in my appreciation of them? 

I may say that I never saw them before, or can only recall a dim vision of them, and now wherever I go I hardly see anything else. It is the reign and presidency only of the andropogons.

I walk down the Great Meadows on the upland side. They are still mowing, but have not got more than half, and probably will not get nearly all. I see where the tufts of Arum peltandrum have been cut off by the mower, and the leaves are all gone, but the still green fruit, which had curved downward close to the ground on every side amid the stubble, was too low for his scythe, and so escaped. Thus this plant is perpetuated in such localities, though it may be cut before the seed is mature. 

The wool-grass, black-bracted, of these meadows long since went out of bloom, and is now not merely withered at top but wasted half away, and is quite gray, while that which I examine in another meadow, green-bracted, has but recently ceased to bloom. Looking from this side, the meadow appears to be filled almost exclusively with wool-grass, yet very little has any culm or has blossomed this year. 

I notice, however, one tract, in the midst of the rest, an oblong square with perfectly straight sides, reaching from the upland toward the river, where it has quite generally blossomed and the culms still stand as high as my head. This, plainly, is because the land of a particular proprietor has been subjected to a peculiar treatment. 

Minott tells me that once, one very dry summer, when but part of these meadows had been cut, Moore and Hosmer got the owners to agree to have them burnt over, in the expectation that it would improve the quality of the grass, and they made quite an affair of it, — had a chowder, cooked by Moore’s boys, etc.; but the consequence was that this wool-grass came in next year more than ever. 

Some come a good way for their meadow-grass, even from Lincoln. George Baker has some in this meadow and some in the Sudbury meadows. But Minott says they want to get rid of their river meadow now, since they can get more and very much better grass off their redeemed swamps, or meadows of their own making, near home. 

Hardhack, meadow-sweet, alders, maples, etc., etc., appear to be creeping into the meadow. 

M. says they used to mow clean up to the ditch by the hard land. He remembers how he used to suffer from the heat, working out in the sun on these broad meadows, and when they took their luncheon, how glad he was to lie along close to the water, on the wet ground under the white maples by the riverside. And then one would swim a horse over at the Holt go up to Jack Buttrick’s (now Abner’s), where there was a well of cool water, and get one or two great jugs full, with which he recrossed on the horse. He tells of one fellow who trod water across there with a jug in each hand! 

He has seen young woodcocks in the nest there, i. e. on the ground where he had mowed, the middle of August; and used to see the summer ducks perched on the maples, on some large limb close up to the main stem, since they cannot cling to a small twig.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1858

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 27, 1856 (“The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground ”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. See August 12, 1858 (“That very handsome high-colored fine purple grass grows particularly on dry and rather unproductive soil just above the edge of the meadows, on the base of the hills, where the hayer does not deign to swing his scythe. He carefully gets the meadow-hay and the richer grass that borders it, but leaves this fine purple mist for the walker’s harvest”); September 1, 1857 ("Landing at Bittern Cliff, I see that fine purple grass; how long? "); October 9, 1857 ("Under the pines by the Clamshell, that fine purple grass is now withered and faded to a very light brown which reflects the autumnal light.”)

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours. See May 23, 1853 ("Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human 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."); 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 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

August 27.

August 27, 2016

P. M. —To Clintonia Swamp and Cardinal Ditch.

Unusually cold last night.

Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, the lower half or more turning brown, but the beautifully reticulated leaves which pave the moist shady hillside about its base are the chief attraction. These oval leaves, perfectly smooth like velvet to the touch, about one inch long, have a broad white midrib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a dark rich green ground.

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? As a cultivated exotic it would attract great attention for its leaf. Many of the leaves are eaten. Is it by partridges? It is a leaf of firm texture, not apt to be partially eaten by insects or decayed, and does not soon wilt. So unsoiled and undecayed. It might be imitated on carpets and rugs. Some old withered stems of last year still stand.

On dry, open hillsides and fields the Spiranthes gracilis is very common of late, rising tall and slender, with its spiral of white flowers like a screw-thread at top; sometimes fifteen inches high.

There are, close by the former, the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stemlets or pedicels.

See no fringed gentian yet.

Veronica serpyllifolia again by Brister's Spring.

Krigia yesterday at Lee's Cliff, apparently again, though it may be uninterruptedly.

Tobacco-pipe still.

The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.

Ludwigia alternifolia still. It is abundant in Cardinal Ditch, twenty rods from road.

Bidens frondosa, how long?

Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler.

