And in the distance a maple by the water beginning to blush.

September 19

And in the distance a maple by the water beginning to blush

September 19, 2014

P. M. - To Great Meadows.

The red capsules of the sarothra.

Many large crickets about on the sand.

Observe the effects of frost in particular places.

Some blackberry vines are very red.

I see the oxalis and the tree primrose and the Norway cinquefoil and the prenanthes and the Epilobium coloratum and the cardinal-flower and the small hypericum and yarrow, and I think it is the Ranunculus repens, between Ripley Hill and river, with spotted leaves lingering still.

The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, - solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown.

The polygala and the purple gerardia are still common and attract by their high color.

The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound.

The Viola lanceolata has blossomed again, and the lambkill.

What pretty six-fingered leaves the three oxalis leafets make! 

I see the effects of frost on the Salix Purshiana, imbrowning their masses; and in the distance is a maple or two by the water, beginning to blush.

That small, slender-leaved, rose-tinted (white petals, red calyx) polygonum by the river is perhaps in its prime now; slender spikes and slender lanceolate sessile leaves, with rent hairy and ciliate sheaths, eight stamens, and three styles united in middle. Not biting. I cannot find it described.

Cicuta maculata

And what is that white flower which I should call Cicuta maculata, except that the veins do not terminate in the sinuses?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1852

The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises,  September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now."); See also September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now."); .("September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

The red capsules of the sarothra. See August 3, 1852 ("The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.."); August 3, 1856 ("Sarothra apparently now in prime."); August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”); August 19, 1856 ("The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like. ); August 30, 1856 ("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”); September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides. "); September 23, 1852 ("The sarothra in bloom");   See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The Norway cinquefoil. See August 30, 1851 ("I perceive in the Norway cinquefoil (Potentilla Norvegica), now nearly out of blossom, that the alternate five leaves of the calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them. There is one door closed, of the closing year.")

The purple gerardia are still common and attract by their high color. See August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia purpurea, two or three days."); August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass."); August 21, 1851 ("The purple gerardia now."); September 11, 1852 ("How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua.")

The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. See September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside."); . September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill, about the oaks. Never saw them thicker in a meadow. A cool, spring-suggesting yellow. They reserve their force till this season, though they begin so early. Cool to the eye, as the creak of the cricket to the ear. "); August 29, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant")

The Viola lanceolata has blossomed again. See September 28, 1852 ("I have now seen all but the blanda, palmata, and pubescens blooming again .. . This is the commencement, then, of the second spring"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

And in the distance is a maple or two by the water, beginning to blush. See  September 12, 1858 ("Some small red maples by water begun to redden."); September 18, 1858 ("Many red maples are now partly turned dark crimson along the meadow-edge."); September 18, 1860 ("The first autumnal tints (of red maples) are now generally noticed"); September 20, 1857 ("A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there."); September 21, 1854 ("The red maples, especially at a distance, begin to light their fires, some turning yellow, "); September 24, 1851 ("I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. It is a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer and more conspicuous."); September 24, 1855 ("the maples are but just beginning to blush"); September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence"); September 25, 1857 ("The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun."); September 25, 1857 ("A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar."); September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off."); September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."); September 27, 1857 ("At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum."); September 29, 1851 ("The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on its hilly shore is quite charming. They are unexpectedly and incredibly brilliant, especially on the western shore and close to the water's edge, where, alternating with yellow birches and poplars and green oaks, they remind me of a line of soldiers, redcoats and riflemen in green mixed together."); September 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to see that some red maples, which were so brilliant a day or two ago, have already shed their leaves, and they cover the land and the water quite thickly."); October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd"); October 8, 1852 (“Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water.”)

