Spreading perennial herb to about 60 cm tall but generally much smaller, rooting at the lower nodes. Leaves alternate, ovate to elliptic, 3-12 cm long, 2-5 cm wide, sometimes reddish below. Flowers 2(3-5) together, more or less flat, white, pink, red to purple, with a white spur, 3-4.5 cm long. Fruit capsule hairless.

Tropical E Africa

This is the common Busy Lizzie used both as a pot and bedding plant for the bright flower colours and tolerance of shade.

Available in a vast range of habit and flower colour cultivars. Eight cultivars had PBR status in 1998. It has become naturalised in a few places in the Sydney district.

Source: Spencer, R. (2002). Balsaminaceae. In: Spencer, R.. Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.