Spotted Touch-Me-Not

• 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.
• Fruit: An oblong capsule, its 5 valves opening elastically to expel the seeds.
• Leaves: Alternate, thin, pale beneath, ovate coarsely toothed, petioled.
• 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.

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.