And what is that white flower which I should call Cicuta maculata? See June 6, 1851 ("Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata, American hemlock, the veins of the leaflets ending in the notches and the root fasciculated."); August 20, 1851 ("Sium lineare, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the Cicuta maculata.") August 29, 1858 ("Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done."); August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio.."); October 2, 1859 ("The Cicuta maculata, for instance, the concave umbel is so well spaced, the different um-bellets (?) like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament.") Note. Cicuta maculata is a highly poisonous species of flowering plant in the carrot family known by several common names, including spotted water hemlock, spotted parsley, spotted cowbane, and suicide root. It is considered to be North America's most toxic plant.~ Wikipedia

September 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 19

And in the distance

a maple by the water

beginning to blush.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. A maple by the water

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-520919 

Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits.

March 18.

Tree sparrows have warbled faintly for a week.

When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in December, or in midwinter above the snow, my spirits rise as if it were an oasis in the desert.

The very name “sallow” (salix, from the Celtic sallis, near water) suggests that there is some natural sap or blood flowing there.

It is a divining wand that has not failed, but stands with its root in the fountain.

The fertile willow catkins are those green caterpillar like ones, commonly an inch or more in length, which develop themselves rapidly after the sterile yellow ones,which we had so admired are fallen or effete. 

Arranged around the bare twigs, they often form green wands eight to eighteen inches long.

A single catkin consists of from twenty-five to a hundred little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, each of which is closely packed with cotton, in which are numerous seeds so small that they are scarcely discernible by ordinary eyes.

I do not know what they mean who call this the emblem of despairing love! “The willow, worn by forlorn paramour!” It is rather the emblem of love and sympathy with all nature. It may droop, — it is so lithe, supple, and pliant — but it never weeps.

The willow of Babylon blooms not the less hopefully with us, though its other half is not in the New World at all, and never has been. It droops, not to represent David's tears, but rather to snatch the crown from Alexander's head. (Nor were poplars ever the weeping sisters of Phaëton, for nothing rejoices them more than the sight of the Sun's chariot, and little reck they who drives it.) 

Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits.

No wonder its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, take the whole tree, it is not only soft and pliant but tough and resilient (as Pliny says ?), not splitting at the first blow, but closing its wounds at once and refusing to transmit its hurts.

I know of one foreign species which introduced itself into Concord as [a] withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, and has its descendants.

Herodotus says that the Scythians divined by the help of willow rods. I do not know any better twigs for this purpose.




How various are the habits of men ! Mother says that her father - in - law, Captain Minott, not only used to roast and eat a long row of little wild apples, reaching in a semicircle from jamb to jamb under the andirons on the reddened hearth (I used to buy many a pound of Spanish brown at the stores for mother to redden the jambs and hearth with), but he had a quart of new milk regularly placed at the head of his bed, which he drank at many draughts in the course of the night.

It was so the night he died, and my grandmother discovered that he was dying, by his not turning over to reach his milk.

I asked what he died of, and mother answered apoplexy! at which I did not wonder.

Still this habit may not have caused it. I have a cousin, also, who regularly eats his bowl of bread and milk just before going to bed, however late. He is a very stirring man.

You can't read any genuine history — as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede - without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it.

A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.

Your account of foreign parts which you have never seen should by good rights be less interesting.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1861

Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits. See   February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring,. . . as if all the landscape and all nature shone. T. . . I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. "); March 13, 1859 ("The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed.."); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins!"); April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day. . . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); May 14, 1852 (“Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow!”)

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet.

April 20. 

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. 

A warm day. Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. 

Moore tells me that last fall his men, digging sand in that hollow just up the hill, dug up a parcel of snakes half torpid. They were both striped and black together, in a place somewhat porous, he thought where a horse had been buried once. 

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet. This seems to be the common practice when such collections are found; they are at once killed and stretched out in a line, and the sum of their lengths measured and related.  

It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time. 

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush.

H. D.. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1860

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. See April 10, 1860 ("Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days");. See also April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

 Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. See April 16, 1855 ("A perfectly clear and very warm day, . . . and I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat"); April 17, 1855 ("I leave off my greatcoat, though the wind rises rather fresh before I return. It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat.");. April 19, 1855 ("Warm and still and somewhat cloudy. Am without greatcoat"); April 25, 1854 (" I swelter under my greatcoat. . . . (I have not left it at home yet),. . . For some time we have done with little fire, nowadays let it go out in the afternoon."); April 26, 1854 ("It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time.");April 30, 1859 (" The warmest afternoon yet. Sat in sun without fire this forenoon."); May 2, 1858 ("Sit without fire to-day and yesterday."); May 3, 1857 ("To-day we sit without fire.")

