Impatiens noli-tangereL.

Touch-me-not Balsam

WFO wfo-0000730791 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203319472
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by Daria
fig. b Daria, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204899002
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. c mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162255126
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. d Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200953215
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by Patrick Meurin
fig. e Patrick Meurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159453605
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁
fig. f WATANABE Hitoshi 渡辺仁, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 156856177
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. g mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158775311
Impatiens noli-tangere, photographed by Patrick Meurin
fig. h Patrick Meurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159457960

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 906 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 906 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 20 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Balsamina impatiens A.Rich.
  • Balsamina lutea Delarbre
  • Balsamina noli-tangere (L.) Scop.
  • Impatiens borealis Sweet
  • Impatiens caucasica Steven
  • Impatiens cucullata Gilib.
  • Impatiens komarovii Pobed.
  • Impatiens lutea Lam.
  • Impatiens noli-me-tangere Crantz
  • Impatiens noli-tangere f. albiflora A.F.Schwarz ex Beger & Em.Schmid
  • Impatiens noli-tangere f. hemileuca Koji Ito & Hinoma
  • Impatiens noli-tangere f. pallescens Beger
  • Impatiens noli-tangere f. pallida Herm. ex Beger & Em.Schmid
  • Impatiens noli-tangere f. pallidiflora H.Lindb.
  • Impatiens noli-tangere var. pallescens (Beger) Nakai
  • Impatiens noli-tangere var. pallida (Herm. ex Beger & Em.Schmid) M.Kim
  • Impatiens noli-tangere var. parviflora Kitag.
  • Impatiens occidentalis Rydb.
  • Impatiens palustris Pers.
  • Impatiens penduliflora St.-Lag.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.