To see the lilies open

July 4.  Sunday.

July 4, 2022

3 A. M. - To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old.

I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard.

I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced.  There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon.

There is very little dew on the uplands.

I hear a little twittering and some clear singing from the seringo and the song sparrow as I go along the back road, and now and then the note of a bullfrog from the river.

The light in the east has acquired a reddish tinge near the horizon.  Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening.

It being Sunday morning, I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge.  The crickets are not remarkably loud at this season. The sound of a whip-poor-will is wafted from the woods.  Now, on the Corner road, the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a bluebird or two, etc. 

The daylight now balances the moonlight.

How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 A. M. you see them again in the east, probably 2.30, leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again.

The robins sing, but not so loud and long as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? 

Ah! those mornings when you are awakened in the dawn by the singing, the matins, of the birds!

 

I hear the dumping sound of frogs now on the causeway.

Some small clouds in the east are reddish fuscous. There is no fog on the river nor in the meadows.

The kingbird twitters (?) on the black willows.

Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fireflies in the darker ruts in the grass, in Conant's meadow.

The moon yields to the sun. She pales even in the presence of his dawn.

It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived.

The notes of the sparrows and the bluebirds and the robin have a prominence now which they have not by day.

The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Else-where the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time.

Those bars are reddening more purplish, or lilac rather, light in the eastern sky. (And now, descending to the Cliff by the riverside, I cannot see the low horizon and its phenomena.)

I love to go through these old apple orchards so irregularly set out. Sometimes two trees standing close together. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these.

A bittern leaves the shore at my approach. I suppose it is he whose excrement has whitened the rocks, as if a mason had spilled his whitewash.

A nighthawk squeaks and booms, before sunrise.

The insects shaped like shad-flies (some which I see are larger and yellowish) begin to leave their cases (and selves?) on the stems of the grasses and the rushes in the water. I find them so weak they can hardly hold on.

I hear the black-bird's conqueree, and the kingfisher darts away with his alarum and outstretched neck.

Every lily is shut.

Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore.

A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river.

There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Fair Haven, that wild lake.

The subdued light and the repose remind me of Hades. In such sunlight there is no fever. It is such an innocent pale yellow as the spring flowers. It is the pollen of the sun, fertilizing plants. The color of the earliest spring flowers is as cool and innocent as the first rays of the sun in the morning falling on woods and hills.

The fog not only rises upward (about two feet), but at once there is a motion from the sun over the surface.

What means this endless motion of water-bugs collected in little groups on the surface and ceaselessly circling about their centre, as if they were a family hatched from the eggs on the under side of a pad? Is not this motion intended partly to balk the fishes? Methinks they did not begin to move till sunrise. Where were they? 

And now I see an army of skaters advancing in loose array, of chasseurs or scouts, as Indian allies are drawn in old books.

Now the rays of the sun have reached my seat, a few feet above the water; flies begin to buzz, mosquitoes to be less troublesome.

A hummingbird hums by over the pads up the river, as if looking, like myself, to see if lilies have blossomed.

The birds begin to sing generally, and, if not loudest, at least most noticeably on account of the quietness of the hour, just before -- a few minutes before -- sunrise. They do not sing so incessantly and earnestly, as a regular thing, half an hour later.

Carefully looking both up and down the river, I could perceive that the lilies began to open about fifteen minutes after the sun from over the opposite bank fell on them, which was perhaps three quarters of an hour after sunrise (which is about 4.30), and one was fully expanded about twenty minutes later.  When I returned over the bridge about 6.15, there were perhaps a dozen open ones in sight. 

It was very difficult to find one not injured by insects.  Even the buds which were just about to expand were frequently bored quite through, and the water had rotted them. You must be on hand early to anticipate insects.

One thimble-berry which will be quite ripe by to-morrow.

Indigo almost expanded.

I perceive the meadow fragrance on the causeway.

Bobolinks still.

I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds, — all I can find within many rods, — which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour, all but one or two. 

