Spotted Snapweed

The ‘garden balsam’ or ‘touch-me-not’ is variable in the size of the plant, pubescence and colour of the flower. There are several varieties known, e.g. the red flowered var. coccinea K.&.K. (Impatiens coccinea Wall. Cat. no. 4732).

The flowers and leaves are often used for coloring fingernails. The stem and seeds are used medicinally for promoting blood circulation and for relieving pain and sore throats.

Annual, 45-60 cm tall, pubescent. Leaves lanceolate, 30-90 x 10-30 mm, serrate. Flowers white, orange, pink-red or purple, 25-30 mm long, axillary, solitary or 2(-3); pedicel up to 1-5 mm long. Lateral sepals c. 1.5 mm long, ovate, sparsely ciliate; lower sepal conical, spur 10-20 mm long, curved. Capsule broadly elliptic to fusiform, 1.2-1.4 mm long, densely tomentose, pendulous. Seeds sub-globose, minutely tuberculate.

Plants annual, 60-100 cm tall. Stem erect, robust, base ca. 8 mm in diam., succulent, simple or branched, glabrous or laxly pubescent when young, with many fibrous roots, lower nodes swollen. Leaves alternate, sometimes lowest ones opposite; petiole 1-3 cm, adaxially shallowly sulcate, both sides with few pairs of stipitate glands; leaf blade lanceolate, narrowly elliptic, or oblanceolate, 4-12 × 1.5-3 cm, with a pair of sessile black glands toward base, both surfaces glabrous or sparsely pubescent, lateral veins 4-7 pairs, base cuneate, margin deeply serrate, apex acuminate. Inflorescences 1-flowered, or 2 or 3 flowers fascicled in leaf axils, without peduncles. Pedicels 2-2.5 cm, densely pubescent, bracteate at base; bracts linear. Flowers white, pink, or purple, simple or double petalous. Lateral sepals 2, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, 2-3 mm. Lower sepal deeply navicular, 13-19 × 4-8 mm, pubescent, abruptly narrowed into an incurved spur; spur 1-2.5 cm, slender. Upper petal orbicular, apex retuse, mucronulate, abaxial midvein narrowly carinate; lateral united petals shortly clawed, 2.3-2.5 cm, 2-lobed; basal lobes obovate-oblong, small; distal lobes suborbicular, apically retuse; auricule narrow. Stamens 5; filaments linear; anthers ovoid, apex obtuse. Ovary fusiform, densely pubescent. Capsule broadly fusiform, 1-2 cm, densely tomentose, narrowed at both ends. Seeds many, black-brown, globose, 1.5-3 mm in diam., tuberculate. Fl. Jul-Oct. 2n = 14*.

Widely cultivated, native of S.E. Asia.

Distribution: Cultivated as an ornamental in tropical and sub-tropical regions of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaya and also in China; introduced in Turkey and S. Europe.

1200-1900 m

Fl. Per.: Late August-September.

A common ornamental plant, widely cultivated in gardens and houses throughout China [native to SE Asia; cultivated worldwide].

Balsamina hortensis Desportes (1816), not A. St.-Hilaire (1808).