Thoreau writes in his journal:
This morning the first frost. Yet the 10th was one of the warmest days in the year. Methinks it is the Amaranthus hypochondriacus, prince’s-feather, with “bright red-purple flowers” and sanguine stem, on Emerson’s muck-heap in the Turnpike, and the Polygonum orientale, prince’s-feather, in E. Hosmer’s grounds . . .
