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Moonflower Madness

© Susan Ward

It really galls me to see plants destroyed because of people’s stupidity.

In Kamloops a few days ago, municipal workers went round all the city beds and pulled up all the Moonflowers. Why? Because a few days before that, some boys ate some Moonflowers, in the mistaken belief that they’d get high. What they got instead was incredibly ill. All three teens ended up in the hospital. So far, over a dozen teens have ended up in the emergency room over the past two weeks. You can read more details in the August 22 feature of Kamloops This Week.

This incident was also featured in the news on several different radio and TV broadcasts, and in newspapers. In every case, the plants in question were simply referred to as “Moonflowers”.

The problem with this is that there are several plants commonly known as Moonflowers. If our media actually wants to disseminate information, they should refer to plants by their Latin names to avoid confusion. News travels fast. Especially if it’s inaccurate.

The previously mentioned Kamloops This Week article states, “It goes by many names - moonflower, angel’s trumpet, devil’s weed or Jimsonweed.” This would make the plant in question Datura stramonium, the only type of Datura known as Jimsonweed. And Jimsonweed is highly toxic.

The US National Drug Intelligence Center describes the peril of Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium); “ingestion has led to seizures, coma, and even death.” The document states, “The high experienced by users often includes delirium and hallucinations, and there is no antidote for jimsonweed poisoning--only treatment.”

However, Jimsonweed is not one of the showier members of the Datura family, having small flowers, and I doubt that the municipality of Kamloops would be growing it in their public beds. It may have been Datura innoxia, an upright plant that grows to 3 feet tall with white, pink or lavender trumpets, grown here as an annual, and often used as a bedding plant. One of its common aliases is Angel’s Trumpet. According to the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System, “Angel's trumpet (Datura innoxia) contains toxic alkaloids that have caused poisoning and death in humans and other animals.”

Or, the plant in question may have been Datura metel, another good-looking member of the Datura family that’s also commonly used as a bedding plant. It grows 2 to 5 feet tall, and has large upright trumpet flowers, usually white, but sometimes yellow or purple. The flowers can be up to 10 inches long and 6 inches across. It’s truly spectacular. But as is the case with its other relatives, all parts of the plant are poisonous.

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