Spring

Spring
Kbh3rd, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Water rising from the ground, cold or hot, often clear and sometimes rich in minerals. A spring may be a trickle under a stone or a pool that boils up through white sand; some smell of sulphur, taste of iron or leave a crust of salt on the rocks. Watercress, mosses and tiny blind snails live in the coldest ones, and the hot ones grow mats of coloured slime around their edges. Springs draw villages, shrines and travellers, and many have a saint, a spirit or a healing reputation. People fear the spring that runs dry, the one that turns bitter, and the one whose water makes the drinker forget. The hot springs of Bath, where people have bathed since Roman times, are springs of this kind.

Hear it

Adventure hooks

  1. A hot spring eases stiff joints, and the abbey that owns it charges pilgrims a fortune to bathe. A peasant has dug a second outlet in his field and lets people in for free; the abbey wants him stopped, by any means.
  2. The spring of the village saint has run dry, and everyone says the saint is angry. The miner who opened a new adit on the hill above knows exactly why, and has kept his mouth shut.
  3. Whoever drinks from a roadside spring sees, for an instant, the face of someone they have lost. A widow has sat beside it for a month, and her children want someone to bring her home without breaking her heart.
  4. A carter drinks from an iron-rich spring every day, and lately every compass in town points at him. A ship’s navigator wants to hire him, and the carter wants to know how much.

What grows here

  • Blinks (herb). A small sprawling herb with thin reddish stems, fleshy spoon-shaped leaves in pairs and tiny white flowers, native on every continent but Antarctica and absent only from southern Asia; its name fontana means 'of the spring'. It grows in freshwater springs in the uplands, in pools and along streams, and in winter-wet acid grassland in the lowlands; as a plant of clean water it is valued in conservation. It is gathered wild and eaten as a salad in Spain and Portugal. Gives: Blinks.
  • Fool's Watercress (herb). A low, often sprawling perennial of western Europe with a hollow stem rooting at the nodes and glossy leaves of paired, toothed leaflets that smell of carrot when crushed. It often grows with watercress in ditches, springs, fens and ponds, and in brackish marshes too. It is not poisonous, but is easily confused with the lesser water parsnip, said to be. Its young leaves and shoots are gathered wild in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Morocco. Gives: Fool's Watercress Shoots.
  • Large Bittercress (herb). A perennial of the cabbage family that often forms large colonies, with white flowers and violet anthers from April to June, found across Europe, above all in the centre and north. It wants clayey soil rich in organic matter: its typical places are the edges of springs, spruce swamps, brooks, ditches and the thickets of banks. Pieces of its runners break off and travel downstream to root elsewhere; unlike the cuckooflower, it has no rosette at its base.
  • Maidenhair Fern (herb). A delicate fern with black, wiry stalks and light green, finely divided fronds, native to warm, humid regions around the world and north to southern Scotland. It grows on moist, shaded limestone and sandstone, in gorges, by streams and at desert cliff seeps and springs; hot mineral springs let it live far north of its range, at Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia and Cascade Springs in the Black Hills. In 2020 it was found thriving in the 14th-century tunnels under Znojmo in Moravia, in the damp and the tourists' lamplight. Gives: Maidenhair Fronds.
  • Seep Monkeyflower (herb). A yellow-flowered, bee-pollinated annual or perennial of western North America, from sea level high into the mountains, and very common by water in New Zealand. It grows along streams and seeps, and in many other places besides: the splash zone of the Pacific, the chaparral of California, the western deserts, the geysers of Yellowstone, alpine meadows, and even the toxic tailings of copper mines. Its slightly bitter leaves are eaten raw or cooked, sometimes in salads in place of lettuce. Gives: Monkeyflower Leaves.
  • Watercress (herb). A fast-growing perennial of the cabbage family, with hollow stems and small white flowers, growing in clear, shallow, slow-flowing, non-acidic water from Europe and North Africa to China, up to 2,000 m. It is one of the oldest leaf vegetables eaten by people. Wild cress from water reached by livestock dung can carry the liver fluke: never eat it raw. Gives: Watercress.

Animals

To gather

Blinks, Fool's Watercress Shoots, Maidenhair Fronds, Monkeyflower Leaves, Watercress

Nearby biomes

River, Stream, Lake, Pond

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