SPOTTED JEWEL-WEED 

 (Snapweed. Touch-Me-Not) 



Impatiens bifloca Walt. 



Summer Like a bit of hand-\\'rought golden jewelry set 



Bottomland woods with tiny mines, the flower of the jewel-weed 



sparkles in the morning sunshine streaming 

 through the arching woodland trees. In the heavy soil of the river bottom- 

 lands, there where the shade is dense most of the day and most of the 

 summer, the woods are covered with waist-high jungles of jewel-weed. 

 It is one of the most abundant plants of the l)ottomlauds. Its smooth 

 coolness is in direct contrast to the unpleasant prickly plants of the sting- 

 ing nettle which gTow with the jewel-weed in many of these lowland 

 localities. 



The jewel-weed is a frail watery plant with a translucent, jointed 

 -tem which pours forth nuicilaginous, watery juice when cut or bruised. 

 The plant branches abundantly to form a low bush with oval, scalloped 

 leaves which wilt in hot sunshine or when jnckcd. Anumg them are the 

 small jewels which are the flowers. There is nothing else in the wild 

 just like the jewel-weed flowers. 



Spotted jewcl-weodV blossom hangs like a ])endant or an ear-drop 

 from a slim stem which springs from the leaf-axil. 'I'he flower is pouched 

 and has a curled-over "tail", the end of the trunijjet in which a bit of 

 nectar lies. This lines the hummingbirds which visit the jewel-weed 

 patches all day long and thrust slender beaks into the dangling flowers 

 to get the nectai-. The seeds soon form. When they are ripe, the thin- 

 skiimed covering of the seed-pod splits, curls, and ejects the seeds into 

 the woods. At the touch of a passerby, the seed-pod simply collapses with 

 disconcerting suddenness. 



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