At 12.30 P. M., I perceive that the lilies in the river have begun to shut up. The water has gone down so much that I can stand on the shore and pluck as many as I want, and they are the fairest ones, concealed by the pickerel-weed, often the whole plant high and dry. I go again to the river at 2.30 P. M., and every lily is shut.

I will here tell the history of my rosaceous lilies plucked the 1st of July.

• They were buds at the bottom of a pitcher of water all the 2d, having been kept in my hat part of the day before.
• On the morning of the 3d I assisted their opening, and put them in water, as I have described; but they did not shut up at noon, like those in the river, but at dark, their petals, at least, quite tight and close.
• They all opened again in the course of the forenoon of the 4th, but had not shut up at 10 o'clock P. M., though I found them shut in the morning of the 5th.

May it be that they can bear only a certain amount of light, and these, being in the shade, remained open longer? ( I think not, for they shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st.) Or is their vitality too little to permit [them] to perform their regu- lar functions? 

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? 

I looked down on the river behind Dodd's at 2.30 P. M., a slate-colored stream with a scarcely perceptible current, with a male and female shore; the former, more abrupt, of button-bushes and willows, the other, flat, of grass and pickerel-weed alone. Beyond the former, the water being deep, extends a border or fringe of green and purplish pads lying perfectly flat on the surface, but on the latter side the pads extend a half a rood or a rod beyond the pickerel-weed, — shining pads reflecting the light, dotted with white or yellow lilies. This sort of ruff does the river wear, and so the land is graduated off to water.

A tender place in nature, an exposed vein, and nature making a feint to bridge it quite over with a paddy film, with red-winged black- birds liquidly warbling and whistling on the willows, and kingbirds on the elms and oaks; these pads, if there is any wind, rippling with the water and helping to smooth and allay it. It looks tender and exposed, as if it were naturally subterranean, and now, with these shields of pads, held scale-like by long threads from the bottom, she makes a feint to bridge it.

So floats the Musketaquid over its segment of the sphere.

Methinks there is not even a lily, white or yellow, in Walden.

I see perfectly formed pouts by the shore of the river, one inch long.

The great spatterdock lily is a rich yellow at a little distance, and, seen lying on its great pads, it is an indispensable evidence of the fertility of the river.  The gratiola begins to yellow the mud by the riverside. The Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida is out, in the meadows. 

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1852

the light of the waning and now declining moon. See June 30, 1852 ('Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

To see the lilies open. See June 21, 1853 ("4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5."); July 1, 1852 ("...to see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make"); July 11, 1852 ("The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock."); July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies . . .I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

They shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st. See July 1, 1852 ("The freshly opened lilies are a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads is quite unrippled, the passing air gives a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables.After eating our luncheon at Rice's landing, I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom. See June 16, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half-open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight. Already the bright petals of yesterday's flowers are thickly strewn along on the black mud at the bottom of the ditch."); July 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida I think has [been] some time done") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Now is the time for meadow walking.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

4.30 A. M. -To the river.

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed.

The heart-leaf flower is abundant more than ever, but shut up at this hour.

The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock.

The Polygonum hydropiperoides, I think it is, now in blossom in the mud by the river.

Morning-glories are in perfection now, some dense masses of this vine with very red flowers, very attractive and cool-looking in dry mornings. They are very tender and soon defaced in a nosegay.

The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cultivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge.

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day, thus showing a preference for that portion of the day.

P. M. — To Conantum.

The wind makes it rather more comfortable to-day.

That small globose white flower with glossy radical leaves is common now on the muddy shore of the river.

The fishes' nests are left high and dry, and I perceive that they are distinctly hollowed, five or six inches deep, in the sand, i. e. below the surrounding surface.

Here are some which still contain their panful of water, but are no longer connected with the river. They have a distinct raised edge of sand about one and a half inches high and three or four wide.

The lilies I have tried in water this warmest weather have wilted the first day. Only the water can produce and sustain such flowers. Those which are left high and dry, or even in very shallow water, are wont to have a dwarfed growth.

