HANDS OFF!

BUDDY AND A TOUCH-ME-NOT PLANT IN A ROADSIDE DITCH...

...TGOUCH-ME-NOT FLOWER

JUDY'S WILD BLUEBERRY PIE

Saturday, 8:00 AM.  68 degrees at the ferry dock, 62 on the back porch.  The sky is clear with a lot of haze over the channel.  The wind is calm to light and quite variable.  The humidity is 83% and the barometer remains steady, at 30.12".
   It is amazing how plants seem to appear over night.  I had not seen any touch-me-not plants and suddenly the ditches are full of them.  Touch-me-not, AKA jewelweed, is a large annual in the small family Balsaminaceae.  It is grows in damp earth throughout much of the northeastern and Midwestern  US and southern Canada, and there are several species in Europe and Asia.  Its common name is derived from the fact that if the ripe seed pod is even lightly touched  the seeds will be propelled out of the pod with some force, like little cannon balls, traveling perhaps a foot or more.  It is kind of fun to do, for children and like-minded adults alike.
   There are several species of Impatiens one may encounter, but the most common is Impatiens  biflora, which bears twin yellow-orange flowers on opposite sides of a flowering stem.  The flowers are normally few, and the simple, finely toothed leaves are a  pale bluish green and the soft stems are very turgid, exuding a lot of sap when crushed.  Balsam, the colorful annual garden flower,  is closely related to the wild species.
   Touch-me-not sap was in former times used in folk medicine, but has long been considered by herbalists to be poisonous. The sap has a very acrid smell and taste and animals do not eat the plant.  I learned at some point that the sap is a good antidote for poison ivy, and I have rubbed it on my skin without ill effect (although I seldom am bothered by poison ivy), but I cannot recommend that to anyone else as I cannot find any reference to such use in the literature.
   Judy did indeed bake us a delicious wild blueberry pie, which we had some of for desert yesterday evening. She uses three cups of wild blueberries in an eight-inch pie.  I will have a large slice for breakfast.  There are lots of wild blueberries this year but they won't last much longer.  Andy and Judy picked three pints out in the Moqua Barrens yesterday.
   If a plant can be called  "touch-me-not," I guess I can say, "Hands off my wild blueberry pie!"