BALSAMINACEAE 



TOUCH-ME-NOT FAMILY 



SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT. JEWELWEED 



Impaticns bi flora Walt. 



The Spotted Touch-me-not, also called Wild Balsam and 

 Jewelweed, is found in moist shady places, often forming dense 

 patches, from Quebec to Oregon and south to Georgia and 

 Kansas. It is an annual, 

 2-5 feet tall, with stems 

 that contain so much watery 

 juice that they are nearly 

 transparent. 



The flowers are orange- 

 yellow thickly mottled with 

 reddish brown, and oc- 

 casionally pale and not 

 mottled. They are axillary, 

 single, and hang almost 

 horizontal by slender pedi- 

 cels. Their peculiar shape 

 suggests some of the jewels 

 worn as earrings by women 

 of the nineteenth century. 

 There are 3 sepals, the 2 

 lateral being small, green 

 and nerved, and the third 

 large, saclike with a long 

 slender incurved spur one- 

 half the length of the enlarged portion, and colored like the 

 petals. The petals are 5, each side petal united to the one just 

 behind, so that the apparent number of petals is 3. The anthers 

 of the 5 stamens, alternate with the petals, are united around 

 the stigma. A scale is borne on the inner side of each filament and 

 the 5 scales come together over the stigma. The styles of the 

 5-parted pistil are lacking or obsolete and the fruit is a 5-celled, 

 elastically dehiscent capsule filled with many seeds hanging in 

 single rows. 



Although the large flowers are much visited by bumblebees 

 they often do not develop fruits; instead, small flowers that 

 never open but are pollinated in the bud are more likely to do so. 

 Mature fruits are under such tension that a touch causes them 

 to split into their 5 parts, hence the name Touch-me-not. 



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