The Victoria lily is a water flower.

The river is low. 

Now is the time for meadow walking. (I am in the meadow north of Hubbard's Bridge.) You go dry-shod now through meadows which were comparatively impassable before, —- those western reserves which you had not explored. We are thankful that the water has preserved them inviolate so long.

There is a cheerful light reflected from the undersides of the ferns in the drier meadows now, and has been for some time, especially in breezy weather.

It was so in June.

The dusty roads and roadsides begin to show the effects of drouth.

The corn rolls.

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight.

Is it not later than the chestnut?

The elder is a very conspicuous and prevalent flower now, with its large flat cymes.

Pogonias and calopogons are very abundant in the meadows. They are interesting, if only for their high color.

Any redness is, after all, rare and precious. It is the color of our blood. The rose owes its preëminence in great measure to its color. It is said to be from the Celtic rhos, red. It is nature's most precious color.

Impatiens fulva, by Corner Spring.

I hear often nowadays the kingbird's chattering twitter.

As you walk under oaks, you perceive from time to time a considerable twig come gently falling to the ground, whose stem has been weakened by a worm, and here and there lie similar twigs whose leaves are now withered and changed.

How valuable and significant is shade now! Trees appear valuable for shade mainly, and we observe their shadows as much as their form and foliage.

The waving of the meadow-grass near Fair Haven Isle is very agreeable and refreshing to one looking down from an elevation. It appears not merely like a waving or undulation, but a progress, a creeping, as of an invisible army, over it, its flat curly head.

The grass appears tufted, watered.

On the river the ripple is continued into the pads, where it is smoother,-- a longer undulation.

Pines or evergreens do not attract so much attention now. They have retired on the laurels of the winter campaign.

What is called genius is the abundance of life or health, so that whatever addresses the senses, as the flavor of these berries, or the lowing of that cow, which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain-side just before night, where odoriferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor, serenity, and expectation of perpetual untarnished morning, — each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication.  The shrunken stream of life overflows its banks, makes and fertilizes broad intervals, from which generations derive their sustenances.

This is the true overflowing of the Nile. 

So exquisitely sensitive are we, it makes us embrace our fates, and, instead of suffering or indifference, we enjoy and bless. If we have not dissipated the vital, the divine, fluids, there is, then, a circulation of vitality beyond our bodies. The cow is nothing. Heaven is not there, but in the condition of the hearer.

I am thrilled to think that I owe a perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that these berries have fed my brain. After I had been eating these simple, wholesome, ambrosial fruits on this high hillside, I found my senses whetted, I was young again, and whether I stood or sat I was not the same creature.

The yellow lily is not open-petalled like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping. On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They both make freckles beautiful.

Fragrances must not be overpowering, however sweet. I love the sweet fragrance of melilot.

The Circæa alpina, enchanter's-nightshade, by Corner Spring, low, weed-like, somewhat like touch-me-not leaves. Was it not the C. Lutetiana (a larger plant) that I found at Saw Mill Brook?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1852

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day. See June 20, 1853 (" Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut."); July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. See July 16, 1852 ("The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, . . . The tree resounds with the hum of bees, — bumblebees and honey-bees ; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here, — a perfect susurrus, a sound, as C. says, unlike any other in nature, — not like the wind, as that is like the sea. . . . The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry.");. July 17, 1854 ("I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many"); . July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 (" We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. ") Compare June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”); June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.""); June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 3, 1853("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely."); July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”); and see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Now is the time for meadow walking. See August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go."); August 21, 1859 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet.."); June 26, 1860 ("You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.") Compare July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.")

Whatever addresses the senses . . . each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication. See  July 16, 1851 ("To have such sweet impressions made on us,. . . This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.");   August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody."); December 11, 1855 ("My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world; Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

Fall flowers.

September 8 

Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp, with Viola pedata.

