Thoreau S Botany

Thoreau’s last years have been the subject of debate for decades, but only recently have scholars and critics begun to appreciate the posthumous publications, unfinished manuscripts, and Journal entries that occupied the writer after Walden (1854). Until now, no critical reader has delved deeply enough into botany to see how Thoreau’s plant studies impact his thinking and writing. Thoreau’s Botany moves beyond general literary appreciation for the botanical works to apply Thoreau’s extensive studies of botany—from 1850 to his death in 1862—to readings of his published and unpublished works in fresh, interdisciplinary ways. Bringing together critical plant studies, ecocriticism, and environmental humanities, James Perrin Warren argues that Thoreau’s botanical excursions establish a meeting ground of science and the humanities that is only now ready to be recognized by readers of American literature and environmental literature.

The first collection of Thoreau's writings on the flowering plants of Concord, with more than 200 drawings by renowned artist Barry Moser Some of Henry David Thoreau's most beautiful nature writing was inspired by the flowering trees and plants of Concord. An inveterate year-round rambler and journal keeper, he faithfully recorded, dated, and described his sightings of the floating water lily, the elusive wild azalea, and the late autumn foliage of the scarlet oak. This inviting selection of Thoreau's best flower writings is arranged by day of the year and accompanied by Thoreau's philosophical speculations and his observations of the weather and of other plants and animals. They illuminate the author's spirituality, his belief in nature's correspondence with the human soul, and his sense that anticipation--of spring, of flowers yet to bloom--renews our connection with the earth and with immortality. Thoreau's Wildflowers features more than 200 of the black-and-white drawings originally created by Barry Moser for his first illustrated book, Flowering Plants of Massachusetts. This volume also presents "Thoreau as Botanist," an essay by Ray Angelo, the leading authority on the flowering plants of Concord.

Henry David Thoreau went alone to Walden Pond in 1845 and observed the ferns and turtleheads, the sundrops and spatterdocks, and the other beautiful native plants that formed a natural garden around his cabin. He walked the woods and fields and penned his observations in his journals. Noted plantsman Peter Loewer combines excerpts from Thoreau's diaries with his own botanical illustrations and comments.

Thoreau developed ideas fundamental to ecology 50 years before that word was coined. He called for a science that would join man and nature--a "conscience", a moral knowledge founded on material faith. Edited by Laura Dassow Walls. Part of "The Spirit of Thoreau Series". 20-30 drawings by Thoreau.

Thoreau presents information about the "'unnoticed wild berry whose beauty annually lends a new charm to some wild walk, '" along with what "may be considered Thoreau's last will and testament, in which he protests our desecration of the landscape, reflects on the importance of preserving wild space 'for instruction and recreation, ' and envisions a new American scripture."--Jacket.

In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape. Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of historical and social change. Thoreau's journals evoke not a wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today. From the journal: "I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy." --October 20, 1855

Some of Henry David Thoreau’s most beautiful nature writing was inspired by the flowering trees and plants of Concord. An inveterate year-round rambler and journal keeper, he faithfully recorded, dated, and described his sightings of the floating water lily, the elusive wild azalea, and the late autumn foliage of the scarlet oak. This inviting selection of Thoreau’s best flower writings is arranged by day of the year and accompanied by Thoreau’s philosophical speculations and his observations of the weather and of other plants and animals. They illuminate the author’s spirituality, his belief in nature’s correspondence with the human soul, and his sense that anticipation—of spring, of flowers yet to bloom—renews our connection with the earth and with immortality. Thoreau’s Wildflowers features more than 200 of the black-and-white drawings originally created by Barry Moser for his first illustrated book, Flowering Plants of Massachusetts. This volume also presents “Thoreau as Botanist,” an essay by Ray Angelo, the leading authority on the flowering plants of Concord.