Edible weed: how to eat Himalayan balsam flower and use the stem as a straw

29/7/2012

Here she is, giant and beautiful, Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera).
Dutch: Reuzenbalsemien - French: Balsamine de l'Himalaya - German: Drüsige Springkraut

Want to find out how you can get to know her as a wild edible?

Picking carefully - bees hide in the flowers! Remember, foraging is an exercise in mindfulness...

Color variation - lighter and darker pink. Flowers are great in salads and summer drinks, or as an edible flower decoration. Or frozen in ice cubes!

And the stem is hollow - you can use it as a straw! This is a piece from the upper part of the stem; below you can see wider straws from the lower part. You can use whatever you prefer.

Himalayan balsam flower ice tea, served with Himalayan balsam stem straws.

Just to give you an idea of how massive a plot of Himalayan balsam can be - it's huge, and rather invasive.

Himalayan balsam jungle is the word our kids use :)

26 Comments

Susan edwards

10/8/2013 08:53:14 pm

I live in central France. My neighbour gave me a seed packet labelled Himalayan Balsam. Can this be the same invasive weed? Sadly Roger died last year so I can't ask him.

Leaf link

14/8/2013 06:51:48 am

Hi Susan. It probably is. I live in one of France's neighbour countries, Belgium, and it grows here abundantly. We just got back from Germany where it grows as well.
It has a preference for wet feet though - so it likes to grow near riversides etc. I'd think twice before sowing the seeds - unless if you live in a more dry area.
Hope this helps!

Ruby Cole

16/7/2014 08:17:14 pm

Please do not sow seeds of Himalayan Balsam, its incredibly invasive and will smother out native plants! In the UK armies of volunteers spend thousands of hours destroying this weed.

Derek

18/7/2014 10:14:08 pm

Hi Ruby,
As it is an annual and only roots a couple of inches deep it's hardly a plague that needs dealing with. My flower border is full of flowers, roses included. in the spring the HB's show themselves with a very characteristic pair of large seed leaves. It's just after that stage that I decide which ones will be allowed to flourish and I put a marker by them. any others (hundreds) just get pinched off or if I'm feeling energetic just pulled and tossed on the ground to wither and help compost. That plant dies.
The Himalayan Balsam is a very adaptable survivor, to the rear of my border in amongst the Atlantic Delpiniums, (which I've removed the flower stems from as they are over and done with,) there are maybe a hundred HB's, but they are only max 18 inches tall and single stemmed, yet over in the wet ground with the montbretia (now there's a plant you cant get rid of) and the various flavours of mints and aqualigia they are over six foot tall but their stem is only and inch diameter.
My 'specimen' HB's have a trunk of over three inches diameter and have many branches and are approx 4 feet tall. Close all around them are Asian poppies (beautiful Gold) cornflowers Gallardia, Potentillas and clover. Nothing is struggling and I never water them.
The HB's fizzle away to nothing in the Autumn and you cannot tell where they have been, They root so shallowly that they struggle for water and so limit their size, and if you were to ask a beekeeper which he/she would prefer his/her bees to visit, Himalayan Balsam or Oilseed Rape, having been a beekeeper, I know just what the answer would be if you want your bees to survive.

Derek

18/7/2014 10:14:58 pm

George Anderson

1/10/2015 06:35:55 am

It is actually illegal to spread this plant in the UK.

Susan

15/8/2013 10:54:27 pm

Thanks for the info.
I can't believe my neighbour, who always bought from a seed catalogue, would have ever planted these seeds. I shall treat them with extreme caution!!

Susan link

15/8/2013 10:55:33 pm

Thanks for the info.
I can't believe my neighbour, who always bought from a seed catalogue, would have ever planted these seeds. I shall treat them with extreme caution!!

Jack

2/9/2013 04:13:59 am

Yes here in 64 I am currently pulling it up around the cow feeder for the 2nd year. Strangely I've just sent off for some quinoa seed and there are slight similarities. Well edible !

Dubhghlas

16/10/2013 09:17:26 pm

This stuff is extremely invasive and is steadily crowding out local native plants in the area of Northern England. There are a number of campaigns by local environmental groups to clear it, but it is a losing battle.

Treat with extreme caution, this is an invasive species.

Leaf link

20/10/2013 05:02:55 pm

Yes. And if you ran into the blooming plant, by all means eat the flowers. It will prevent the plant from going into seed and propagating even more.

radha

13/3/2017 01:31:13 pm

I love wild edibles.

Lin

21/10/2013 08:53:06 pm

Could you tell me if there's a yellow variety also please?

