On Conantum Cliffs, whose seams dip to the northwest at an angle of 50 degrees (?) and run northeast and southwest, I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. Following thus early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world. It can take advantage of a perpendicular cliff where the snow cannot lie and fronting the south. In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are. Also the first plantain-leaved everlasting (Gray’s Antennaria plantaginifolia) is in blossom in a sheltered place in the grass at the top of the rock. The thimble-berry and the sweet-briar are partly leaved out in the crevices of the rock, and the latter emits its fragrance. The half-open buds of the saxifrage, showing the white of the petals in a corymb or cyme, on a short stem, surrounded by its new leaves mingled with the purplish tips of the calyx-leaves, is handsomer than when it is fully expanded. This is a place to look for early blossoms of the saxifrage, columbine, and plantain-leaved everlasting, - the first two especially. The crevices of the rock (cliff) make natural hothouses for them, affording dryness, warmth, and shelter.
It is astonishing how soon and unexpectedly flowers appear, when the fields are scarcely tinged with green. Yesterday, for instance, you observed only the radical leaves of some plants; to-day you pluck a flower.
