The Guide to Walden Pond by Robert M. Thorson

Author:Robert M. Thorson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

Smooth sumac

(Rhus glabra)

“Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on . . . In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.”

Smooth sumac has dense clusters of beautiful berries that attract birds, which readily and widely disperse the seeds. Sumac is a weedy shrub that thrives on disturbed sandy soils like the low embankment Thoreau created to level his House Site. Thoreau specifically identified the species as the smooth sumac, a species still found on the park’s plant inventory.

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