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Datura
 

Datura is a genus of 12-15 species of flowering plants belonging to the family Solanaceae. Their exact natural distribution is uncertain, due to extensive cultivation and naturalization throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the globe, but is most likely restricted to the Americas, from the United States south through Mexico (where the highest species diversity occurs) to the mid-latitudes of South America. Some species are reported by some authorities to be native to China, but this is not accepted by the Flora of China, where the three species present are treated as introductions from the Americas.

Common names include jimson weed, thorn-apple (from the spiny fruit), pricklyburr (similarly), and somewhat paradoxically, both angel's trumpet and devil's trumpet (from their large trumpet-shaped flowers), or as Nathaniel Hawthorne refers to it in the Scarlet Letter apple-peru. The word Datura comes from Hindi dhatūrā (thorn apple); record of this name dates back only to 1662 (OED).

They are large, vigorous annual plants or short-lived perennial plants, growing to 1-3 m tall. The leaves are alternate, 10-20 cm long and 5-18 cm broad, with a lobed or toothed margin. The flowers are erect or spreading (not pendulous), trumpet-shaped, 5-20 cm long and 4-12 cm broad at the mouth; color varies from white to yellow, pink, and pale purple. The fruit is a spiny capsule 4-10 cm long and 2-6 cm broad, splitting open when ripe to release the numerous seeds.

Datura species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Hypercompe indecisa.

Species

Some species formerly included in Datura are now classified in the separate genus Brugmansia; this genus differs in being woody, making shrubs or small trees, and in having pendulous flowers.

Cultivation and uses

Datura contains the alkaloids scopolamine and atropine and has long been used as a poison and hallucinogen. The dose-response curve for the combination of alkaloids is very steep, so people who consume datura can easily take a potentially fatal overdose. In the 1990s and 2000s, the United States media contained stories of adolescents and young adults dying or becoming seriously ill from intentionally ingesting datura.

It was supposedly used in witchcraft to induce hallucinations.

Records of use

Datura stramonium is also called jimsonweed. This name comes from the town of Jamestown, Virginia. Various versions of the story exist, but in the most common version, British soldiers sent to quell Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 were accidentally served this unfamiliar plant as food, causing many to be incapacitated for 11 days. Datura wrightii, also called sacred datura or western jimsonweed, has similar effects.

Perhaps the most famous account of jimsonweed intoxication is given in The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. The narrator records several experiences with the subtly addictive "devil's weed", which his mentor describes as having power similar to that of a woman:

She is as powerful as the best of allies, but there is something I personally don't like about her. She distorts men. She gives them a taste of power too soon without fortifying their hearts and makes them domineering and unpredictable. She makes them weak in the middle of their great power.

In 2003, a German student known just as "Andreas W", from Halle cut off his own penis and tongue with a pair of garden shears while under the influence of datura. Neither organ was re-attached successfully.

In literature

  • In Paul Theroux's 2005 novel Blinding Light, a writer becomes addicted to a rare species of datura. Under its influence he is blind, but inspired, transcendently aware, and megalomaniacal.

  • Datura is explained in Wade Davis's The Serpent and the Rainbow to be a critically important hallucinogen in a series of toxins and cultural practices that produce zombies, administered at the time of retrieval from the grave as an antidote to previously administered tetrodotoxin.

  • In the novel "The Sundial" by Maarten 't Hart, datura is used twice as a poison.

In popular culture

  • Singer/songwriter Tori Amos penned a song entitled "Datura" for her 1999 album "To Venus and Back". “I’m talking about the times when lines have been crossed by men." says Amos. "Men can be dangerous, like in the song Datura about how sometimes they can bring you gold and sometimes they can be the bearer of poison. The plant Datura is a hallucinogen and it’s like men. If you get the right amount you’ll walk into the garden and become a woman, but if too much seeps in in the wrong way and at the wrong time - it’ll kill you.” (UK) - November 1999

See also

External links

Datura is also the name of a trance song by singer/songwriter Tori Amos. Appearing on her album To Venus and Back, the song features Amos reading a list of various plants that are growing in her garden over hypnotic piano and rhythms. She consistently mentions datura within the list, as if to indicate it is overgrowing and destroying her garden. The flower, in the song, is used as a metaphor for destructive relationships.

Datura is also the name of an Italian techno/trance group formed 1991 in Bologna by the musicians Ciro Pagano and Stefano Mazzavillani and the DJs Ricci & Cirillo. One of their biggest hit singles Yerba del diablo ("Devil's weed") also pays reference to the plant.

Datura is also the name of a fictional chemical in Ryu Murakami's surreal 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies. It's a gas that, when ingested, completely destroys a person's self-control and restraint, resulting in "a form of criminal psychosis the creation of an irreversibly destructive personality" without remorse. [Kodansha Intl. Ltd. (English trans., 1995), p.118

The band Murder By Death mentions datura in their song "Killbot 2000" from their album "Who Will Survive and What Will be Left of Them."

Deliriants | Entheogens | Herbal and fungal hallucinogens | Solanaceae

Stechäpfel | Datura | Datura | Datura | Durnaropė | Datura | チョウセンアサガオ | Bieluń dziędzierzawa | Дурман | Datura | Spikklubbor

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Datura".

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