I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
In low swampy woods
where cinnamon fern prevails.
it’s already fall.
August 4, 1854
These ferns turn yellow
or brown and ripen before
they are frost-bitten.
September 24, 1859
The sour scent of ferns
reminds me of the season
and of the past years.
October 2,1859
May 12. The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places. The first is more uniformly woolly down the stem, the other, though very woolly at top, being partly bare on the stem. The wool of the last is coarser. May 12, 1858
May 13. The intetmediate ferns and cinnamon, a foot and a half high, have just leafeted out. The sensitive fern is only six inches high. — apparently the latest of all. May 13, 1860
May 26. Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day. May 26, 1855
May 26, 2017
May 28. The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long. May 28, 1858
May 30. In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. May 30, 1854
May 31. Also the cinnamon fern grows in circles. May 31, 1857
May 31, 2020
June 11. Ferns generally were killed by the frost of last month, e. g. brakes, cinnamon fern, flowering and sensitive ferns, and no doubt others. I smell the strong sour scent of their decaying . . The brakes, the sarsaparilla, the osmundas, the Solomon’s-seals, the lady's slippers have long since withered and fallen. The huckleberries and blueberries, too, have lost their leaves. The forest floor is covered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves. June 11, 1859
July 17. Osmunda Claytoniana and cinnamomea, done. July 17, 1857
July 19. In the maple swamp at Hubbard's Close, the great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long. July 19, 1854
August 4. It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. There are the sight and scent of beginning decay. August 4, 1854
August 12, 2023
August 23. I go through the swamp, wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me [of] a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than my head without being stretched out.
They grow in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds interlace and form one green waving mass . . . My clothes are covered with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off their stems. August 23, 1858
September 5, 2016
September 6. The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. September 6, 1854
September 12. The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither. How rich in its decay! Sic transit gloria mundi! Die like the leaves, which are most beautiful in their decay. Thus gradually and successively each plant lends its richest color to the general effect, and in the fittest place, and passes away.
Amid the October woods we hear no funereal bell, but the scream of the jay. Coming to some shady meadow’s edge, you find that the cinnamon fern has suddenly turned this rich yellow. Thus each plant surely acts its part, and lends its effect to the general impression. September 12, 1858
September 24. Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns. I stand on the elevated road, looking down into it. The trees are very tall and slender, without branches for a long distance. All the ground, which is perfectly level, is covered and concealed, as are the bases of the trees, with the tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. It is a very pretty sight, these northern trees springing out of a ground work of ferns. It is like pictures of the tropics, except that here the palms are the undergrowth. You could not have arranged a nosegay more tastefully. It is a rich groundwork, out of which the maples and pines spring.
But outside the wood and by the roadside, where they are exposed, these ferns are withered, shrivelled, and brown, for they are tenderer than the dicksonia. The fern, especially if large, is so foreign and tropical that these remind me of artificial groundworks set in sand, to set off other plants. These ferns (like brakes) begin to decay, i. e. to turn yellow or brown and ripen, as here, before they are necessarily frost-bitten. Theirs is another change and decay, like that of the brake and sarsaparilla in the woods and swamps, only later, while the exposed ones are killed before they have passed through all their changes. The exposed ones attained to a brighter yellow early and were then killed; the shaded ones pass through various stages of rich, commonly pale brown, as here, and last much longer. The brown ones are the most interesting. September 24, 1859
September 25. In shade is the laboratory of white. Color is produced in the sun. The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown there. The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. September 25, 1859
September 27. The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. Septemberr 27, 1857
September 30. Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens. As far as I know, the earliest to wither and fall are
- the brake (mostly fallen),
- the Osmunda cinnamomea (begun to be stripped of leaves),
- 0. Claytoniana,
- and 0. regalis
(the above four generally a long time withered, or say since the 20th) September 30, 1859
October 2. You may take a dry walk there for a quarter of a mile along the base of the hill through this open swamp, where there is no underwood, all the way in a field of cinnamon fern four or five feet high and level, brushing against its light fronds, which offer now no serious obstacle.
They are now generally imbrowned or crisp. 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, as if your nose [were] over a hogshead of vinegar. When I strip off a handful of the frond I find it is the cinnamon fern. I perceive it afterward in different parts of the town. October 2, 1857
October 2. 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. October 2, 1859
October 6. Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw, perfect in outline, falling over each way from the centre, of a very neat drab color, quaker-like, fit to adorn an Oriental drawing-room. October 6, 1858
October 11. The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. October 11, 1857
October 12, 2023
October 15. Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets. October 15, 1858
October 17. The cinnamon ferns surrounding the swamp have just lost their leafets, except the terminal ones. They have acquired their November aspect, and the wool now adheres to my clothes as I go through them. The protected ones are not yet bare. October 17, 1857
November 2. The brakes, the sarsaparilla, the osmundas, the Solomon’s-seals, the lady's slippers have long since withered and fallen. The huckleberries and blueberries, too, have lost their leaves. The forest floor is covered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves. November 2, 1857
January 6. I walk amid the bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. January 6, 1858
Cinnamon fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum)
is a large fern that grows in clumps . . . The fertile fronds start out green
but the small, upward pointing pinnae soon turn brown or cinnamon colored.
~ GoBotany
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern
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 © 2009-2025
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-cinnamon
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