# Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) *Spotted touch-me-not, wild celandine, slippers, quick-in-the-hand, weathercocks; *Impatiens biflora* of Walter, *Impatiens capensis* of Meerburgh, *Impatiens fulva*; the Ojibwe *wesa’w s ga’skon k*, yellow light; the Potawatomi *wasawa’shiak*, yellow slippery* **Known today as.** *Impatiens capensis*, the orange-flowered touch-me-not of wet shady ground across the eastern and midwestern United States and Canada, a succulent annual whose spurred flowers hang like slippers and whose ripe pods burst at a touch: the plant the tribes rubbed on nettle stings and poison ivy, and the one plant of the Midwestern folk pharmacy that has been put to a controlled test. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** Nothing read for this entry describes harm from the plant used on the skin. Against poison ivy a fresh mash or a saponin wash applied at once is what the trials supported; a bottled extract did nothing. ## What was it used for? “This is accounted a valuable medicine among the Forest Potawatomi who use the fresh juice of the plant to wash nettle stings or poison ivy infections,” Smith writes, and adds that he knows himself “that it instantly alleviates the sting of the Stinging Nettle” and had it from the Indians that it cures the itch of poison ivy. The Flambeau medicine man Bearskin told him the fresh juice rubbed on the head cured a headache, and the leaves were steeped for a tea. Both the Ojibwe and the Potawatomi boiled the whole plant for an orange or deep yellow dye, deepened with rusty nails. Rafinesque has the two touch-me-nots “in common use for jaundice and asthma, as a tea,” emetic and diuretic in large doses, the leaves for piles and a wash for wounds, and dyeing wool saffron and yellow. ## What does modern science say? Tested three times against poison ivy. In 1997 an extract of the fresh stems, patched on urushiol sites in ten volunteers, did no better than distilled water. In 2012 the fresh plant mash, rubbed on the forearms of volunteers after poison ivy had been brushed on, did reduce the rash, while extracts did not and soaps did best of all; the lawsone content varied with the season and made no difference. In 2015 a saponin-rich extract of the leaves also reduced the rash, as did every soap tested, so that the saponins, the plant’s own soap, appear to be the agent, and the old use holds up as a wash applied at once. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **saponins**: the plant’s own soap, in the leaves; a saponin-rich extract prevented the poison-ivy rash as well as soap did - **lawsone**: the naphthoquinone long supposed to be the active agent; its content varied with the season and made no difference to the rash **Mechanism.** A wash: the saponins, like soap, remove or disperse the urushiol before it binds, which is why the fresh mash and the saponin extract worked when applied at once and a bottled extract patched on an established reaction did not. **Dose.** The fresh juice or mash rubbed on the skin at once, by the Potawatomi and the trials. **Standing.** A folk remedy that survived a controlled test, on the condition that it is used as the tribes used it, fresh and immediately. ## What lore surrounds it? Weathercocks, slippers, quick-in-the-hand: the names are all about the pod that leaps apart when touched, and the jewel is the water that beads on the leaf. Smith, a museum botanist who did not often vouch for his informants’ remedies, vouched for this one from his own stung hands. ## What did the older authorities say? **Huron H. Smith.** Among the Forest Potawatomi the fresh juice washes nettle stings and poison ivy, and “the writer knows that it instantly alleviates the sting of the Stinging Nettle.” Among the Ojibwe, Bearskin of Flambeau “said that the fresh juice of this plant rubbed on the head would cure a headache,” and the Pillager Ojibwe boiled the whole plant with a few rusty nails for a yellow dye. The chemical constituents, he notes, were not known. **C. S. Rafinesque.** “Touchmenot, Jewel weed. Slippers, Celandine, Quickinthehand, Weathercocks. Two sp. *I. fulva* and *pallida*, both in common use for jaundice and asthma, as a tea. In large doses emetic, eccoprotic and diuretic. Leaves used for piles and wash for wounds: they dye wool saffron color and yellow.” **Britton and Brown.** In the *Illustrated Flora* of 1913: an annual, glabrous, two to five feet high, branched, purplish; leaves thin, ovate or elliptic, pale and glaucous beneath, coarsely toothed; the flowers horizontal, orange-yellow, mottled with reddish-brown, rarely nearly white, on slender pendent pedicels, two to four to a peduncle. *Impatiens biflora* of Walter’s Flora of Carolina, 1788. ## Sources - Smith, H. H. (1932). *Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4(3), “Spotted Touch-me-not,” under medicines and dyes. Project Gutenberg, 49527. - Smith, H. H. (1933). *Ethnobotany of the Forest Potawatomi Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 7(1), “Touch-me-not,” under medicines and dyes. Internet Archive, ethnobotany-of-the-forest-potawatomi-indians-by-huron-h.-smith-1933. - Rafinesque, C. S. (1830). *Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America*, vol. 2, “Impatiens,” p. 229. Internet Archive, b21468710_0002. - Britton, N. L., & Brown, A. (1913). *An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions*, 2nd ed., vol. 2, “Impatiens biflora. Spotted Touch-me-not.” Internet Archive, cu31924024548525. - Abrams Motz, V., Bowers, C. P., Mull Young, L., & Kinder, D. H. (2012). The effectiveness of jewelweed, *Impatiens capensis*, the related cultivar *I. balsamina* and the component, lawsone in preventing post poison ivy exposure contact dermatitis. *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 143: 314–318. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2012.06.038 - Motz, V. A., et al. (2015). Efficacy of the saponin component of *Impatiens capensis* Meerb. in preventing urushiol-induced contact dermatitis. *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 162: 163–167. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2014.12.024 - Long, D., Ballentine, N. H., & Marks, J. G. (1997). Treatment of poison ivy/oak allergic contact dermatitis with an extract of jewelweed. *American Journal of Contact Dermatitis* 8: 150–153. doi:10.1016/s1046-199x(97)90095-6 --- *Jewelweed.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/jewelweed Historical description, not medical advice.