"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,"
wrote Longfellow, as if blue flax were a familiar sight on this
side of the Atlantic. The charming little European plant (L.
usitatissimum), which has furnished the fiber for linen and the
oily seeds for poultices from time immemorial, is only a fugitive
from cultivation here. Unhappily, it is rarely met with along the
roadsides and railways as it struggles to gain a foothold in our
waste places. Possibly Longfellow had in mind the blue toad flax
(q.v.).
JEWEL-WEED; SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT: SILVER CAP; WILD BALSAM: LADY'S
EARDROPS; SNAP WEED; WILD LADY'S SLIPPER
(Impatiens biflora; I. fulva of Gray) Jewel-weed family
Flowers - Orange yellow, spotted with reddish-brown, irregular, 1
in. long or less, horizontal, 2 to 4 pendent by slender
footstalks on a long peduncle from leaf axils. Sepals, 3,
colored; 1 large, sac-shaped, contracted into a slender incurved
spur and 2-toothed at apex; 2 other sepals small. Petals, 3; 2 of
them 2-cleft into dissimilar lobes; 5 short stamens, 1 pistil.
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