Jewelweed, genus Impatiens, with several wild species, has a seed pod that implodes upon touch spiraling nutlets (a name of the seed type) into the air while the pod twists inward and also twists through the air. In the herbal and outdoors person view this amusing but we're more often noting it in case of use of that old wives tale that it may be the balm against poison ivy and itch-provoking plants as well as bites; poison oak, the sting of nettles, the nag of the mosquito.
Some plants drift in legendary myth or perhaps have real utility because they have been passed down as useful against something for which this is hardly any sound remedy, and none complete. So, for poison ivy should one brush with misfortune, we remember it, also because at least in the East in the US and Canada, it nearly always occurs hobnobbing with poison ivy. I wouldn't call that a sign, but if it works, it is convenient! It also has botanical traits that make it unmistakable, it's an easy beginner naturalist plant, and there are other ways to use it too!
This is a plant I knew as a child. I've found that where I have lived, if folks know one potentially useful plant in the woods or meadows, trailside, or near ponds or streams, it is jewelweed, and many will boast while identifying it as if they knew this forever and no one else knows. ;-] Once you know it, on any outing in its region, you can be that person too, or you may commence sighing and shifting while others plantsplain with twinkling eyed self congratulatory authority.
A few years ago I pitched Jewelweed as a next monograph for a group I worked with, to justify going after nearly every scrap of use information either supporting or refuting its topical uses, and I also made a more informal and animated audio version for the HerbRally Podcast.
This Meaninful Monograph! is the HerbRally version.
So now you're itching to hear it, 'eh?
-Heather (Sound Wise About Medicinal Plants)