St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 4/Nature and Science/Touch-me-not
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Here is a plant about which the botanist and the young people agree. The scientific name is Impatiens, which is simply the Latin for impatient. The young people call the same plant touch-me-not, because the plant is, indeed, nervously impatient when its seed pod is touched, and responds with a snap that throws the seeds to a distance of many feet. It is startling, on first acquaintance, to have the seed pod pop—go to pieces—double itself up into a lot of spirals, and throw its contents in every direction. It is fascinating, too, to touch the ends of one pod after another as they hang from the branches in some lowland place. The plant is particularly fond of a brookside. It 
THE PODS OF THE TOUCH-ME-NOT AS WE FIND THEM IN LATE AUTUMN. may be imagination, but it has always seemed to me that Impatiens is particularly fond of any structure that crosses a brook, as a bridge or a fence, especially an old stone wall. At the edge of the bridge, or on one of the projecting stones of the old wall, I have often amused myself by touching these irritable pods. No matter how many times you may have done it, you want to try just once more, and invariably they startle you, though you may know just what they will do. They pop so suddenly that no amount of anticipation will find you prepared for the explosion. Their conduct is the more fascinating because they look so innocent; they appear to have no intention other than that of any sedate seed-vessel, but, at a certain stage of their development,
AS “INNOCENT” AND HARMLESS IN APPEARANCE AS A CARTRIDGE. a touch sends them into a convulsion. Yet, if you take a pair of tweezers or scissors, and hold the stem carefully just behind the pod, you may cut it off and lay it on a piece of paper or a plate. When you get several in a row, like the three shown in the accompanying illustration, for instance, ask one of your friends to touch one. It is somewhat like touching the first of a row of bricks, where each one, falling upon its neighbor, knocks it down. As one pod explodes, it usually sets off the next. The third illustration
BUT TOUCH JUST THE TIP OF ONE, AND IT “EXPLODES” AND THROWS ITS SEEDS IN EVERY DIRECTION. shows some of the strange forms into which this impatient touch-me-not contorts itself.
THE IMPATIENT TOUCH-ME-NOT
THE PODS OF THE TOUCH-ME-NOT AS WE FIND THEM IN LATE AUTUMN. may be imagination, but it has always seemed to me that Impatiens is particularly fond of any structure that crosses a brook, as a bridge or a fence, especially an old stone wall. At the edge of the bridge, or on one of the projecting stones of the old wall, I have often amused myself by touching these irritable pods. No matter how many times you may have done it, you want to try just once more, and invariably they startle you, though you may know just what they will do. They pop so suddenly that no amount of anticipation will find you prepared for the explosion. Their conduct is the more fascinating because they look so innocent; they appear to have no intention other than that of any sedate seed-vessel, but, at a certain stage of their development,
AS “INNOCENT” AND HARMLESS IN APPEARANCE AS A CARTRIDGE. a touch sends them into a convulsion. Yet, if you take a pair of tweezers or scissors, and hold the stem carefully just behind the pod, you may cut it off and lay it on a piece of paper or a plate. When you get several in a row, like the three shown in the accompanying illustration, for instance, ask one of your friends to touch one. It is somewhat like touching the first of a row of bricks, where each one, falling upon its neighbor, knocks it down. As one pod explodes, it usually sets off the next. The third illustration
BUT TOUCH JUST THE TIP OF ONE, AND IT “EXPLODES” AND THROWS ITS SEEDS IN EVERY DIRECTION. shows some of the strange forms into which this impatient touch-me-not contorts itself.