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Back in the days when life was more flowery, so was language.  For example, here's Neltje Blanchan in her Nature's Garden in 1900.  "The inaccessible crevice of a precipice, moist rocks sprayed with the dashing waters of a lake or some tumbling mountain stream, wind-swept upland meadows, and shady places by the roadside may hold bright bunches of the hardy bells, swaying with exquisite grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear.  How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are!  One gladly risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from its aerial cranny."  This one in fact grew on moist rock on the Lake Superior shore, where it probably was dashed by the waters of the lake.