Sometimes it’s worth giving wild plants a second look.
Nothing unusual here, right? It looks like a jewelweed, that plant that is a wild relative of your human impatiens. Then we squirrels looked closer.
This plant has yellow flowers, and Miz Flora figured out it’s a different one, the Pale Jewelweed, Impatiens pallida.
It’s closely related to the jewelweed with the orange flowers, Impatiens capensis, has a similar leaf and likes wet soils. These flowers are pollinated by insects that have to travel way back to the nectar spur to get their sweet sugar water.
On the way, they pass the pollen and transfer it from flower to flower. Our one plant seems to have had insect visitors, because many new seedlings are popping up around the single plant from last year.
Looks like a full garden this year!