A Book of the Seasons: September 3 (an autumnal day, goldenrod, berries and butterflies, johnswort after the rain, a sea-change or tide of thought)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

September 3

daybreak

September 3, 2018

Now is the season

for beautiful berries which

are not food for man.  

 September 3, 1853

Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, – a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness.  September 3, 1860

Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild

berries which are not food for man . . . To fill my basket with the neglected but beautiful fruit of the various species of cornels and viburnums, poke, arum, medeola, thorns, etc.  September 3, 1853

Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower. September 3, 1853

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. September 3, 1856

Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. September 3, 1856

 I look for fringed gentian. September 3, 1856

In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described. September 3, 1854

Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian.  September 3, 1856

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows. September 3, 1851

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, -- the hypericums, for instance. They are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops. September 3, 1851

 The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.  September 3, 1858

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. September 3, 1854

The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. September 3, 1856

I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown and muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drifting pad which he partly sinks.  September 3, 1856

I see where the bank by the Pokelogan is whitewashed, i. e. the grass, for a yard or two square, by the thin droppings of some bird which has roosted on a dead limb above. It was probably a blue heron, for I find some slate-blue feathers dropped, apparently curving breast feathers, broadly shafted with white.  September 3, 1858  

I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing? September 3, 1858 

A slate-colored snowbird back. September 3, 1857

Of late I have not heard the wood thrush. September 3, 1852

Though it is warm enough, I notice again the swarms of fuzzy gnats dancing in the cooler air, which also is decidedly autumnal.     September 3, 1860

See no fireflies.  September 3, 1852

A strong wind, which blows down much fruit. R. W. E. sits surrounded by choice windfall pears. September 3, 1859

The winds which the sun has aroused go down at evening, and the lunar influence may then perchance be detected. September 3, 1852 

 I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations. September 3, 1852 

1 A. M., moon waning . . . I hear an apple fall, as I go along the road.  September 3, 1852 

My thoughts suffered a sea-turn. September 3, 1854

September 3, 2023

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

  Arum Berries

 Cucumber Root (medeola)

 Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

The Fringed Gentian

The Polygala

 St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

 the Autumnal Dandelion

The White Pines

The October Pine Fall

Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

Yellow Butterflies

Fireflies

the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

 the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

the Blue Heron

The Wood  Thrush

 Young Birds

September Moonlight

 The world can never be more beautiful than now 

September 3, 2023

*****

July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the 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.") 

August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July.")

August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place.")

August 29, 1852 ("The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall")

August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”) 

September 1, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant.")

September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon..")

September 2, 1856 ("Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves”) 

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.")

Clear air cloudless sky 

decidedly autumnal

a beautiful day 

September 3, 1860

September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.”)

September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.") 

September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls")

September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green. ") 

September 24,1854 ("On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups . . .”)  

September 3, 2022

to separate 

the tide in my thoughts 

from 

the current distractions 

and fluctuations

September 3, 2022

January 22, 1852 ("My thoughts are my company."); March 1, 1860 ("I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down"); June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. ”); July 26, 1853 ("I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about alders, etc. about this time when the first asters open . . . Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us.");] August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness?"); September 14, 1859 (""Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. . . . our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last.); September 21, 1851 ("Is not the poet who walks by night conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence, in which the ocean within him overflows its shores and bathes the dry land? Has he not his spring-tides and his neap-tides, the former sometimes combining with the winds of heaven to produce those memorable high tides of the calendar which leave their marks for ages?")

Blue-stem and white goldenrod

September 3, 2023

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

September 2  <<<<<<<<<<    September 3   >>>>>>>>>  September 4

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 3

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

 

tinyurl.com/HDT03SEPT

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

September 3.




Why was there never a poem on the cricket? Its creak seems to me to be one of the most prominent and obvious facts in the world, and the least heeded. In the report of a man's contemplations I look to see somewhat answering to this sound.

When I sat on Lee's Cliff the other day (August 29th), I saw a man working with a horse in a field by the river, carting dirt; and the horse and his relation to him struck me as very remarkable. There was the horse, a mere animated machine, — though his tail was brushing off the flies, his whole existence subordinated to the man's, with no tradition, perhaps no instinct, in him of independence and freedom, of a time when he was wild and free, completely humanized.

No compact made with him that he should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any holidays. His independence never recognized, it being now quite forgotten both by men and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am not aware that there are any wild horses known surely not to be descended from tame ones.

Assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread it over the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping, and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time to time, on his own account, all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worthwhile that he should be animated for this. It was plain that the man was not educating the horse; not trying to develop his nature, but merely getting work out of him.

That mass of animated matter seemed more completely the servant of man than any inanimate. For slaves have their holidays; a heaven is conceded to them, but to the horse none. Now and forever he is man's slave.

The more I considered, the more the man seemed akin to the horse; only his was the stronger will of the two.

For a little further on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that to a certain extent his independence be recognized, and yet really he was but little more independent.

I had always instinctively regarded the horse as a free people somewhere, living wild. Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild, — not tamed and broken by society.

Now for my part I have such a respect for the horse's nature as would tempt me to let him alone; not to interfere with him, --  his walks, his diet, his loves. But by mankind he is treated simply as if he were an engine which must have rest and is sensible of pain.

Suppose that every squirrel were made to turn a coffee-mill! 

Suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts! 

There he was with his tail cut off, because it was in the way, or to suit the taste of his owner; his mane trimmed, and his feet shod with iron that he might wear longer.

What is a horse but an animal that has lost its liberty? 

What is it but a system of slavery? and do you not thus by insensible and unimportant degrees come to human slavery? 

Has lost its liberty! - and has man got any more liberty himself for having robbed the horse, or has he lost just as much of his own, and become more like the horse he has robbed?

Is not the other end of the bridle in this case, too, coiled round his own neck?

Hence stable-boys, jockeys, all that class that is daily transported by fast horses.

There he stood with his oblong square figure (his tail being cut off) seen against the water, brushing off the flies with his tail and stamping, braced back while the man was filling the cart.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that, though no man is quite well or healthy, yet every one believes practically that health is the rule and disease the exception, and each invalid is wont to think himself in a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor to another state of existence. But it may be some encouragement to men to know that in this respect they stand on the same platform, that disease is, in fact, the rule of our terrestrial life and the prophecy of a celestial life.

Where is the coward who despairs because he is sick? 

Every one may live either the life of Achilles or of Nestor.

Seen in this light, our life with all its diseases will look healthy, and in one sense the more healthy as it is the more diseased. Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. It is, nevertheless, a cheering fact that men affirm health unanimously, and esteem themselves miserable failures.

Here was no blunder. They gave us life on exactly these conditions, and me thinks we shall live it with more heart when we perceive clearly that these are the terms on which we have it.

Life is a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the body answer to the troubles and defeats of the spirit. Man begins by quarrelling with the animal in him, and the result is immediate disease.

In proportion as the spirit is the more ambitious and persevering, the more obstacles it will meet with. It is as a seer that man asserts his disease to be exceptional.

2 P. M. — To Hubbard's Swimming-Place and Grove in rain.

As I went under the new telegraph-wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead. It was as the sound of a far-off glorious life, a supernal life, which came down to us, and vibrated the lattice-work of this life of ours.?

The melons and the apples seem at once to feed my brain.

Here comes a laborer from his dinner to resume his work at clearing out a ditch notwithstanding the rain, remembering as Cato says, per ferias potuisse fossas veteres tergeri, that in the holidays old ditches might have been cleared out. One would think that I were the paterfamilias come to see if the steward of my farm has done his duty.

The ivy leaves are turning red.

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

How much the Roman must have been indebted to his agriculture, dealing with the earth, its clods and stubble, its dust and mire.

Their farmer consuls were their glory, and they well knew the farm to be the nursery of soldiers.

Read Cato to see what kind of legs the Romans stood on.

The leaves of the hardhack are somewhat appressed, clothing the stem and showing their downy under sides like white, waving wands. Is it peculiar to the season, or the rain, -- or the plant? 

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, -- the hypericums, for instance. They are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops.

Some farmers have begun to thresh and winnow their oats.

Identified spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata), apparently out of blossom.

Shepherd's-purse and chickweed.

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities "are gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors." He proposes that the people's right to them be asserted and defended and that they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. "This," says he, “would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foundation" !!! So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neighborhood of English large towns.

Think of a man -- he may be a genius of some kind -- being confined to a highway and a park for his world to range in! I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement. I should hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me beforehand. Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where gentlemen are seated! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe? Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1851

Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. Compare December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear ")

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows. See August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place."); September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon.."); September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, See 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.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The tide in my thoughts,

September 3. 

daybreak, September 3, 2018

1 A. M., moon waning, to Conantum. 

A warm night. A thin coat sufficient. 