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. They nearly fill the ditch for thirty-five rods perfectly straight, about three feet high. I count at random ten in one square foot, and as they are two feet wide by thirty-five rods, there are four or five thousand at least, and maybe more. They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, and a few white (or rather pale-pink) ones are mingled with the scarlet. That is the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. They are mostly gone to seed, i. e. the greater part of the spike. 

Mimulus there still common.

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem recurved over the hillside, generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) berries on an axillary peduncle three quarters of an inch long, hanging straight down; eight or nine such peduncles, dividing to two short pedicels at end; the berries successively smaller from below upwards, from three eighths of an inch diameter to hardly more than one eighth.

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks, rather elliptic-shaped and mucronated, one cheek clear red with a purplish bloom, the other pale green, now. Among the handsomest of berries, one half inch long by three eighths by two eighths, being somewhat flattish.

Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.

The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1856 

Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? See August 20, 1856 (“The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. ”);  March 10, 1852 ("I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green.”); June 12, 1853 ("The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.”) Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Rattlesnake-Plantain

I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 4 p. m. See  August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules."); August 17,1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m."); August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense");   August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 P. M.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw. Compare August 20, 1851 ("In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. ")

The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks  See August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack") See also   A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica (meadow-beauty)

Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem . See June 12, 1852 ("Clintonia borealis  amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal

The Polygonatum pubescens berries . . . generally two slaty-blue (but darkgreen beneath the bloom) . . ..  See  August 21, 1853 ("The polygonatum berries have been a bluish-green some time.”)

The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks,. . . See August 21, 1853 ("The Viburnum Lentago berries are but just beginning to redden on one cheek.”); August 23, 1853 (".How handsome now the cymes of Viburnum Lentago berries, flattish with red cheeks!”); August 25, 1852 ("The fruit of the Viburnum Lentago is now very handsome, with its sessile cymes of large elliptical berries, green on one side and red with a purple bloom on the other or exposed side, not yet purple, blushing on one cheek.”);August 27, 1854 ("Some Viburnum Lentago berries, turned blue before fairly reddening.”)

See no fringed gentian yet. See September 12, 1854 ("I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.”); September 14, 1855”( I see no fringed gentian yet.”) and September 14, 1856 ("Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th.”)

Hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet . . .See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

There are many wild-looking berries about now.

tinyurl.com/wildberriesHDT

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups

April 22.

5.30 A. M. — To Assabet stone bridge. 

Tree sparrows still. See a song sparrow getting its breakfast in the water on the meadow like a wader. 

Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge. Balm-of-Gilead probably to-morrow.

The black currant is just begun to expand leaf — probably yesterday elsewhere -a little earlier than the red. 

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. 

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups. 

P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff. 

Fair, but windy. 

Tree sparrows about with their buntingish head and faint chirp. 

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. 

The yellow willow catkins pushing out begin to give the trees a misty, downy appearance, dimming them. 

The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart. 

The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars. The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male. 

I first noticed my little mud turtles in the cellar out of their [sic], one of them, some eight days ago. I suspect those in the river begin to stir about that time? 

Antennaria probably yesterday, Skull-cap Meadow Ditch. 

Many yellow redpolls on the willows now. They jerk their tails constantly like phoebes, but I hear only a faint chip. Could that have been a female with them, with an ash head and merely a yellow spot on each side of body, white beneath, and forked tail?

Red stemmed moss now. 

Goosanders, male and female. They rise and fly, the female leading. They afterward show that they can get out of sight about as well by diving as by flying. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side. 

Getting over the wall under the middle Conantum Cliff, I hear a loud and piercing sharp whistle of two notes, — phe phe, like a peep somewhat. Could it  be a wood-chuck? Hear afterward under Lee’s Cliff a similar fainter one, which at one time appears to come from a pigeon woodpecker. 

Cowbirds on an apple tree. 

Crowfoot on Cliff. Johnswort radical leaves have grown several inches and angelica shows. Elder leaves have grown one and a half inches, and thimble-berry is forward under rocks. Meadow sweet in some places begins to open to-day; also barberry under Cliffs and a moss rose to-morrow. 

Say earliest gooseberry, then elder, raspberry, thimble berry, and low blackberry (the last two under rocks), then wild red cherry, then black currant (yesterday), then meadow sweet, and barberry under Cliff, to-day. A moss rose to-morrow and hazel under Cliffs to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1855

The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male.. . .Hazel under Cliffs to morrow. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen.”); and April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. “); April 9, 1854 (" The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it just after the common."'); April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday.”);April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. . . .half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen . . . . They know when to trust themselves to the weather.");  April 18, 1857 ("The beaked hazel, if that is one just below the little pine at Blackberry Steep, is considerably later than the common, for I cannot get a whole twig fully out, though the common is too far gone to gather there. The catkins, too, are shorter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons: the Hazel.