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

Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out. See June 15, 1851 (“See the first wild rose to-day on the west side of the railroad causeway”); June 15, 1853 (“Here are many wild roses northeast of Trillium Woods. It is the pride of June. I bring home the buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”); September 25, 1852 ("A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected."); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again")

Viola pedata. See August 12, 1858 (“Saw a Viola pedata blooming again.”); August 31, 1853 ("Viola pedata out again.") September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); September 28, 1852 (" I find the hood-leaved violet quite abundant in a meadow, and the pedata in the Boulder Field. I have now seen all but the blanda, palmata, and pubescens blooming again .. . This is the commencement, then, of the second spring."); 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"); October 23, 1853 ("The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night.

May 29

May 29, 2015

These last two days, with their sultry, hazy air, are the first that suggest the expression “the furnace-like heat.”

Bathing has begun.

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air, so that some have to shut the windows toward the river, but when you awake in the morning not one is to be heard. As it grows warmer in the forenoon I hear a few again; but still I do not hear them numerously and loudly as earlier in the season at that hour, though far more numerously and loudly at night.

P. M. - To Hosmer's Holden place.

Thimble-berry two or three days.

Cattle stand in the river by the bridge for coolness.

Place my hat lightly on my head that the air may circulate beneath.

Wild roses budded before you know it — will be out often before you know they are budded.

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed 

—a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds.

Some plants have already reached their fall.

How still the hot noon; people have retired behind blinds.

Yet the kingbird — lively bird, with white belly and tail edged with white, and with its lively twittering— stirs and keeps the air brisk.

I see men and women through open windows in white undress taking their Sunday-afternoon nap, overcome with heat.

At A. Hosmer's hill on the Union Turnpike I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil, advanced picket of that Brazilian army, — parrot-like. But no more shall we see; it is only an affair of outposts. It appears as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest.

May 29, 2024

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night; the outlines of cloudy cumuli are dimly seen through the hazy, furnace-like air, rising in the west.

Spergularia rubra, spurry sandwort, in the roadside ditch on left just beyond A. Hosmer's hill; also Veronica peregrina (?) a good while. The last also in Great Fields in the path.

Raspberry out.

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention.

The barrenest pastures wear now a green and luxuriant aspect.

I see many of those round, white, pigeon-egg fungi in the grass since the rains. Do they become puffballs? 

The thyme-leaved veronica shows its modest face in little crescent-shaped regiments in every little hollow in the pastures where there is moisture, and around stumps and in the road ditches.

The Cratægus Crus-Galli this side the Holden place on left, probably yesterday, thorns three inches long, flowers with anthers not conspicuously red.

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow south side of road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1853

Bathing has begun. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and . . . Some boys have bathed in the river.") May 12, 1860 ("First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough."); May 15,1853 ("The weather has grown rapidly warm. I even think of bathing in the river .")

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed — a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds. See May 29, 1854 ("Dandelions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. These are interesting as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); See also May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 17. 1853 ("The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. "); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

 

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air.  See May 20, 1854 ("The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Ring of Toads

I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil. . .as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest. See May 23, 1853 ("That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky!. . .this bird's colors and his note tell of Brazil. "); May 28, 1855 (" the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the  Scarlet Tanager

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow. See May 22, 1853 ("Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded"); May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

How still the hot noon; 

people retire behind blinds  –

 yet the kingbird stirs.

See men and women

through open windows undress,

overcome with heat. 

These are afternoons

when you expect a thunder-

shower before night.

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains.

December 12. 

Cold at last. 

December 12, 2015

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. 

Baeomyces roseus also. 

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. 

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. 

Last night's rain was snow there, then. They now have a parti-colored look, like the skin of a pard, as if they were spread with a saddle-cloth for Boreas to ride.

I hear of a cultivated rose blossoming in a garden in Cambridge within a day or two. 

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool in the fall.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, December 12, 1852

Baeomyces roseus. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. See December 9, 1852 ("A man tells me he saw a violet to-day.") See also November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”);  November 16, 1850 (Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and in numerable other plants begin again to spring and are only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year.")