I hear an apple fall, as I go along the road. 

Meet a man going to market thus early. 

There are no mists to diversify the night. Its features are very simple. 

I hear no whip-poor-will or other bird. 

See no fireflies. 

Saw a whip- poor-will (?) flutter across the road.

Hear the dumping sound of frogs on the river meadow, and occasionally a kind of croak as from a bittern there. 

It is very dewy, and I bring home much mud on my shoes. This is a peculiarity of night, — its dews, water resuming its reign. 

Return before dawn. 

Morning and evening are more attractive than midnight. 

I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations. The winds which the sun has aroused go down at evening, and the lunar influence may then perchance be detected. 

Of late I have not heard the wood thrush.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1852

To separate the tide in my thoughts . . . from the current distractions and fluctuations. See  September 21, 1851 ("But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends us, but also by her influence on the earth. No thinker can afford to overlook the influence of the moon any more than the astronomer can. “The moon gravitates towards the earth, and the earth reciprocally towards the moon.” This statement of the astronomer would be bald and meaningless, if it were not in fact a symbolical expression of the value of all lunar influence on man . Even the astronomer admits that “the notion of the moon's influence on terrestrial things was confirmed by her manifest effect upon the ocean,” but is not the poet who walks by night conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence, in which the ocean within him overflows its shores and bathes the dry land? 'Has he not his spring-tides and his neap-tides, the former sometimes combining with the winds of heaven to produce those memorable high tides of the calendar which leave their marks for ages?");July 26, 1853 ("I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about alders, etc. about this time when the first asters open, which makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. . . .Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us. They are such fruits as music, poetry, love, which humanity bears") See also January 22, 1852 ("My thoughts are my company."); March 1, 1860 ("I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down"); June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. ”); August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness?"); September 14, 1859 (""Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. . . . our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last.)

Of late I have not heard the wood thrush. See August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July."); August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush

See no fireflies. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies

Windfalls

September 3. 

A strong wind, which blows down much fruit. R. W. E. sits surrounded by choice windfall pears.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1859


See August 29, 1852 ("The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall"); September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls"); September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green. ") See also September 3, 1860 ("See on the two pear trees by the Boze cellar ripe pears, some ripe several days  . . . one was quite sweet and good")

The squirrel lives in a hazel grove.

September 3. 

P. M. — Up Assabet a-hazelnutting. 

I see a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad, all but the head and one foreleg taken in. It is a singular sight, that of the little head of the snake directly above the great, solemn, granitic head of the toad, whose eyes are open, though I have reason to think that he is not alive, for when I return some hours after I find that the snake has disgorged the toad and departed. 

The toad had been swallowed with the hind legs stretched out and close together, and its body is compressed and elongated to twice its length, while the head, which had not been taken in, is of the original size and full of blood. The toad is quite dead, apparently killed by being so far crushed; and its eyes are still open. The body of the snake was enlarged regularly from near the middle to its jaws. It appeared to have given up this attempt at the eleventh hour. Probably the toad is very much more elongated when perfectly swallowed by a small snake. It would seem, then, that snakes undertake to swallow toads which are too big for them. 

I see where the bank by the Pokelogan is whitewashed, i. e. the grass, for a yard or two square, by the thin drop pings of some bird which has roosted on a dead limb above. It was probably a blue heron, for I find some slate-blue feathers dropped, apparently curving breast feathers, broadly shafted with white. 

I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing?

Zizania still. 

The hazelnut bushes up this way are chiefly confined to the drier river-bank. At least they do not extend into the lower, somewhat meadowy land further inland. They appear to be mostly stripped. The most I get are left hanging over the water at the swimming-ford. 

How important the hazelnut to the ground squirrel! They grow along the walls where the squirrels have their homes. They are the oaks that grow before their doors. They have not far to go to their harvesting.  These bushes are generally stripped, but isolated ones in the middle of fields, away from the squirrel-walks, are still full of burs. 

The wall is highway and rampart to these little beasts. They are almost inaccessible in their holes beneath it, and on either side of it spring up, also defended by the wall, the hazel bushes on whose fruit the squirrels in a great measure depend. Notwithstanding the abundance of hazelnuts here, very little account is made of them, and I think it is because pains is not taken to collect them before the squirrels have done so. Many of the burs are perfectly green yet, though others are brightly red-edged. 

