Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Spotted Touch-Me-Not

Also known as Jewelweed. Another wildflower of that likes damp places.


(Click on images to enlarge)

You can find these here and there along most of the paths in the southern half of Deep River County Park, but the biggest patch I have found, covering about 60 square feet, is in the Deep River bottom where I photographed the skunk cabbages last spring.



As I came up on the patch, I scared up four or five hummingbirds from among the blossoms. One flew up to a dead tree branch nearby and sat chattering angrily at me all the while I was photographing. Jack Sanders says that nature designed these flowers to be pollinated by the hummingbird's long bill.

He also explains why they are called Touch-me-not: because of the "energetic little pods" that contain their seeds.

The seeds are wrapped in an ingenious case that, when mature and disturbed, suddenly "pops" as the covering lets go like an uncoiling spring. The action sends the seeds flying as far as four or five feet.

It's probably those flying seeds that keep this patch spreading.