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); December 6, 1852 ("Tansy still fresh.")

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. See December 12, 1859 ("I got a new view of the mountains . . .very grand in their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple . . . It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds.") See also December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?")

.

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool. See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. "); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.")

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.

September 25

September 25, 2020

Polygonum dumetorum, climbing false-buck wheat, still; also dodder.

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river.

Ranunculus reptans still.

The small galium (trifidum).

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected.

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed.

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red.

Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st, and the fringed gentian November 7th, last year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1852

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. See September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower."); see also August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp"): October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case."); November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. See June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”);  July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?)."); September 8, 1853 ("Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

It is a sacrament, a communion. The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste

July 24.

Sunday. 4.30 A. M. – By boat to Island.

Robins, larks, peawais, etc., as in the spring, at this hour.

The mikania to-morrow or next day.

The zizania, some days.

The low, front-rank polygonums are still imbrowned in many places; as I think, have not recovered from the effect of late frosts.

Mr. Pratt asked me to what animal a spine and broken skull found in the wall of James Adams’s shop belonged, — within the partition.

I found by its having but two kinds of teeth, and they incisive and molar, that it belonged to the order Rodentia, which, with us, consists of the Beaver, Hare, Rat ( including squirrels ), and Porcupine families.

From its having “ incisors 3, molars 3 ” and “ molars with a flat crown and zigzag plates of enamel, ” I knew it to be a muskrat, which probably got into the building at a time of high water.

The molars appeared like one long tooth, their flat, smooth tops zigzagged with the edges of hard plates of 1 in this and some but after looking long and sharply with a microscope, though on the side I could not distinguish the separate teeth, I made out, by tracing about the edges of the enamel which intertwined and m broke joints curiously for strength, three separate inclosures, and, with full faith in this and in science, I told Pratt it was a muskrat, and gave him my proofs; but he could not distinguish the three molars even with a glass, or was still plainly uncertain, for he had thought them one tooth, when, taking his pincers, he pulled one out and was convinced, much to his and to my satisfaction and our confidence in science ! How very hard must be the teeth of this animal whose food is clams!

What keeps his incisors so sharp?

Look at this strong head, with its upper jaw and incisor curved somewhat like a turtle’s beak.

What an apparatus for cutting, holding, crushing ! What a trap to be caught in ! It is amusing to think what grists have come to this mill, though now the upper and nether stones fall loosely apart, and the brain-chamber above, where the miller lodged, is now empty ( passing under the portcullis of the incisors ), and the windows are gone. 

With or without reason, I find myself associating with the idea of summer a certain cellar-like coolness, resulting from the depth of shadows and the luxuriance of foliage.

I think that after this date the crops never suffer so severely from drought as in June, because of their foliage shading the ground and producing dews.

We had fog this morning, and no doubt often the last three weeks, which my surveying has prevented my getting up to see.

It is the palmer-worm which has attacked the apple trees this year.

Surveying one very hot day, a week or two ago, and having occasion to strip a sapling of its bark, I was surprised to observe how cool the freshly exposed and sappy wood was, as if it extracted coolness from the cool cellars of the earth.

Sophia's Viola pedata, taken up in the spring, blossomed again a day or two ago. 

I perceive the peculiar scent of corn-fields.

Yesterday a dew-like, gentle summer rain.

You scarcely know if you are getting wet.

At least two kinds of grass as tall as the zizania have preceded it along the river.

One has long since gone to seed, and looks flavid or yellowish now.

The other is still in blossom, its chaff ( ? ) being remarkably and regularly on one side of the glume (?). 

For a week or more I have perceived that the evenings were considerably longer and of some account to sit down and write in.


Ate an early-harvest apple of my own raising yesterday; not quite ripe.

The scent of some very early ones which I have passed in my walks, imparting some ripeness to the year, has excited me somewhat.

It affects me like a performance, a poem, a thing done; and all the year is not a mere promise of Nature’s.