The men killed them. See  note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time.  See  April 20, 1853 ("Saw a toad and a small snake.") See also April 5, 1860 ("I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. . . .. Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general. ");  April 25, 1859 ("[A] new season has arrived.  . . . It begins when the first toad is heard. Methinks I hear through the wind to-day . . . a very faint, low ringing of toads, as if distant and just begun. It is an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination").  Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush. See April 19, 1858 ("Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? ");  April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..") and note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

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 ©  2009-2023

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice.

April 11. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

The hills are now decidedly greened as seen a mile off, and the road or street sides pretty brightly so. 

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. 

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out, some killed by frost; probably a day or two at least. 

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. 

The early willow still in prime. Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? 

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). 

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. 

April 11, 2020

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days (not yet quite generally), the highest only two inches, is probably Carex umbellata.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1860

The hills are now decidedly greened. See  April 10, 1855 ("There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones.");April 17, 1856 ("There is a quite distinct tinge of green on the hillside seen from my window now."); April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups."); April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. . . .during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet") See also April 2, 1855 ("Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant" when a plant is moist or most alive. . . . The word, according to Webster, is from the Saxon grene, to grow, and hence is the color of herbage when growing. ")

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. See March 6, 1860 ("I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window")

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out. See April 11, 1853 ("The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning"); see also  April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. "); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open."); April 13, 1854 ('The red maple in a day or two. I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 18, 1856 ("Red maple stamens in some places project considerably, and it will probably blossom to-morrow if it is pleasant. "); April 22, 1855 ("Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge."); April 23, 1856 ("The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d."); April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ");April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("Red maples are past prime. I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees."); April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color."); April 29, 1859 ("Those red maples are reddest in which the fertile flowers prevail.")

The early willow still in prime. See  April 12, 1852 (“See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.”); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far. I notice that the sterile blossoms of that large-catkined early willow begin to open on the side of the catkin, like a tinge of golden light, gradually spreading and expanding over the whole surface and lifting their anthers far and wide.").

Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? See April 9, 1858 ("The staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.")

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. See April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath.") See also April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet." ) ; April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 13, 1855 ("Many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig."). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel.

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). See April 4, 1859 ("The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower"); April 13, 1858 ("Epigaea abundantly out, maybe four or five days.")/ See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. See April 16, 1855 ('Stow’s cold pond-hole is still full of ice though partly submerged, —the only pool in this state that I see.")

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days is probably Carex umbellata. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. );  April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger."); April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i.e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.");

The Cheney elm and the Salix purpurea

April 10. 

Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th. Some are killed. 

Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days. 

2 P  M. — 44º and east wind (followed by some rain still the next day, as usual).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1860


Cheney elm, many anthers shed pollen, probably 7th. See note to April 7, 1859 ("The Cheney elm looks as if it would shed pollen to-morrow,[no], and the Salix purpurea will perhaps within a week")

Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days. See April 13, 1859  ("The Salix purpurea will hardly open for five days yet."); April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

The sour scent of decaying ferns

October 18

Rains till 3 p. m., but is warmer. 

October 18, 2019

P. M. — To Assabet, front of Tarbell's. 

Going by Dennis Swamp on railroad, the sour scent of decaying ferns is now very strong there. 

Rhus venenata is bare, and maples and some other shrubs, and more are very thin-leaved, as alder and birches, so that the swamp, with so many fallen leaves and migrating sparrows, etc., flitting through it, has a very late look. For falling, put the canoe birch with the small white. The beach plum is almost quite bare. The leaves of a chinquapin oak have not fallen. 

The long, curved, yellowish buds of the Salix discolor begin to show, the leaves falling; even the down has peeped out from under some. 

