25 July 1853 – 31 July 1853

Dodder, probably the 21st. Blue-curls. Burdock, probably yesterday. P. M. — To Le Grosse’s. Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe. White and red huckleberries said to be in Le Grosse’s or Wetherbee’s pasture. Could not find them. Cy- noglossum Morisont, beggar’s-lice, roadside between Sam Barrett’s mill and the next house east, in flower and fruiting probably ten days. Probably the same with plant found beyond the stone bridge, gone to seed, last year. I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually.

I reckon that about nine tenths of the flowers of the year have now blossomed. Dog-days, — sultry, sticky (? ) weather, — now when the corn is topped out. Clouds without rain. Rains when it will. Old spring and summer signs fail. P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. The lycopodium which I see is not yet out. The Potentilla Norvegica is common and tall, the tallest and now most flourishing of the potentillas. The xyris, some time, on Hubbard’s meadow, south of the water-plantain, whose large, finely branched, some- what pyramidal panicle of flowers is attractive. ‘The bobolinks are just beginning to fly in flocks, and I hear their link link. I see the young birds also, just able to get out of my way above the weeds and bushes of the low grounds, their tails not grown out to steady them. Larks, too, seen now, four or five together, sing as of yore; also the goldfinch twitters over oftener. That other kind of amaranth is apparently quite out in some places. The Hypericum corymbosum, which may have been out nearly as long as the perforatum. I see on all hands the hardhack’s slender rosy pyramid spring above the walls and hedges. It is a fine coarse plant and must rank with the rhexia or near it. The broader, more cone-like meadow-sweet also. The swamp rose and the polygalas are other reds now in prime which I think of, not to include the orchis.' The small bluish-white berries of the trientalis appear to be ripe. Gnaphaliwm polycephalum, less downy and greener than the pearly one. I notice to-day the first purplish aster, a pretty sizable one; may have been out a day or two, near the brook beyond Hub- bard’s Grove, — A. Radula (?). 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 con- dense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! 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. Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?). The swamp blackberry ripe in open ground. The Rhus copallina is not yet quite out, though the glabra is in fruit. ‘The smaller purple fringed orchis has not quite filled out its spike. What a surprise to detect under the dark, damp, cavernous copse, where some wild beast might fitly prowl, this splendid flower, silently standing with all its eyes on you! It has a rich fragrance withal. Rain in the evening.

8 a.M. — Rains, still quite soakingly. June and July perhaps only are the months of drought. The drought ceases with the dog-days. P. M. — To White Pond in rain. The autumnal dandelion now appears more abun- dantly within a week. Solidago lanceolata also, a few days probably, though only partially open.

7 a. M.— To Azalea Brook. The mikania is hardly out yet;' like the eupato- riums, shows its color long before it opens. The ver- nonia not quite yet. The lilies, though a little less nu- merous, appear freer from insects than at first. Their pads not so much eaten as those of the nuphar. The pickerel-weed has passed its prime. The petty-morel at the brook not out, though that by the Corner Spring has berries. P. M. — To Clematis Brook via Lee’s with Mr. Con- way.”

P. M.— To hibiscus, Beck Stow’s, and Brister’s Hill. Galeopsis Tetrahit, a good while. Vernonia, just opened, a few central ones. Polygonum hydropiper- 141, 142, where he speaks of walking with Thoreau in the summer of 1853.] oides. At Vernonia Meadow I notice the beds of horse- mint now in flower,— bluish whorls of flowers, — now in its prime. Now is the time to gather thorough- wort. Cardinals are in their prime. ‘The hibiscus is barely budded, but already the meadow-hay mowers have sheared close to it. Most fields are so completely shorn now that the walls and fence-sides, where plants are protected, appear unusually rich. I know not what aspect the flowers would present if our fields and meadows were untouched for a year, if the mower were not permitted to swing his scythe there. No doubt some plants contended long in vain with these vandals, and at last withdrew from the contest. About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irrup- tion into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can, and I am restricted to the rough hedges and worn-out fields which had little to attract them, to the most barren and worthless pastures. I know how some fields of johnswort and goldenrod look, left in the natural state, but not much about our richest fields and meadows. Those huckleberries near the hibiscus are remark- ably glossy, fresh, and plump in the lowland, but not so sweet as some. Crossed the river there, carrying over my clothes.