How far behind the spring seems now, — farther off, perhaps, than ever, for this heat and dryness is most opposed to spring.

Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now; it is either drought and barrenness or fall there now.

The reign of moisture is long since over.

For a long time the year feels the influence of the snows of winter and the long rains of spring, but now how changed! It is like another and a fabulous age to look back on, when earth’s veins were full of moisture, and violets burst out on every hillside. 

Spring is the reign of water; summer, of heat and dryness; winter, of cold. 

Whole families of plants that lately flourished have disappeared.

Now the phenomena are tropical.

Let our summer last long enough, and our land would wear the aspect of the tropics.

The luxuriant foliage and growth of all kinds shades the earth and is con verting every copse into a jungle.

Vegetation is rampant.

There is not such rapid growth, it is true, but it slumbers like a serpent that has swallowed its prey.

Summer is one long drought.

Rain is the exception.

All the signs of it fail, for it is dry weather.

Though’it may seem so, the current year is not peculiar in this respect.

It is a slight labor to keep count of all the showers, the rainy days, of a summer.

You may keep it on your thumb nail.



P. M.--To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Hill.

Mimulus ringens at Heywood Brook, probably several days.

The fruit of the skunk-cabbage is turned black.

At Hubbard’s Bathing-Place I tread on clams all across the river in mid-channel, flattening them down, for they are on their edges.

The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules.

The black choke-berry, probably some days.

The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. For some time, then, though a few are yet green.  They are numerous near the edge of Hubbard’s lower meadow. They are in clusters of half a dozen on brittle stems eight or ten inches high, oblong or squarish round, the size of large peas with a dimple atop.

Seen thus, above the handsome, regular green leaves which are still perfect in form and color and which, here growing close together, checker the ground, and also in the dense shade of the copse, there is something peculiarly celestial about them. This is the plant’s true flower, for which it has preserved its leaves fresh and unstained so long.

Eupatorium pubescens at Hubbard’s burnt meadow.

There is much near his grove.

Also Epilobium molle there (put it with the coloratum), and coloratum and the common still in blossom.

There is erechthites there, budded.

Also Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate, — I think not so early as the last.

At the Corner Spring the berries of the trillium are already pink.

The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries.

The swamp-pink still blooms and the morning-glory is quite fresh; it is a pure white, like a lady’s morning gown.

The aspect of vegetation about the spring reminds me of fall.

The angelica, skunk-cabbage, trillium, arum, and the lodged and flattened grass are all phenomena of the fall.

A spikenard just beyond the spring has already pretty large green berries, though a few flowers. Say July 10th.

It is a great plant, six feet high, seven long, with the largest pinnate leaves of this kind I think of. More than two feet by two, with single leafets eleven inches by nine.

The two-leaved convallaria and the Smilacina racemosa show ripening clusters.

I hear incessantly a cricket or locust, inspired by the damp, cool shade, telling of autumn.

I have not observed it more than a week.

Scutellaria galericulata, maybe some time.

The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now.

Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town.

Nature does her best to feed man.

The traveller need not go out of the road to get as many as he wants; every bush and vine teems with palatable fruit.

Man for once stands in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck and eat as they go.

The fields and bills are a table constantly spread.

Wines of all kinds and qualiities, of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of countless berries, for the taste of men and animals.

To men they seem offered not so much for food as for sociality, that they may picnic with Nature, — diet drinks, cordials, wines.

We pluck and eat in remembrance of Her.

It is a sacrament, a communion.

The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste.

Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her regard and protection.

It is a Saturnalia, and we quaff her wines at every turn.

This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries, and women and children who never visit distant hills and fields and swamps on any other errand are seen making baste thither now, with half their domestic utensils in their hands.

The woodchopper goes into the swamp for fuel in the winter; his wife and children for berries in the summer.

The late rose, — R. Carolina, swamp rose, – I think has larger and longer leaves; at any rate they are duller above (light beneath), and the bushes higher.

