Reference my earlier post entitled Jewelweed – Friend or Foe? This year I’m more than grateful to have the Spotted Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) growing in my yard. With all the damage to my prairie, I have so little quantity and, to a lesser extent, variety of plants standing upright that the jewelweed has become a great alternative for the bees.
I have been watering mine. Watering lots of plants at the base. I put the flowers in vinegar and witch hazel. Or a comb of both. I may dry some flowers and then add. I have had some in very high sunlight areas. They fall at the base if you water, die if you do not water. They are easy enough to pull up. I have been thinking of planting the root base. All impatiens can be easily rooted. I wonder if they are all medicinal. My regular impatiens died of a disease a few years back. They seem to be doing fine this year.
A ravine nearby has the big yellow. I think the stems were cooked with maple syrup to use on the skin.
They should be more popular in land restoration, especially moist areas.
Since impatiens are annuals, Cindy, they are unlikely candidates for typical land restoration. However, they are such aggressive seeders, in the right place they might work well in a bottomland-type restoration.
I was exposed to different ideas. They do not generally plant moss or violets either. Once in a blue violet means all the time.
You’re correct, Cindy. It would take a special person to appreciate these plants in their landscape.
As a native plant gardener in Maryland, I appreciate the jewelweed in our yard, and am giving some potted jewelweed plants to my neighbors who have moist ground in their yards.
Glad to see that you have come around to a deeper appreciation of jewelweed. Yes it can be a vigorous spreader in a wet year.
Although many gardeners and landscapers view vigorous-spreaders as hostile “invasives,” I hope they will take a second look, as you have done. Some of my esteemed landscaping colleagues have termed common milkweed “thuggish.” As you know, milkweed is the only plant that monarch butterfly larvae will eat. So, we must welcome milkweeds back into our rural and suburban landscapes, if we are to bring the monarchs back from the edge of extinction.
At this time of our planet’s evolution we are losing ground literally and figuratively, and plants who can spread with vim and vigor are playing important, but unrecognized, roles in keeping soil in place, providing wildlife food and habitat, and sequestering carbon.
Thanks for all that you do to promote living landscapes.
Thanks. I agree with you, Diane — Donna