Datura

Notorious Nightshade Family

The family Solanaceae is also known as the nightshade family or potato family. This family includes mandrake, deadly nightshade (belladonna), capsicum (paprika, chili pepper), potato, tobacco, tomato, eggplant, petunia and Datura. Quite the family tree, indeed.

Datura Stramonium is a beautiful and photogenic but very dangerous plant that defends against being eaten by making those foolish enough to consume it “blind as a bat, mad as a hatter, red as a beet, hot as hell, dry as a bone, the bowel and bladder lose their tone, and the heart runs alone…” The effects of Datura ingestion have been described as being in a living dream: consciousness falls in and out, people who don’t exist or are miles away are conversed with, and vivid hallucinations. The effects can last for many days. In case of overdose the results are hyperthermia, coma, respiratory arrest, and seizures, and even death. I have noticed that not even insects will take a single nibble of this plant. Farmers called it Loco Weed because their cows went crazy after eating it. No one that has tried Datura ever wants to repeat the experience!

This plant is a fairly common weed I spotted growing on a side street right here in New York City. You can’t miss its big white trumpet shaped flowers. Datura flowers give off a very sweet cloying fragrance. It looks like a flower quite well fitted for a funeral. It blooms all summer long and develops these large spiky seed pods. I collected some of those a few years back and now one is growing outside my apartment building. It dies off in the winter but reappears every summer. This year was a cold, damp spring and summer and its growth was quite stunted.

There are some creatures that can tolerate the toxic Datura plant: the seed is an important food source for a number of songbirds such as the Northern Cardinal (Redbird) for one. This could explain why this species, Datura stramonium, is found in nearly every US State and Canadian Provinces. I have also seen insects collecting it's pollen. I wonder if a bee can hallucinate! The plant may be prohibited by law in some places, to prevent reckless teenagers from experimenting with it, so you may wish to check that before cultivating it.

In the US it is also known as Jimson Weed, Gypsum Weed, Loco Weed, Moon Flower, Angel Trumpet, Hells Bells, Devil’s Trumpet, Stink Weed, Thorn Apple, or Jamestown Weed. It earned this name from the town of Jamestown, Virginia, where British soldiers were once secretly or accidentally drugged with it, while attempting to suppress Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. The British spent several days chasing straws, making monkey faces, and generally acting deranged and did in fact fail at their mission.

”Some of the soldiers sent thither to quell the rebellion of Bacon (1676); and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and making mows [grimaces] at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll.

In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves- though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly; for they would have wallowed in their own excrements, if they had not been prevented. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after 11 days returned themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.” – Robert Beverly, The History and PresentState of Virginia, 1705

The plant has also been described extensively in history as a toxin famous for its mind-altering properties. There are references to it in Homer’s Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Anthony and Cleopatra. It could well be the inspiration for many tales of otherworldly voyages. I first read of it in the series of books about Mexican Shamanism by Carlos Castaneda. The sorcerer Don Juan Matus made a paste of the root to be placed on the temples. The descriptions of the events that unfolded were extraordinary and terrifying!

So, enjoy this plant in your garden, in the wild and in your photography as I have, but give it a wide berth and do not under any circumstances ingest it!

It’s facinating plant indeed.

For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel—looking, looking, breathlessly. - Don Juan