Thoreau on scarlet oaks
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has shifted to its winter hours, and closes now at 4:30. On Saturday I spent the last hour of daylight there, leaving as a few small bats began fluttering and somersaulting overhead.
After the September 11 attacks, the Botanic Garden planted a row of scarlet oaks in memory of the victims, and they provide a warm note of color late in the year.
Thoreau took special note of the scarlet oak in the fall of 1858. The passage below is just one of several, and contributed to his late essay ”Autumnal Tints.”
October 24, 1858The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower. Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. Color stands for all ripeness and success. We have dreamed that the hero should carry his color aloft, as a symbol of the ripeness of his virtue. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest-colored, the jewel of the body. The warrior’s flag is the flower which precedes his fruit. He unfurls his flag to the breeze with such confidence and brag as the flower its petals. Now we shall see what kind of fruit will succeed....
The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory…. Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this.
