Jewel-weed; Spotted Touch-me-not; Silver Cap; Wild Balsam; Lady’s
Eardrops; Snap Weed; Wild Lady’s Slipper
_Impatiens biflora (I. fulva)_
_Flowers_--Orange yellow, spotted with reddish brown, irregular, 1 in.
long or less, horizontal, 2 to 4 pendent by slender footstalks on a long
peduncle from leaf axils. Sepals, 3, colored; 1 large, sac-shaped,
contracted into a slender incurved spur and 2-toothed at apex; 2 other
sepals small. Petals, 3; 2 of them 2-cleft into dissimilar lobes; 5
short stamens, 1 pistil. _Stem_: 2 to 5 ft. high, smooth, branched,
colored, succulent. _Leaves_: Alternate, thin, pale beneath, ovate
coarsely toothed, petioled. _Fruit_: An oblong capsule, its 5 valves
opening elastically to expel the seeds.
_Preferred Habitat_--Beside streams, ponds, ditches; moist ground.
_Flowering Season_--July-October.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Oregon, south to Missouri and Florida.
These exquisite, bright flowers, hanging at a horizontal, like jewels
from a lady’s ear, may be responsible for the plant’s folk-name; but
whoever is abroad early on a dewy morning, or after a shower, and finds
notched edges of the drooping leaves hung with scintillating gems,
dancing, sparkling in the sunshine, sees still another reason for naming
this the Jewel-weed. In a brook, pond, spring, or wayside trough, which
can never be far from its haunts, dip a spray of the plant to transform
the leaves into glistening silver. They shed water much as the
nasturtiums do.
When the tiny ruby-throated humming bird flashes northward out of the
tropics to spend the summer, where can he hope to find nectar so deeply
secreted that not even the long-tongued bumblebee may rob him of it all?
Beyond the bird’s bill his tongue can be run out and around curves no
other creature can reach. Now the early-blooming columbine, its slender
cornucopias brimming with sweets, welcomes the messenger whose
needle-like bill will carry pollen from flower to flower; presently the
coral honeysuckle and the scarlet painted-cup attract him by wearing his
favorite color; next the jewel-weed hangs horns of plenty to lure his
eye; and the trumpet vine and cardinal flower continue to feed him
successively in Nature’s garden; albeit cannas, nasturtiums, salvia,
gladioli, and such deep, irregular showy flowers in men’s flower beds
sometimes lure him away.
Familiar as we may be with the nervous little seed-pods of the
touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as
they do from balsam pods in grandmother’s garden, they still startle
with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at
the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds
makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of
progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants have
to contend, how many generations must it take to fringe even one mill
pond with jewel-weed; yet this is rapid transit indeed compared with
many of Nature’s processes. The plant is a conspicuous sufferer from
the dodder.
* * * * *
The Pale Touch-me-not _(I. aurea)_--_I. pallida_ of Gray--most abundant
northward, a larger, stouter species found in similar situations, but
with paler yellow flowers only sparingly dotted if at all, has its
broader sac-shaped sepal abruptly contracted into a short, notched, but
not incurved spur. It shares its sister’s popular names.