Garden and Flowers

ANGELS’ TRUMPETS
The reason the Dutch nickname for this plant is ‘thorny apple’ is easy to guess when you see its spherical fruits which are densely covered in spikes. In their American homelands, their purpose was probably to fend off grazing animals in search of an evening meal. The animals concerned must have had special stomachs, because the plants are exceedingly toxic. The poison anaesthetizes and was at one time used for that purpose during surgery. The ‘thorny apple’ presumably arrived at some time as a medicinal plant in a herb garden - the first botanical gardens. From there it escaped, and the plant now grows wild in open, nutritive soil such as rubbish tips. This indicates where it feels most at home in a garden: near a sunny manure or compost heap. Make sure there is loose, nutritive soil in a border and the species will sow itself freely there as well. It will sometimes even germinate in autumn and survive a mild winter. After a severe winter, a second crop will germinate in March-April. It is best to do your own sowing in April-May. The flowers will then appear from July until well into September. They are usually white and jut out sideways.

The common datura has several divergent varieties and forms. Datura stramonium var. tatula has lilac-blue flowers and is very beautiful. Datura stramonium f. inermis is highly sought-after, and its fruits do not have any spines (’inermis’ means ‘unarmed’).

Datura stramonium is an erect annual herb growing into a bush up to 7 ft. high. It has a pungent nut-like smell that becomes stronger if any part it is crushed or even touched. The leaves are soft, irregularly undulate, and toothed. The flowers are trumpet-shaped, white to creamy or violet, and 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 in. long. They rarely open completely. The egg-shaped seed capsule is walnut-sized, either covered with spines or bald. At maturity it splits into four chambers, each with dozens of small black seeds. The species is invasive and is seldom cultivated.