WATER CRESS 



Nasturtium officinale R. Br. 



May - June 



Springs, ponds, swamps 



The .spring runs clear and cold from the 

 sandy hillside and has cut itself a channel 

 between the slopes before it finally flows as a 

 little stream into the swamp beyond. The spring runs clear and fast 

 over the clean-washed brown sand. Unlike other streams of Illinois which 

 almost invariably are muddy and thick, the spring is clean and pure. 

 In it, therefore, as an indication of clarity and purity and motion, grow 

 beds of water cress. 



The bright green little leaves on their matted stems cluster thickly 

 in dense beds, all with their roots and stems in the water and the leaves 

 in the sunlight, and the flower stalks with white blossoms held higher 

 still. Down among the cool leaves sit dozens of little white-bellied cricket 

 frogs, and on the spring evenings their pipings from the water cress 

 l)eds are loud and long and happy, all the soft night through. Small 

 transparent copepods, minute crustaceans, live among the cress roots or 

 climb up into the leafage at water line. Sometimes one of the big yellow 

 and brown bull snakes from the nearby swam}) comes into the water 

 cress beds to have a meal of small frogs. Sometimes the coots come push- 

 ing in here, like unmannerly tugboats, dabbling and bobbing about and 

 shoving themselves hastily through the tangle of green leaves, hunting 

 for tasty little copepods and other morsels to eat. 



Sometimes, too, people come here with knives and baskets to cut a 

 mess of water cress for the table or for the market, for these pungent lit- 

 tle green leaves which grow in spring water are much liked in salads. 

 They give a certain pleasant pepperiness to the dullest of lettuces, spark 

 up any salad, are a delight in the most oi'dinary sandwich. 



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