The shaggy hazelnuts now greet the eye, always an agreeable sight to me, with which when a boy I used to take the stains of berries out of my hands and mouth.

These and green grapes are found at berry time.

High blueberries, when thick and large, bending the twigs, are a very handsome cool, rich, acid berry.

On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset.

— How fortunate and glorious that our world is not roofed in, but open like a Roman house, — our skylight so broad and open! We do not climb the hills in vain.

It is no crystal palace we dwell in.

The windows of the sky are always open, and the storms blow in at them.

The field sparrow sings with that varied strain.

The night wind rises.

On the eastern side of this hill it is already twilight.

The air is cooler and clearer.

The mountains which were almost invisible grow more distinct.

The various heights of our hills are plainly shown by the more or less of the mountain bases seen * from them.

The atmosphere of the western horizon is impurpled, tingeing the mountains.

A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun.

The now silver-plated river is burnished gold there, and in midst of all I see a boat ascending with regular dip of its seemingly gilt oars.

That which appears a strip of smooth, light silvery water on each side of the stream, not reflecting the sky, is the reflection of light from the pads.

From their edges, there stream into the smooth channel sharp blue serrations or ripples of various lengths, sometimes nearly across, where seemingly a zephyr gliding off the pads strikes it.

A boy is looking after his cows, calling “ker ker ker ker,” impatient to go home.

The sun is passing under the portcullis of the west.

The nighthawk squeaks, and the chewink jingles his strain, and the wood thrush; but I think there is no loud and general serenade from the birds.

I hear no veery. 

How much more swiftly the sun seems to perform the morning and evening portions of his journey, when he is nearest his starting-place or goal!

He is now almost ready to dip, — a round red disk shorn of his beams, — his head shaved like a captive led forth for execution.

Meanwhile the night is rapidly gathering her forces in deepening lines of shade under the east side of the willow causeway and the woods.

Now the sun has dipped into the western ocean.

He is one half below the horizon, and I see lines of distinct forest trees, miles and miles away on some ridge, now revealed against his disk.

It takes many a western woodland — go far enough, a whole Iowa-to span it.

Now only the smallest segment of its sphere, like a coal of fire rising above the forest, is seen sending a rosy glow up the horizon sky.

The illustrious traveller with whom we have passed a memorable day has gone his way, and we return slowly to our castle of the night.

But for some minutes the glowing portal clouds are essentially unchanged.

Pycnanthemum muticum behind Wheeler’s cottages; put it with the earliest of its class



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1853

Sophia's Viola pedata blossomed again a day or two ago. August 12, 1858 ("Saw a Viola pedata blooming again. "); September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); October 22, 1859 (" 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules. See July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum and Canadense (linear- leaved) whose red pods are noticed now.");  August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules.");  August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now. See July 18, 1854 ("Where I looked for early spring flowers I do not look for midsummer ones.")

The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. See July 19, 1854 ("Clintonia berries in a day or two."); August 27, 1856 ("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.")

At the Corner Spring the berries of the trillium are already pink See July 22, 1852 ("The green berries of the arum are seen, and the now reddish fruit of the trillium, and the round green-pea-sized green berries of the axil-flowering Solomon's-seal.")

This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries. See July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 31, 1856 ("The children should grow rich if they can get eight cents a quart for black berries, as they do."); August 5, 1852 ("The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene")

A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun. See October 19 1855 ("if there were eyes enough to occupy all the east shore, the whole pond would be seen as one dazzling shimmering lake of melted gold.")

So many men in the fields haying now. Yellow butterflies in the road.

July 22.

P. M. – To Annursnack.

The Chenopodium hybridum (?); at least its leaves are dark-green, rhomboidal, and heart-shaped.

The orchis and spikenard at Azalea Brook are not yet open.

The early roses are now about done, — the sweet briar quite, I think.

I see sometimes houstonias still.

The elodea out.

Boehmeria not yet.

On one account, at least, I enjoy walking in the fields less at this season than at any other; there are so many men in the fields haying now.

