IMPATIENS FULVA. 

 SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT, OR SNAP-WEED. 



NATURAL ORDER, BALSAMINACEyE. 



Impatiens FULVA, Nuttall. — Leaves rhombic-ovate, obtusish, coarsely and ol)tusely serrate, 

 teeth mucronate ; pedicel two to four-flowered, short; lower gibbous sepal, acutely conical, 

 longer than broad, with an elongated, closely reflexed spur; flowers deep orange, macu- 

 late with many brown spots. Stem one and a half to three feet high. Leaves one to 

 three inches long, one half as wide, having a few filiform teeth at the base. Flowers 

 about one inch in length, the recurved spur of the lower sepals half inch long. Capsule 

 oblong-cylindric one inch long, bursting at the slightest touch when mature, and scatter- 

 ing the seed. (Wood's Class-Book of Botany. See also Gray's Manual of the Botany 

 of the Northern United States ; and Chapman's Botany of the Southern United States.) 



HIS extremely interesting plant is well known to the 

 lovers of wild flowers, for it has so many points of 

 attraction, that there are few who have not more or less observed 

 it. The flowers themselves are so peculiar in their form, and so 

 rich in color, as to have earned for the plant the common name 

 of "Jewel weed;" while the remarkable sensitiveness of the seed 

 vessels to the touch, as referred to in the description quoted from 

 Professor Wood, has obtained for the plant the name of "Touch- 

 me-not," a name which is applied to this and other allied species 

 by all the nations of Europe. The suddenness with which the 

 seed vessel falls to pieces when it is grasped in one's hand, no 

 matter how lightly, is surprising to one who experiences it for 

 the first time. When Burns wrote 



" But pleasures are like poppies spread ; 

 You seize the flower, its bloom is shed," 



he unconsciously characterized also the behavior of these seed 

 vessels which leave us so little where we expected so much ! 

 Dr. Prior says the name, "Touch-me-not," is "a phrase that was 



C4i) 



