🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Himalayan balsam

Nature · Wildflowers & flowers

Himalayan balsam

Neophyte, introduced 1839 · flowers Jul–Oct · riverbanks, ditches and damp ground

Impatiens glandulifera — Balsaminaceae

Britain's tallest annual plant, up to 2 m, with pink hooded flowers and seed pods that explode when touched, throwing seeds several metres. Brought from the Himalayas as a garden plant in 1839, it escaped and now smothers riverbanks and wet ground. It is listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it an offence to plant it or cause it to grow in the wild.

How to spot them

  • ▸Tall (up to 2 m), hollow, reddish-tinged stems with lance-shaped, toothed leaves in whorls of three, or opposite
  • ▸Large, hooded, pink-purple flowers with a sweet, slightly musky scent, July to October
  • ▸Hanging green seed pods that burst open explosively on touch, throwing the seed up to about 7 m
  • ▸Grows in dense stands along riverbanks, ditches and damp woodland edges
  • ▸Look-alike: orange balsam and small balsam, other non-native balsams, are shorter and have yellow or orange flowers

How to know it

Tall pink hooded flowers and hanging pods that burst at a touch, flinging seed several metres, choke a riverbank

Himalayan balsam, Impatiens glandulifera.

Introduced as a garden plant in 1839, it escaped and spread along river systems within a few years

Himalayan balsam.

Listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, it is an offence to plant it or cause it to grow in the wild

Himalayan balsam.

Nicknamed 'policeman's helmet' and 'kiss-me-on-the-mountain', it is Britain's largest annual plant

Himalayan balsam, per the Wildlife Trusts.

The genus name means 'impatient' in Latin, for pods that burst open when touched

Impatiens — Himalayan balsam.

Its nectar-rich flowers are visited by bees, which may draw them from native plants

Himalayan balsam.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Family Balsaminaceae; Impatiens means 'impatient' (the touch-me-not pods) and glandulifera 'gland-bearing'
  • •Introduced in 1839 as an ornamental plant, according to the Wildlife Trusts and RHS; sources credit John Forbes Royle with sending seed from the Himalayas
  • •RHS: grows to about 2 m, and the pods propel seed up to 7 m, with more spread by water
  • •Legal status: listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 — it is an offence to plant it or otherwise cause it to grow in the wild, though it is not illegal to have it on your land. A Welsh control-project site dates its Schedule 9 listing in England and Wales to April 2009
  • •Wildlife Trusts: flowers July to October and 'invades wet habitat at the expense of other, native flowers'
  • •Nectar-rich flowers are favoured by bees, which may draw pollinators from native flowers
  • •Riverbank soil can be left bare and prone to erosion when the annual plants die back in winter
  • •Called kiss-me-on-the-mountain in parts of the UK, Indian balsam and policeman's helmet elsewhere

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources