Summer Season Board: Jewelweed

Our final addition to our Summer board is Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)! It's been pretty dry and this plant likes water, but I was still able to find some sad plants in the corners of our yard. 😂 They're one of my favorite native flowers since it looks neat how the stem connects to the "front" of the flower instead of the "back".

Here’s the coloring page!

To make the flowers, I rolled an approximately 2 inch square of orange construction paper around the tip of a pencil and glued it in a cone shape. I then cut the open end of the cone into three petal shapes and bent them back. The girls added some red crayon marks for for "realism". Then we glued them in place.

Another name for Jewelweed is the Spotted touch-me-not, and that's because the seed pods explode when you touch them. So, that'll be fun to show the girls here in a few more weeks. The seeds are also edible and have a nice nutty flavor.

Another great fact is that the sap of the plant can be used to help prevent the poison ivy rash from forming. The two plants commonly grow near each other, so if you rub against some poison ivy, quickly break off some jewelweed and rub some sap on the same spot. Scientific studies have supported this claim and it's believed that the saponins in jewelweed neutralize the urushiol in poison ivy - the compound that causes the rash.

And that's all for summer! We'll take a break from the board for a few weeks, but I still have plenty of other ideas to share. The Autumn board will start up sometime in September. 🙂🍂