Observed, on the wild basil on Annursnack, small reddish butterflies which looked like a part of the plant. It has a singularly soft, velvety leaf.

Smooth sumach berries crimson there.

There is a kind of low blackberry which does not bear large fruit but very dense clusters, by wall-sides, shaded by the vine or other plants often, of clammy and strong-tasted berries.

Yellow butterflies in the road.

I find the Campanula Americana of the West naturalized in our garden.

Also a silene (?) without visibly viscid stem and with swollen joints; apparently the snapdragon catchfly otherwise. Leaves opposite, sessile, lanceolate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1853

There are so many men in the fields haying now. Compare July 22, 1854 ("The hottest night, — the last. It was almost impossible to pursue any work out-of- doors yesterday. There were but few men to be seen out.") 

On the wild basil . . . small reddish butterflies which looked like a part of the plant. See July 22, 1852 ("Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies"): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

The orchis and spikenard at Azalea Brook are not yet open. See July 12, 1853 ("Spikenard, not quite yet.The green-flowered lanceolate-leafed orchis at Azalea Brook will soon flower.") The locally rare Spikenard (Aralia racemosa) that Thoreau saw near Azalea brook still persisted in 2007.~ Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts(and in Lincoln, Massachusetts) & Other Botanical Sites in Concord compiled by Ray Angelo./ See also May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora")

Yellow butterflies in the road. See July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road”); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed");   July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road."); July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places."); September 3, 1854 ("Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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

In Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia

July 14.

Heavy fog. 

I see a rose, now in its prime, by the river, in the water amid the willows and button-bushes, while others, lower on shore, are nearly out of bloom.

Is it not the R. Carolina?

Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. 

This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. 

Within a week R. W. E. showed me a slip of this in a botany, as a great rarity which George Bradford brought from Watertown. I had long been interested in it by Linnæus’s account. I now find it in abundance. 

Andromeda Polifolia

It is a neat and tender-looking plant, with the pearly new shoots now half a dozen inches long and the singular narrow revolute leaves. I suspect the flower does not add much to it.

There is an abundance of the buck-bean there also. 

Holly berries are beginning to be ripe. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper, by to-morrow. 

Spergula arvensis gone to seed and in flower. 

A very tall ragged orchis by the Heywood Brook, two feet high, almost like a white fringed one. Lower ones I have seen some time. 

The clematis there (near the water-plantain) will open in a day or two.  

Mallows gone to seed and in bloom.

Erigeron Canadensis, butter-weed. 

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1853

In Beck Stow’s Swamp to-day approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia. See February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. . . . in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.”); May 24, 1854 ("Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime. . .A timid botanist would never pluck it."); November 15,1857 ("At C. Miles Swamp [Ledum Swamp] [f]ind plenty of Andromeda Polifolia ... where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood”); See also February 12, 1858 ("There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in [C.Miles] swamp than anywhere else in Concord."); November 23, 1857 ("This [Gowing's] swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia."). See also  Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

This is another instance of a common experience. When I become interested in some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. See  May 31, 1853 ("The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw. . . may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive."); August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”); January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . “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.”);  September 2, 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things."); February 4, 1858 ("It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.") 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.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.") See also  January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.")

Beck Stow's Swamp. See July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! When life looks sandy and barren, is reduced to its lowest terms, we have no appetite, and it has no flavor, then let me visit such a swamp as this, deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step, with its open water where the swallows skim and twitter, its meadow and cotton-grass, its dense patches of dwarf andromeda, now brownish-green, with clumps of blue berry bushes, its spruces and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side. ") A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  at Beck Stow's Swamp. 

There is an abundance of the buck-bean there also See August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that [Gowings] swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) See also  May 29, 1856 (" Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”)

A very tall ragged orchis by the Heywood Brook, two feet high, almost like a white fringed one. See July 21, 1851 ("The ragged orchis on Conantum."); July 13, 1856 ("Orchis lacera, apparently several days, lower part of spike, willow-row, Hubbard side, opposite Wheildon's land.")