Dancing To The Devil's Trumpet
Made a new acquaintance this morning still wet from the morning dew. Datura Stramonium is growing rampant and I have been getting to know her little by little. I have been showing a lot of restraint in my enthusiasm for experimenting with this great lady out of respect for her potent tropane alkaloid content.
Datura has a long history of use by witches and shamans around the world in their spiritual ceremonies, and is one of the famous Nightshades associated with witchcraft in Europe for it’s use in Flying Ointment along with Mandrake, Belladonna, and Henbane. Other members of the Solanaceae family you may be more familiar with that are much more benign are Tomato, Potato, Cucumber, Egg Plant, and any kind of Pepper!
I am eagerly looking forward to working with her more directly down the road, but for now plan to save some of seeds once they are ready, for planting. For now enjoy some photos of her dewy blooms closing for the day (Datura is night blooming and as such is sometimes referred to as ‘Moonflower’) and her spiky fruit which is responsible for one of her other common names ‘Thorn Apple’.