Impatiens sodenii (Oliver's touch-me-not)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Impatiens sodenii, photographed by GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ — fig. a GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-08 / obs. 196161360

Impatiens sodenii, photographed by Juan Carlos Caicedo Hernández — fig. b Juan Carlos Caicedo Hernández, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193618858

Impatiens sodenii, photographed by EMDGL5 — fig. d EMDGL5, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192876673

Impatiens sodenii, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 196845262

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.

Native range 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Impatiens sodenii, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Kenya	KEN	AFRICA
Tanzania	TAN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 194 in flower of 201 examined

100%

82%

100%

96%

100%

80%

91%

100%

Proportion of examined Impatiens sodenii in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	20	20	100%	84% to 100%
Feb	9	11	82%	52% to 95%
Mar	23	23	100%	86% to 100%
Apr	24	25	96%	80% to 99%
May	14	14	100%	78% to 100%
Jun	14	14	100%	78% to 100%
Jul	18	18	100%	82% to 100%
Aug	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Sep	8	10	80%	49% to 94%
Oct	21	23	91%	73% to 98%
Nov	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Dec	17	17	100%	82% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Impatiens sodenii observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 194 of 201 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 5 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.

Impatiens elgonensis T.C.E.Fr.
Impatiens magnifica G.M.Schulze
Impatiens oliveri C.H.Wright ex W.Watson
Impatiens thomsonii Oliv.
Impatiens uguenensis Warb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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