Impatiens balfourii
species of plant
Impatiens balfourii is a species of the genus Impatiens known by the common names Balfour's touch-me-not, Kashmir balsam, and poor man's orchid. It belongs to the family Balsaminaceae.
Etymology
The Latin name Impatiens means "impatient" or "intolerant" and refers to the explosive dehiscence of the fruits, which burst at the slightest touch as a means of scattering the seeds. The Latin species epithet balfourii honors the Scottish botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour (1853-1922).
Description
This is an annual herb growing 15–120 centimetres (5.9–47.2 in) in height. Its stem is glabrous, reddish, lined and very branched. It has alternately arranged, oval to lance-shaped, toothed, stalked leaves up to 4 centimetres (1.6 in) long. The inflorescence is a raceme generally bearing 4 to 8 flowers. Each flower is about 2 centimetres (0.79 in) long, with one of its white sepals forming a long, thin spur, and two of its yellow-dotted lavender or pink petals extending from the mouth.
Reproduction
The flowers are hermaphrodite, or perfect, and are pollinated by insects, or, in the Americas, by hummingbirds.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Impatiens balfourii” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2881538. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1853 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Impatiens balfourii” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.