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GOLDENROD (SOLIDAGO NEMORALIS) 



September 12, 1859. To Moore's Swamp and 

 Great Fields. 



I stand in Moore's Swamp and look at Garfield's 

 dry bank, now before the woods generally are 

 changed at all. How ruddy ripe that dry hillside by 

 the swamp, covered with goldenrods and clumps of 

 hazel bushes here and there, now more or less scarlet. 

 The goldenrods on the top and the slope of the hill 

 are the Solidago nemoralis, at the base the taller 

 S. altissima. The whole hillside is perfectly dry and 

 ripe. 



Many a dry field now, like that of Sted Buttrick's 

 on the Great Fields, is one dense mass of the bright- 

 golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis 

 (a little past prime), waving in the wind and turning 

 upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand, 

 flowerets each. It is the greatest mass of conspicu- 

 ous flowers in the year, and uniformly from one to 

 two feet high, just rising above the withered grass 

 all over the largest fields, now when pumpkins and 

 other yellow fruits begin to gleam, now before the 

 woods are noticeably changed. Such a mass of yel- 

 low for this field's last crop! Who that had botan- 

 ized here in the previous month could have foretold 

 this more profuse and teeming crop? All ringing, as 

 do the low grounds, with the shrilling of crickets and 

 locusts and frequented by honey-bees (i.e., the gold- 



