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Datura: Angel's Trumpet or Devil's Apple? - Page 2

© Audrey Stallsmith

Datura has crazing and and deadly effects on both livestock and humans. Some believe it to be the Greek hippomanes that drove horses mad. And goats who have consumed it will supposedly try to walk on their hind legs like men. Fortunately, most animals don't like the smell or taste of the foliage, and will avoid the plant unless they have nothing else to eat. Humans are not always that sensible.

The nickname Jimsonweed is supposed to be a corruption of Jamestown weed. Some British soldiers, sent to crush the 1676 Bacon rebellion in the colony, consumed the plant and "turned natural fools upon it." Sources differ as to whether they ate datura as a cooked green, as a spice, or ground the seeds into flour. But the fact that their ill-advised meal turned the men into gibbering idiots for eleven days testifies to the potency of the poison.

At least, the soldiers seem to have consumed the plant out of ignorance. Throughout history, other imprudent persons have taken it deliberately. Datura was frequently used by pagan priests to induce visions. (Frankly, I would have doubts about any god who requires mind-altering chemicals to guide his people!)

Thorn-apple is also reportedly one of the drugs that gave hallucinating witches the impression they could fly. The Thugs of India drugged their victims with datura fastuosa, and new mothers there poisoned unwanted female babies with it. (You can see why "devil" frequently appears in the plant's nicknames.) The whirling dervishes also "fueled" themselves with the plant.

Although sufferers of spasmodic conditions such as asthma and whooping cough once smoked datura to relieve their symptoms, that risky use was banned in the sixties. The plant was also sometimes an ingredient in narcotic ointments for inflammations such as rheumatism, neuralgia, abscesses,and burns.

I am alarmed to note--from a recent episode of C.S.I. and from several web sites I've come across--that datura is regaining popularity as a recreational drug. Since this is one extremely toxic plant, I have to conclude that those rash enough to consume it must be out of their minds-- even before they take it! They certainly will be after. If I am remembering correctly, the young user in the TV show went temporarily insane and killed his best friend. That was fiction, but I'm very much afraid that it could easily become fact.

Datura's combination of beauty and danger caused it to stand for "deceitful charms" in the Language of Flowers. But, as I have frequently pointed out in my articles, plants are not responsible for the foolishness of some humans. Just as the devil was once an angel, all evil is a perversion of something good. Whether datura will be angel or devil to you depends on whether you crave its beauty or its bane.

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