Forest Lessons
Keyword(s):
Botany appealed to the wordsmith as well as the naturalist in Thoreau. “How copious and precise the botanical language!” he enthused in his journal in 1851. He used its precise lexicon to describe trees. The broad flat brown buds on Mr. Cheney’s elm, containing twenty or thirty yellowish-green threads, surmounted with little brownish mulberry cups, which contain the stamens and the two styles—these are just expanding or blossoming now. The flat imbricated buds, which open their scales both ways, have had a rich look for some weeks past. Why so few elms so advanced, so rich now? Are the staminiferous and pistilliferous flowers ever on different trees?...