Leaf link

22/10/2013 05:25:09 pm

Lin, you're probably referring to touch-me-not balsam, Impatiens noli-tangere. This plant is from the same family and has a similar, yellow flower. It's rather rare and protected where I live, but the Plants For A Future database mentions the leaves and seeds being edible: http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Impatiens+noli-tangere (you'll have to copy and paste the link in your browser). But please check first if it isn't protected in your area.

Bard

4/3/2014 07:03:50 pm

Thankfully Himalayan/Indian balsam is here to stay. What a fantastic pioneer plant we have on our hands. The fact of the matter is that it's very well adapted to our climate, it's edible and it grows only where the ecosystem has been disturbed by human influence. I chorttle watching the "eco" groups pulling it out, churning up all that soil into bare earth, totally unaware that they are creating the perfect environment for another "invasion" next year. It's also worth pointing out that as climate change continues many of these invasive "weeds" may be the plants that we are going to need in the future. Naturally humans on the whole don't think that far ahead though.

Derek

22/3/2014 01:43:55 am

I usually allow just 3 plants to survive per year on my small plot so they grow as 'spectacular as nature internded'. during the extreme wet spring of 2013 they were a godsend to the bumble bees and we counted 6 different species that were taking advantage of them, then of course they got blackfly and all kinds of other parasitic flies etc. which is great as far as I'm concerned because everything gets eaten by something!
so far this year 'end of march 2014' I've seen at least fifty queen bumblers and about a dozen honeybees in my garden, so we have done something right last year.
my neighbours have had plants off me once I showed them that you can just mow or hand pick the ones out you dont need when they shoot up in the spring as they are in fact quite a delicate annual and do not make a 'scorched bare earth' of your garden as some who should know better try to tell you.
in fact the stems and leaves breakdown very rapidly and produce a great fibre for the soil. even with my best ones having stems that are approximately six inches diameter the roots only extend approx twelve inches diameter and are very shallow.
I didn't know until last year that they are edible seeds and flowers so perhaps this year there will be four growing.
I wonder if you can make himalayan seedpod wine?? hmmm.
that's if I can get them before the grandchildren pop them.

Joy

14/8/2014 05:30:24 am

Can this plant(Himalayan Balsam or pink jewelweed) be used to treat/heal poison ivy rash? They say the orange flowered kind can and they are similar with juicy stems...

Dali Castillo

5/10/2014 12:41:37 am

Can the leaves be used to make tea? I have bought balsam at a local Amish market and it is leaves which they use for tea. Is this the same plant?

Ladybird

16/7/2015 06:05:59 am

I volunteer with the YWT and at this time of year our main job is trying to remove himalayan balsam.

The plant is extremely fast growing & once it gains a foothold it wipes out all of the other species attempting to grow there & the area becomes a complete balsam monoculture. I have literally seen forests of the stuff stretching as far as the eye can see with nothing else surviving underneath. V.demoralizing.

The native insects do not yet have a taste for balsam & so the plant has few predators to keep it in check. As a group we must have destroyed thousands & yet we only found one plant that the native insects had colonized & were hopefully having a good munch on. You can work all day & only find perfect leaves & stems with nary an insect to be seen.

Of course bees absolutely love balsam & humans need bees. However there are lots of other plants the bees would love equally.

Balsam has barely any root system. You can pull out 5 six foot plants one handed. This lack of a root system is one of our main reasons for wanting to remove it. Because balsam likes to grow along river banks & it forces out all of the deeper rooted plants soil erosion is inevitable - the balsams roots simply do not have the strength/depth to hold the soil together.

Soil erosion is not just a problem for the local wildlife. Its a massive & unnecessary problem for us too. Nature is our best defense against flooding & without it we will be spending millions on new flood defenses/homes destroyed. Especially in winter - when as Derek mentions above, the balsams watery stem dies off & leaves bare earth.

If you see balsam please pull it out, or at the very least don't plant it; you don't know where its hundreds of seeds will end up... Balsam seeds can be transported on shoes and tires as well as the more traditional route where the seed bursts on a river bank & is transported by water.

All gardeners love nature - so please be conscientious in your plant choices.