I have for some time noticed the emersed leaves of the Bidens Beckiit above the river surface, and this morning find the first flower. Last year I found none. Was it owing to the high water? ‘The river has risen some since the dog-days. Wool-grass appears now in its prime. The weeds in the river seem to be subject to more casualties than elsewhere. Many go to Europe fo finish their education, and ‘when they have returned their friends remark that ‘the most they have acquired is a correct pronunciation of English. It is a premature hardening but hollow- ing of the shell. They become valuable utensils of the gourd kind, but have no palatable and nutritious inside. Instead of acquiring nutritious and palatable qualities to their pulp, it is all absorbed into a pre- maturely hardened shell. They went away squashes, and they return gourds. They are all expressed, or squeezed out; their essential oil is gone. They are pronounced for you; they are good to stand before or for a noun or man as handles; not even hollow gourds always, but the handle without the mug. They pro- nounce with the sharp precise report of a rifle, but the likeness is in the sound only, for they have no bullets to fire. P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp. Going through Dennis’s and Hosmer’s meadows, I see a dozen or more men at work. In almost every meadow throughout the town they are thus engaged at present. In every meadow you see far or near the lumbering hay-cart with its mountainous load and the rakers and mowers in white shirts. The bittern hardly knows where to layits eggs. By the way, I have heard no stake-driver for some time. If the meadows were untouched, I should no doubt see many more of the rare white and the beautiful smaller purple orchis there, as I now see a few along the shaded brooks and meadow’s edge. The choke-cherries (Cerasus Virginiana) near Hos- mer’s Spring are very abundant now; the bushes, about as high as your head, are loaded with full ra- cemes, two or three inches long, of shining dark-red berries, the size of a pea, slightly oblong or oval, but, as yet at least, very astringent, puckering the mouth for a long time. No doubt frequently mistaken at sight for the rum cherry. The angelica has gone to seed, and its great umbels, six inches in diameter, are turned brown at the top of its still purple hollow stems, sometimes seven feet high, the joints two feet long, and one and one third inches in diameter. By a meandering line of tall bare stems, surmounted by dark, dry umbels, I can trace the course of Nut Meadow Brook for half a mile. Nay, I find it by their aid when concealed by the grass even within a rod of me, for they indicate every meander. They rise much above everything else in the meadow. Close at hand, also, this brook is seen to be lined with the slender Crcuta maculata —there is much of this poisonous plant in our meadows — and bulbifera, with their smaller white umbels. This is a good place to look for the latter. I suppose it is the Rumez hy- drolapathum, or great water dock, now going to seed there, with large valves and three large glands. I find some fruit on the Ribes hirtellum in J. P. Brown’s land. It is globular, smooth, and red, marked by internal meridian lines, and inclined to be flattened at the poles. This does not blossom so early as our earliest in garden, but its fruit is more like this in color (though more smooth and glossy), while our later one is a dark purple or blue. Rather acid and wild- tasted. Is that the Cirsium horridulum, now out of bloom, on the north side of T. Wheeler’s meadow, with tall, downy stem and the lower leaves almost entire and downy both sides, upper clasping and cut? Apparently the same by the L. Hosmer road at Nut Meadow Brook in Brown’s meadow. ‘The painted- cup still, and there. I was correct about the alders. The incana has a rounder leaf; the other is more oblong and is quite smooth beneath. I have missed the veery for some time, but the wood thrush still sings and the peawai. The wayfarer’s tree! How good a name! Who be- stowed it? How did it get adopted? The mass of men are very unpoetic, yet that Adam that names things is always a poet. The boor is ready to accept the name the poet gives. How nameless is the poet among us! He is abroad, but is not recognized. He does not get crowned with the laurel. Goodycra pubescens on hillside south of Ministerial Swamp. Its veiny leaves, a hoary green, completely cover the ground on the damp and shady hillside, like a rug, sprinkled with dry oak leaves, which it has lifted as it grew. It is Just sending up its green scapes amid the sere ones of last year, and one has partly blossomed. The hunter often sits on a shady bank and muses on this beautiful leaf, wondering what rare virtues it may possess. The tobacco-pipe has also pushed up there amid the dry leaves in the shade. It is abundant now, and here. Both stem and flowers and scales are a pure and delicate crystalline white. What to name it? Sheathed with delicate white scales. It reminded me of a maiden in her robes of purity who has always been nurtured in a shady and vault-like seclusion, — a nun of spotless purity, a daughter of Tellus and Cexlum too, making her entrance into the world. Pushing aside the doorway of dry leaves, three sisters of various heights issue from their hidden convent and stand side by side in the presence of the light. We are surprised to see such pure robes come from the bowels of the earth. Yet this white and crystal- line purity smacks of the cellar and shade. They come forth to be proved, and stand abashed in presence of the light, with hanging heads and faces toward the ground under their pure white hoods and capes, striv- ing at first to conceal their nakedness and tenderness. A few loose, scanty, but beautiful, pearly sheaths alone invested them, and the broader capes of their hoods. The sisters then came forth of spotless purity, but soon, exposed to light and air, their virtue dried black. I was surprised to hear that this was called the tobacco- pipe! Their untried virtue cannot long stand the light and air. These and pine-sap the plants the dog-days (? ) produce. Here, too, are clintonia berries and, with the neottia and the pyrolas, now generally almost out of bloom. Lygodium palmatum now apparently in bloom. It is a most beautiful slender and delicate fern, twining like [a] vine about the stem of the meadow-sweet, panicled andromeda, goldenrods, etc., to the height of three feet or more, and difficult to detach from them. The lower half, in the shade, of small leafy sterile frondlets, the upper half, exposed to the light, of the finely divided fertile frondlets. Our most beautiful fern, and most suitable for wreaths or garlands. It is rare. Round-leaved sundew for some time. Bar- tonia or centaurella almost out, not spread, some- what like the former now. Tansy has been the pre- vailing yellow flower for some time. It precedes the goldenrods. This month has not been so warm as June. There have been no such bathing days as we had last year, two or three. Methinks our warm weather hardest to bear is the last half of June and the first half of July. Afterward the shade and the dog-days give us moisture and coolness, especially at night. Saw some green galls on a goldenrod (?) three quarters of an inch in diam- eter, shaped like a fruit or an Eastern temple, with two or three little worms inside, completely changing the destiny of the plant, showing the intimate relation between animal and vegetable life. The animal signifies its wishes by a touch, and the plant, instead of going on to blos- som and bear its normal fruit, devotes itself to the service of the insect and becomes its cradle and food. It suggests that Nature is a kind of gall, that the Cre- ator stung her and man is the grub she is destined to house and feed. The plant rounds off and paints the gall with as much care and love as its own flower and fruit, admiring it perchance even more. I see a rusty-colored shorter-wooled cotton-grass, which may be the Eriophorum Virginicum.