In the ditch along the west side of Dennis Swamp I see half a dozen yellow-spot turtles moving about. Probably they are preparing to go into winter quarters. 

I see one of the smaller thrushes to-day. 

Saw a tree-toad on the ground in a sandy wood-path. It did not offer to hop away, may have been chilled by the rain (?). It is marked on the back with black, some what in the form of the hylodes. 

Why can we not oftener refresh one another with original thoughts ? If the fragrance of the dicksonia fern is so grateful and suggestive to us, how much more refreshing and encouraging — re-creating — would be fresh and fragrant thoughts communicated to us fresh from a man's experience and life! I want none of his pity, nor sympathy, in the common sense, but that he should emit and communicate to me his essential fragrance, that he should not be forever repenting and going to church (when not otherwise sinning), but, as it were, going a-huckleberrying in the fields of thought, and enrich all the world with his visions and his joys. 

Why do you flee so soon, sir, to the theatres, lecture-rooms, and museums of the city? If you will stay here awhile I will promise you strange sights. You shall walk on water; all these brooks and rivers and ponds shall be your highway. You shall see the whole earth covered a foot or more deep with purest white crystals, in which you slump or over which you glide, and all the trees and stubble glittering in icy armor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1859


Maples and some other shrubs, and more are very thin-leaved so that the swamp, with so many fallen leaves and migrating sparrows, etc., flitting through it, has a very late look. See October 18, 1853 ("The red maples have been bare a good while. In the sun and this clear air, their bare ashy branches even sparkle like silver."); October 18, 1855 ("The maple swamps, bare of leaves, here and there about the meadow, look like smoke blown along the edge of the woods."); October 18, 1858 ("I am struck by the magical change which has taken place in the red maple swamps, . . . — all their splendor gone, wafted away, as it were, by a puff of wind, and they are the mere ghosts of trees, unnoticed by any, or, if noticed at all, like the smoke that is seen where a blaze is extinguished, ")

The sour scent of decaying ferns is now very strong. See  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds"); October 2, 1857 ("In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent"); October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.")

The long, curved, yellowish buds of the Salix discolor begin to show. See October 25, 1858 ("Now that the leaves are fallen (for a few days), the long yellow buds (often red-pointed) which sleep along the twigs of the S. discolor are very conspicuous and quite interesting, already even carrying our thoughts for ward to spring.")

A black snake at home in the trees.

May 28. 

Saturday. P. M. — To Cliffs. 

Some Salix rostrata seed begins to fly. 

Low blackberry in bloom on railroad bank. 

Also S. Torreyana seed, just begun to fly. S. pedicellaris long out of bloom there. 

At the extreme east side of Trillium Wood, come upon a black snake, which at first keeps still prudently, thinking I may not see him, — in the grass in open land, — then glides to the edge of the wood and darts swiftly up into the top of some slender shrubs there — Viburnum dentatum and alder — and lies stretched out, eying me, in horizontal loops eight feet high. The biggest shrub was not over one inch thick at the ground. At first I thought its neck was its chief member, — as if it drew itself up by it, — but again I thought that it rather (when I watched it ascending) extended its neck and a great part of its body upward, while the lower extremity was more or less coiled and rigid on the twigs from a point d'appui. Thus it lifted itself quickly to higher forks. When it moved along more horizontally, it extended its neck far, and placed it successively between the slender forks. 

This snake, some four feet long, rested there at length twelve feet high, on twigs, not one so big as a pipe-stem, in the top of a shad-bush; yet this one's tail was broken off where a third of an inch thick, and it could not cling with that. It was quick as thought in its motions there, and perfectly at home in the trees, so far was it from making the impression of a snake in an awkward position. 

Cinnamon fern pollen [sic]. 

Lady's-slipper pollen. These grow under pines even in swamps, as at Ledum Swamp. 

The lint from leaves sticks to your clothes now. 

Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. 

Methinks every tree and shrub is started, or more, now, but the Vaccinium dumosum, which has not burst.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1859

Some Salix rostrata seed begins to fly. See June 6, 1856 ("That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered.")