The squirrel lives in a hazel grove. There is not a hazel bush but some squirrel has his eye on its fruit, and he will be pretty sure to anticipate you. As we say, “The tools to those who can use them,” so we may say, “The nuts to those who can get them.” 

That floating grass by the riverside whose lower leaves, so flat and linear, float on the surface of the water, though they are not now, at least, lake-colored, is apparently the Glyceria fluitans, floating fescue grass, still blooming and for a good while. I got it yesterday at Merrick’s shore. 

At the sand-bar by the swimming-ford, I collect two small juncuses, not knowing but I have pressed them before. One appears to be Juncus scirpoides (?), small as it is; the other, Juncus articulates (? ?). 

At Prichard’s shore I see where they have plowed up and cast into the river a pile of elm roots, which interfered with their laying down the adjacent field. One which I picked up I at first thought was a small lead pipe, partly coiled up and muddy in the water, it being apparently of uniform size. It was just nineteen feet and eight inches long; the biggest end was twenty-one fortieths of an inch in diameter, and the smallest nineteen fortieths. This difference was scarcely obvious to the eye. No doubt it might have been taken up very much longer. It looked as if, when green and flexible, it might answer the purpose of a rope, — of a cable, for instance, when you wish to anchor in deep water. The wood is very porous. 

The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1858

See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad, all but the head and one foreleg taken in. See May 19, 1856 (“Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ”)

The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground. September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

On Prospect Hill

September 3

P. M. – Rode to Prospect Hill, Waltham. 

The Polygonum Pennsylvanicum there. 

One Chimaphila maculata on the hill. 

Tufts of Woodsia Ilvensis. 

Hedyotis longifolia still flowering commonly, near the top, in a thin wood. 

Gerardia tenuifolia by the road in Lincoln, and a slate-colored snowbird back.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1857

The Polygonum Pennsylvanicum at Waltham. See September 19, 1856 (“Am surprised to find the Polygonum Pennsylvanvcum abundant, by the roadside near the bank. First saw it the other day at Brattleboro.”); August 28, 1857 (“Polygonum Pennsylvanicum by bank, how long?”)

One Chimaphila maculata on the hill. See  July 24, 1856 ("Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellatais quite done there. Leaves just shooting up.” ) Chimaphila maculate -- spotted prince's-pine, pipsissewa, spotted wintergreen-- is a "highly recognizable understory species having variegated leaves with pale green veins “ ~ GoBotany . HDT calls Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa, “wintergreen.” See July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”);  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

Gerardia tenuifolia by the road in Lincoln. See August 29, 1857 (“Gerardia tenuifolia, a new plant to Concord, apparently in prime, at entrance to Owl-Nest Path and generally in that neighborhood. Also on Conantum height above orchard, two or three days later. This species grows on dry ground, or higher than the purpurea, and is more delicate.”)

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup.

September 3. 

September 3

P. M. — To Hubbard's Swamp for Viburnum nudum berries. 

The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. 

I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown and muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drifting pad which he partly sinks. 

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. It is chiefly stone, and its taste is like that of tar (!), methinks, far from palatable. 

So many plants, the indigenous and the bewildering variety of exotics, you see in conservatories and nurserymen's catalogues, or read of in English books, and the Royal Society did not make one of them, and knows no more about them than you! All truly indigenous and wild on this earth. I know of no mark that betrays an introduced plant, as none but the gardener can tell what flower has strayed from its parterre; but where the seed will germinate and the plant spring and grow, there it is at home. 

Weeds are uncultivated herbaceous plants which do not bear handsome flowers. 

Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian. 

Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. 

If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. 

A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea. 

One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster. 

Castile-soap galls are crowding the more legitimate acorn on the shrub oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1856

Autumn sheen. . . See September 2, 1856 ("Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves”)

Attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. See  September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . . It behooves me to go a-berrying in this sense once a year at least. “)

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. . . methinks, far from palatable. See September 24,1854 ("On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups . . .”)

Painted tortoises with . . . fresh clean black scales . . . See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”)

Castile-soap galls . . . September 4, 1854 (“In the wood-paths I find a great many of the Castile-soap galls, more or less fresh. . . .”)