Sunday. P. M. — To Walden. The bristly aralia berries in dense patches with their numerous umbels, the central ones ripe for two or three days. They are about two inches in diameter and perfect hemispheres of dark-blue or blue-black berries, size of a huckleberry, on slender peduncles of equal length, forming a dense hemispherical umbel, two inches in diameter. I counted a hundred and thirty such berries in one. Rum cherry just ripe. Pur- ple gerardia by to-morrow or the next day; the linear- leafed gerardia. ‘The anychia, or forked chickweed, grows larger, with spreading red stems, on the south side of Heywood Peak. The commonest Lespideza violacea, with small elliptical leaves, perhaps a week. Desmodium nudiflorum, naked-flowered tick-trefoil, some already with loments round-angled; probably more than a week; the tall, naked flowering stems, some- times more than two feet high, appearing like separate plants, at some distance from the rest, which are much lower, about ten inches high, with a bunch of oval ; leaves. Lespedeza hirta out. I find also a trefoil "plant with long, wand-like(?) panicled racemes, » rising afoot or more above the leaves, with flowers turned a bluish or verdigris green, apparently wilted, and leaves below, *, about the simple stem, on short peti- oles, ob- longish, one to two inches. May be Desmodium Canadense (? ) or leviga- tum (?) or—? Somewhat downy-stemmed.! Some time —a week — out. Also in J. Hos- mer’s pines beyond Clamshell Hill. Also the Gnaphalium decurrens, to the eye much like the fra- grant one near by, but a lighter green and very sticky. Pennyroyal well out for some days at least there, in large bushy tufts. White goldenrod. Bushy gerardia, showing no radical leaves yet. I see some galls on under side of hickory leaves, red like currants, hollow with a grub within. Solidago nemoralis. These des- modiums, etc., etc., on the south side of Heywood Peak, a warm dry sprout-land, where I suspect they were not to be found before the wood was cut. They are very forward there. Goodyera repens well out at Corallor- hiza Hillside; some time out. Put it close after the gracilis. I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.