Name compounded of chrysos, golden, and splen, the spleen; probably from some reputed medicinal qualities.

Perennial. Native. An inconspicuous, early blooming plant, growing in cold, wet places. Nova Scotia to Georgia and west to Minnesota. Found in northern Ohio. March-May.

Stems

Slender, decumbent, and forking.

Leaves

Principally opposite, roundish or heart-shaped, obscurely crenate.

Flowers

Inconspicuous, greenish, tinged with yellow or purple.

Calyx

Tube coherent with the ovary; lobes four to five, yellow within.

Corolla

Wanting.

Stamens

Eight to ten, very short, inserted on a conspicuous disk.

Pistil

One; styles two.

Fruit

Many-seeded capsule.

March 30, 1856. Walden Pond.

In this warm recess at the head of a meadow, though the rest is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I was surprised to see the Skunk-Cabbage, with its great spear-heads, open and ready to blossom, and the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish, and the Golden Saxifrage green and abundant, all surrounded and hemmed in by snow, which has covered the ground since Christmas. - Thoreau.

A low, insignificant plant with a forking stem, roundish, fine-scalloped leaves, and small yellowish or purplish green flowers with orange anthers.