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. See April 10, 1855 ("The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom.")

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. See April 22, 1857 ("At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. ") See also April 7, 1855  ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

Goosanders, male and female. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side.  See March 16, 1855 (“Returning, scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake”); March 27, 1858 ("They are now pairing. . . .At first we see only a male and female quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, tacking back and forth and looking every way. They keep close together, headed one way, and when one turns the other also turns quickly. The male appears to take the lead."); March 30, 1859 ("See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and female, as is common. So they have for some time paired. They are a hundred rods off. The male the larger, with his black head and white breast, the female with a red head.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A warm sunny walk

through acres and acres of

fragrant spring beauties.

~ Zphx April 22, 2025

A morning walk

June 12. 

The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer. 

Maple-leaved viburnum well out at Laurel Glen. 

The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art. 

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods.

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. It is the more interesting for its rarity and the secluded situations in which it grows, owing to which it is seldom seen, not thrusting itself on the observation of men. It is a pale purple, as if from growing in the shade. It is not  remarkable in its stalk and leaves, which indeed are commonly concealed by other plants. 

Norway cinquefoil. A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.


The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears (?)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1853 


The note of the wood thrush . . . See June 22, 1853 ("This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination. . . . All that is ripest and fairest in the wilderness and the wild man is preserved and transmitted to us in the strain of the wood thrush.")

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods. See June 11, 1852 (" The red-eye sings now in the woods, perhaps more than any other bird. “)

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. See note to June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

The sidesaddle-flowers . . . make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

June 12. Sunday. P. M. — To Bear Hill.

 Maple-leaved viburnum well out at Laurel Glen, probably 9th.

The laurel probably by day after to morrow.

The note of the wood thrush answers to some cool unexhausted morning vigor in the hearer.

The leaf of the rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins.

It looks like art. Crows, like hawks, betray the neighborhood of their nests by harsh scolding at the intruder while they circle over the top of the wood.

The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods.

The wood thrush and the cuckoo also are heard now at noon. The round-leaved cornel fully out on Heywood Peak, but not in the woods. Did I mention that the sawed stump of the chestnut made a seat within the bower formed by its sprouts ? Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran indeshabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than a chicken just hatched, dispersed, flying along a foot or two from the ground, just over the bushes, for a rod or two. The mother kept close at hand to attract my attention, and mewed and clucked and made a noise as when a hawk is in sight. She stepped about and held her head above the bushes and clucked just like a hen. What a remarkable instinct that which keeps the young so silent and prevents their peeping and betraying themselves! The wild bird will run almost any risk to save her young. The young, I believe, make a fine sound at first in dispersing, something like a cherry-bird. I find beechnuts already about fully grown for size, where a tree overhangs Baker's hillside, and there are old nuts on the ground. Were they sound? This tree must have blossomed early, then. A light-green excrescence three inches in diameter on a panicled andromeda. The lint still comes off the bushes on to my clothes. The hedyotis long leaved out; only two or three plants to be found; probably some days.

Visited the great orchis which I am waiting to have open completely. It is emphatically a flower (within gunshot of the hawk's nest); its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns (by which its own leaves are concealed) in the cool shade of an alder swamp. It is the more in teresting for its rarity and the secluded situations in which it grows, owing to which it is seldom seen, not thrusting itself on the observation of men. It is a pale purple, as if from growing in the shade. It is not  remarkable in its stalk and leaves, which indeed are commonly concealed by other plants.

Norway cinquefoil. A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.

The sidesaddle-flowers are partly turned up now and make a great show, with their broad red petals flapping like saddle ears ( ? ).

The tree-climbing ivy. Was it out as early as the other? Apparently so. I forgot to say that I visited my hawk's nest, and the young hawk was perched now four or five feet above the nest, still in the shade. It will soon fly. Now, then, in secluded pine woods, the young hawks sit high on the edges of their nests or on the twigs near by in the shade, waiting for their pinions to grow, while their parents bring to them their prey. Their silence also is remarkable, not to betray themselves, nor will the old bird go to the nest while you are in sight. She pursues me half a mile when I withdraw. The buds of young white oaks which have been frost-bitten are just pushing forth again. Are these such as were intended for next year at the base of the leaf -stalk ?