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. . . .”)

Looked at plants at the Natural History Rooms

Boston Society of Natural History 

(c. 1847-1863),

Mason Street, Boston

June 19.

Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. 


Among which noticed:

• Ranunculus Purshii varieties a and b with no difference apparent, unless in upper leaves being more or less divided.

• Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry, with a loose raceme such as I have not seen, from White Mountains. 

• A circaea, or enchanter’s-nightshade, with a very large raceme and with longer branchlets than I have seen, methinks. 

• Calla palustris, very different from the Peliandra Virginia. 

• Cerastium arvense, with linear leaves, quite new to me. 

• Smilacina stellata, from Dr. Harris, very different from the racemosa, being simple. 

• Ledum latifolium, from White Mountains, rather 'broader—leafed than mine from Maine. 

• Barbarea sativa, from Cambridge, apparently like my B. vulgaris. 

Is the Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets peculiar, there in Worcester?  I saw several in woods. 


On way to Concord see mountain laurel out in Lancaster. Had seen none out in Worcester.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1856

June 19.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823- 1911) was educated at Harvard where he developed interests in botany and entomology. From 1840-1841, Higginson was corresponding secretary and entomological curator of the Harvard Natural History Society; he was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and of the Cambridge Entomological Club. He shared HDT’s antislavery views and in 1856 had just moved to Worcester, where he joined gatherings at Blake's house to read the letters that HDT wrote to Blake throughout the 1850’s. Mapping Thoreau Country.


Ledum latifolium:  Rhododendron groenlandicum (Bog Labrador-tea) a diminutive shrub of cool, wet swamps, spruce forests, and muskeg recognized by its clusters of tiny white flowers and its folded-under leaves with brown hairs on the undersides. GoBotany

Smilacina racemosa with such long lower branchlets . . . See July 7, 1855 ("What that smilacina-like plant very common in the shrubbery, . . .?"); June 19, 1857 ("The Smilacina racemosa was just out of bloom on the bank. They call it the " wood lily " there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up").

The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea

May 31.

Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual; they were so significant that they plainly served no other use. That is, they have been like myths or passages in a myth, rather than mere incidents or history, which have to wait to become significant.

Ever and anon something will occur which my philosophy has not dreamed of. Yet they are all just such events as my imagination prepares me for, no matter how incredible. Quite in harmony with my subjective philosophy. Perfectly in keeping with my life and characteristic.

This, for instance:  that, when I thought I knew the flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea should be shown me by the hunter who found it. The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive.

Such facts are lifted quite above the level of the actual.  That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery. The limits of the actual are set some thoughts further off. The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1853

See November 30, 1858: ("How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!") and November 4, 1858 ("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.")

See also February 9, 1852; ("The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant . . . a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations."); February 16, 1857 ("Genius has evanescent boundaries") and Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

See also The Hunter's Azalea and  Expecting the Hunter's Azalea

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Significance of the Hunter's Azalea

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