As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; […]
1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Spring”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields