Ward - I am not growing it but it sounds like a willing self seeder, so you will soon have lots of it! Let us know if it attracts hummers. Ruth

A friend who lives in Montgomery Co. Pa told me his plants get Hummer use. He also mentioned that is was an agressive seeder.

Sounds like it is a cultivated form between Impatiens Balsaminae and wild jewelweed. If so it should be a very good hummer plant and we will all be looking for seed LOL!

Penny

Penny - it will probably be a year before there is enough seed. Currently there are just two plants and they are just beginning to set seed. I'm a little concerned about passing around seeds of this plant. Do I really want to be the cause of yet another alien weed spreading around the country? Before I do so I'll need to speak to others who have this plant and find out its behavior.

Ward,
I grow the wild jewelweed and it reseeds very prolifically. Impatiens in general all seem to have very shallow root systems and are super easy to pull out if they come up where you don't want them. In fact this year I had more jewelweed in the spring than I had grass. We just mowed down the ones that were in the lawn and pulled out clumps of extra in the beds to pass along (clumps of of 25-30 plants to a customer minimum and I gave away over a doz. flats.) Some people actually came back for more even though I worned them that they were have at least 100 seedlings next spring LOL! I still have over 100 bloooming plants and that is just a very rough guess.

On a side note...my common impatiens wallerina have set seed for the first time ever. I guess my little babies were visiting the baskets more than I thought. I have never been able to collect seed nor even seen fully developed seed pods from these plants but yesterday as I was refilling feederz, there they were, several large seed pods dangling over the sides of the baskets. So for fun next spring I will try and start my own plants from seed.

My Impatiens balsaminae (garden balsam has developed some really nice seed pods this year so I am working on collecting seed from those now.

Penny

I hate to be obnoxious about this. My concern is not what happens in the garden and yard, but excape into the wild. Since it hitchhiked on rescue plants from Georgia I know they can spread in the wild. And if so, will they grow thickly enough to shade out native plants.

I've had impatiens wallerina reseed several times. However there is no case that can be made that it is an invasive danger, because by now it would have taken over the world. What brought this all to mind was the banning of Himalayan impatiens in parts of the US. That one grows very tall and has invaded several watersheds in the Northwest to the point where it has extirpated native streamside plants. I think I'll go over to the impatiens thread and post my concerns there, some of those maniacs will know more about balfourii than I do.

Ward,
Do let us know what you find out. I have to cut back on my 'invasive plantz' per orders from DH. My jewelweed stays pretty well contained within the boundaries of our yard because of the high privacy fence but the seeds do disperse all over the yard with the help of the kids that love popping them. If the balfouri are anything like my jewelweed and balsam they will fill up an area very quickly. I will say that I do have other plants interplanted (lobelia, native columbine,jacob's ladder, a couple of salvias, and bleeding hearts and so far no problem since they bloom earlier in the season.

I am not concerned about the wallerina being invasive I was just tickled that they actually developed seed pods this year.

Penny