in Thoreau’s Journal:

I find today 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 & fronting the S.