This snake, some four feet long, perfectly at home in the trees. See May 16, 2018 ("It surprised me very much to see it cross from tree to tree exactly like a squirrel, where there appeared little or no support for such a body."); May 30, 1855 ("See a small black snake run along securely through thin bushes (alders and willows) three or four feet from the ground, passing intervals of two feet easily,—very readily and gracefully, —ascending or descending")

The Vaccinium dumosum. See  August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”); July 2, 1857 (“The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. . . . not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom.”); August 8, 1858 (“the Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella . . . the only inedible species of  Vaccinieoe that I know in this town”)

May 28. SeeA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2021

Dragon-flies have begun to come out in numbers.

May 25. 

May 25,2019

Dragon-flies have begun to come out of their larva state in numbers, leaving the cases on the weeds, etc. See one tender and just out this forenoon.

Meadow fox-tail grass abundantly out (how long?), front of E. Hosmer's by bars and in E. Hubbard's meadow, front of meeting-house. 

The Salix petiolaris is either entire or serrate, and generally, I should now say, was becoming serrate, the later leaves, e. g. that one, a fertile one, nearly opposite the Shattuck oak. 

The river is quite high for the season, on account of the late rains. 

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1859

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.  See May 25, 1851 (“I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.”); May 25, 1855 ("Hear . . . the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.”); May 25, 1860  ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also  May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . ..  The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound"); 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. It is the first earth-song, beginning with the croakers, (the cricket's not yet), as if the very meads at last burst into a meadowy song."); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”); Compare May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”);  And see also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and note to May 6, 1858 ("I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles. They express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature.")(catologing the frogs of Massachsetts)

The warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees.

May 15 

Sunday. 

Observe Cornus florida involucres.

Sarsaparilla flower. 

Salix discolor seed, or down, begins to blow. 

A woodcock starts up with whistling sound. 

I have been struck of late with the prominence of the Viburnum nudum leaf in the swamps, reddish-brown and one inch over, a peculiarly large and mature-looking, firm-looking leaf. 

Swamp white oak leafed several days, but generally appears as in winter at a little distance. 

Salix lucida well out, how long? 

Nemopanthes flower, apparently a day or two. 

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. They are scarce and silent in a cool and windy day, or found only in sheltered places. 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches, when the buds of oaks and of most trees are but just burst generally. You are surprised to see such a sudden and rapid development when you had but just begun to think of renewed life, not yet of growth. Very properly these are called shoots. 

This plant has, perhaps, in four or five days accomplished one fourth part [of] its whole summer's growth. (So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long, arranged raywise about the terminal one and the end of their branches, having in about a fortnight accomplished one quarter to one third their whole summer growth. Thus they may be properly said to shoot when their season comes, and then stand to harden and mature before the winter.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1859

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. See May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”) See also April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades."); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south.”); May 11, 1853 (" How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice."); May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 18, 1857 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes")May 23, 1857 ("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,"); May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers “) 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches. See May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”); May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”); June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet, but now in some cases appear to be checked and formed a large bud.”)

So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); May 28, 1855 (“White pine and pitch pine shoots from two to five inches long.”);July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

The warblers begin

to come in numbers with the

leafing of the trees.

Botanizing Lynn

April 26. 

April 26, 2019

Start for Lynn. Rice says that he saw a large mud turtle in the river about three weeks ago, and has seen two or three more since. Thinks they come out about the first of April. 

He saw a woodchuck the 17th; says he heard a toad on the 23d. 

P. M. — Walked with C. M. Tracy in the rain in the western part of Lynn, near Dungeon Rock. This is the last of the rains (spring rains !) which invariably followed an east wind. Crossed a stream of stones ten or more rods wide, reaching from top of Pine Hill to Salem. 

Saw many discolor-like willows on hills (rocky hills), but apparently passing into S. humilis; yet no eriocephala, or distinct form from discolor. Also one S. rostrata. 

Tracy thought his neighborhood's a depauperated flora, being on the porphyry. Is a marked difference between the vegetation of the porphyry and the sienite. 