Derek

16/7/2015 05:42:05 pm

I think I'd best tread carefully, My little garden at the front, 12x5 has asian poppies, cornflowers Gallardia, two rose bushes, Gogi berry and grape (both over 6 foot) growing up the wall, Atlantic delphiniums that have just gone to seed but were 6 feet tall, a dianthus thats been there for two years that just 'appeared' and is approx a foot square, a few thistle family things that I haven't bothered to identify but tend to put a couple of the nice looking leaves in a salad, (and I aint dead yet) A 2x3 patch of polyanthus that looks great in early spring, a lot of that very small dark red/purple clover stuff that has a small yellow flower and is a pain to keep pulling out and right at this moment you cant see a spare bit of soil anywhere because,,,, the rest has been filled in with,,, yep, Himalayan Balsam. But I'm worried, There's some darned bug that is munching the heck out of it! The HB has only got to 6 inches tall to date (probably because I never water and this is a garden in full sun all day) Typical eh? just when a useful to bees and humans plant comes along nature decides that it's ideal for some bug that the blue tits would like.
There are so many plants that people get 'a bee in their bonnet' about it's unreal, for example there's a tree that self seeded out the back (nope dont know what it is) it grows like a nutter every year and produces leaves that some little black caterpillar loves, everyone tells me to get rid of it and I refuse but cut it back to a bare trunk every year so it grows new branches and leaves for the caterpillars the next year.
I dont spend thousands a year wailing and nashings teeth worrying about what in some peoples eyes are invasive species, Britains full of them, I had a Himalayan Honeysuckle appear 4 yrs ago, its now 12 feet tall and full of beautiful racemes of flowers and berries, The postman hates it but the blackbirds love the berries, the postman lost.
Ive got two stems of rasberries appear this year by the shed and so far have had 10 berries off them, thank you mother nature, but the wild patch of raspberries over in the small woodland area over the way has died off this year producing only half a pound of berries but last year we filled our freezer with them. Nature makes it's own decisions, sometimes it's not that pretty to everyone but as it's said, everything happens for a reason and the land ultimately belongs to nature.

pam

4/2/2016 04:41:39 am

I have grown Himalayan Balsam since 1999 when I brought seeds back from a house exchange on Vancouver Island. I was told they called them Imperial Busy Lizzies & I was asked to water them regularly. Here in Essex England it is very dry, so each year they get fewer until they disappear altogether, but I just collect a few seeds when in a wetter area & start again. I keep about 5-6 in the garden, pinch them out so they don't get tall enough to seed over the fence & also produce more side shoots & more flowers. In all the years I've grown them they have never spread to my neighbours gardens. They are certainly invasive around water courses.

Katharine Larkin

21/5/2016 02:06:16 am

Eco systems evolved over hundreds of thousands of years with interdependent vegetation, insects and birds suited to the places in which they evolved. Now we have human intervention on a massive scale transferring plants (and sometimes insects) around the globe, and finding that new, incomer species, can wipe out the unique local habitat with its hundreds of species that took so many thousands of years to evolve, in a very short time. Himalyan Balsam is doing just that in some areas, particularly river banks.

Derek link

22/5/2016 10:22:22 am

That's the standard opinion on most things nowadays and just about everything from a football club losing a match to the price of carrots is put down to global warming.
I've seen and admired whole swathes of Himalyan balsam along river banks, not once is there a scorched earth effect eating it's way out year after year into the surrounding fields denying the wildlife the vegetation and the farmers their crops.
What should not be allowed are the counties of oilseed. grown for profit and bio-fuel.
I have this theory that the bumble bees are starving their colonies to death by visiting this alien plant that shouldn't even be here because it isn't native either.
If you are a beekeeper you would know that if your bees gather the water coloured and insipid tasting nectar from this plant you have to get it out of the combs within ten days flat. Because if you don't it sets as hard as concrete making it unusable to feed the young with, and that comes on top of the 'June Dearth' when nectar is in short supply elsewhere,
So if ever a plant needs banning it's the oilseed not the Balsam which is a fantastic source of nectar for you, me and the bees, just when it's needed.
Summer salad would not be the same without balsam flowers and lemon mint leaves.

Suzy Peters

14/2/2017 05:20:44 pm

Hi Derek, I'm really interested to know where or how you heard about the damaging effect of Oilseed pollen. Because if this is really true then that would be another huge factor to the collapse of bees colonies worldwide since Bee population is down 30% from those pollenating Oilseed crops. I have now messaged a few beekeeper forums asking this same question. Many thanks. Suzy Peters

Julia

4/11/2017 10:22:58 am

Absolutely share your concerns re oilseed rape and bees.
But also concerned about people planting balsam. It took me four years to eradicate after my neighbor strewed it along our verge because she liked the flowers. Biological warfare is on the way with CABI investigating a species specific rust.

Andrew Softley

21/1/2018 10:58:59 am

Himalayan Balsam is a saving grace for honey bees and other insects in the North West. In years when the Balsam doesn't produce a good amount of nectar, I usually end up having to feed my bees sugar syrup in the Autumn for them to have enough food to survive the winter.

Whilst I agree that invasive plant species should be controlled, having lost 98% of our native wildflower meadows and thousands of miles of hedgerow, there isn't a great deal of forage available for pollinating insects - a major factor in their decline. We took away the native food sources, now we’re taking away the non-natives. I would like to see more done to provide alternative food sources for our pollinating insects when nectar-rich non-native plants are destroyed.

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Edible weed: how to eat Himalayan balsam flower and use the stem as a straw

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