Jewelweed is one of the first wildflowers I learned way-back-when... when I started to become a naturalist. The reason, of course, was utilitarian. In fact, almost all of the wild plants that I came to know when I was in my teens had some kind of usefulness, either as wild edibles or as medicinals. I don't know anyone who eats Jewelweed, or, as the botanists call it, Impatiens capensis, and I know lots of gardeners who pull it out by the invasive handfuls. But when I harvest I. capensis, it's with gratitude for its use as the wild equivalent of calamine lotion: Jewelweed can help a sufferer cope with exposure to Poison Ivy. As a camp counselor and devotee of the books of that uber-forager Euell Gibbons, I learned how to rub the leaves and stems right on the reddened skin to instantly take out some of the itchiness, and I would often freeze a boiled-down Jewelweed concentrate into soothing ice cubes. The stuff really works, and the impact doesn't end with better feeling skin. I. capensis just started showing its pretty, slipper-shaped flowers today. These are also curatives, soothing the mind as well as the body.