Got the Cerastium arvense from T.'s garden; said to be abundant on Nahant and to have flowers big as a five-cent-piece; very like a dianthus, — the leaf. 

Also got the Nasturtium officinale, or common brook cress, from Lynn, and set it in Depot Field Brook. Neither of these in bloom. His variety Virginica of Cardamine grows on dry ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 26, 1859

Is a marked difference between the vegetation of the porphyry and the sienite. See January 14, 1858 (“Rode . . . into the northwest part of Lynn, to the Danvers line. After a mile or two, we passed beyond the line of the porphyry into the sienite. The sienite is more rounded. Saw some furrows in sienite. On a ledge of sienite in the woods, the rocky woods near Danvers line, saw many boulders of sienite”)

Got the Nasturtium officinale, or common brook cress, from Lynn, and set it in Depot Field Brook.See July 21, 1856 (“The brook cress might be called river cress, for it is very abundant rising above the surface in all the shallower parts of the river.”)

A beautiful law of distribution.

April 22. 

The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th. 

Arbor-vitae, how long? 

P. M. — In a fine rain, around Walden. 

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut just after entering, whose aments (which apparently here began to shed pollen yesterday) in scattered clusters at the ends of the bare twigs, but just begun to shed their pollen, not hanging loose and straight yet, but curved, are a very rich crimson, like some ripe fruit, as mulberries, seen against the sand. I cannot represent the number in a single cluster, but they are much the handsomest now before the crimson anthers have burst, and are all the more remarkable for the very open and bare habit of the tree. 

When setting the pines at Walden the last three days,

I was sung to by the field sparrow.

For music I heard their jingle from time to time.

That the music the pines were set to, and

I have no doubt they will build many a nest

under their shelter. 

It would seem as if such a field as this —

a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods,

with small pines scattered in it —

was well-nigh, if not quite, abandoned to

this one alone among the sparrows. 

The surface of the earth is portioned out among them.

By a beautiful law of distribution,

one creature does not too much interfere with another.

          I do not hear the song sparrow here. 

As the pines gradually increase,

and a wood-lot is formed,

these birds will withdraw to new pastures,

and the thrushes, etc., will take their place. 

[S]o my pines were established

by the song of the field sparrow.

They commonly place their nests here

under the shelter of a little pine in the field. 

As I planted there, wandering thoughts visited me, which I have now forgotten. My senses were busily suggesting them, though I was unconscious of their origin. 

E. g., I first consciously found myself entertaining the thought of a carriage on the road, and directly after I was aware that I heard it. No doubt I had heard it before, or rather my ears had, but I was quite unconscious of it, — it was not a fact of my then state of existence; yet such was the force of habit, it affected my thoughts nevertheless, so double, if not treble, even, are we. 

Sometimes the senses bring us information quicker than we can receive it. Perhaps these thoughts which run in ruts by themselves while we are engaged in some routine may be called automatic. 

I distinctly entertained the idea of a carriage, without the slightest suspicion how it had originated or been suggested to my mind. I have no doubt at all that my ears had heard it, but my mind, just then preoccupied, had refused to attend to it. 

This suggests that most, if not all, indeed, of our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. 

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. 

I still see a large flock of grackles. 

Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there. 

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods, into which they swiftly scale, dodging to right and left and avoiding the twigs, yet without once flapping the wings after having launched themselves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1859

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut  whose aments are a very rich crimson. See April 3, 1853 ("The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation");  April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata . . .shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. There is a female on the left, on Warren's Path at Deep Cut.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen

A field as this — a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods, with small pines scattered in it — [is]abandoned to this one alone among the sparrows. See  April 19, 1860 ("Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

Our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. Compare November 18, 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.")

At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking. See June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta. On this the musquash there commonly makes its stools. A tall slender sedge with conspicuous brown staminate spikes") See also April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. See April 22, 1852 ("It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge . . . This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."); April 22, 1856 ("It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.")

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See April 22, 1852 ("Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.