Datura stramonium: the white demon of wasteland and its two faces
Sometimes a plant haunts you long before you truly meet it. For me, that was Datura stramonium, the nightshade once called the sorcerer's herb or thorn apple. I had come across it in illustrations, pale and ghostly, in my grandfather's herbaria — those botanist's grimoires where dried flowers keep their power to fascinate despite the decades. Then one summer evening, walking along an abandoned maize field in Hainaut, I smelled it before I saw it: a sweet, almost heady scent that hung in the air like a troubled childhood memory. And there, among the nettles and thistles, it stood, solitary and arrogant, its trumpet-shaped corollas lighting up the gloom with ivory white.
A silhouette you don't forget
Datura stramonium embodies the contradiction typical of the flora's finest characters: an almost theatrical elegance that hides a formidable danger. It belongs to the Solanaceae, the nightshade family — the same clan as tobacco, deadly nightshade and the tomato — and shares with several of its cousins the ability to produce tropane alkaloids that throw the nervous system into turmoil. Its upright, branching, hollow stem commonly reaches a metre, sometimes more in well-fed specimens.
The leaves are perhaps what gives it away best in a landscape: broad, oval and deeply toothed, they recall the clawed hands seen in medieval engravings, those of tempting demons. When you crush them between your fingers — which I strongly advise against without gloves — they give off an unpleasant, sickly smell that has earned the plant some unflattering nicknames.
But it is in flower that Datura displays all its seductive art. From July until the first frosts, its flowers open into funnels 6 to 10 cm long, white or tinged with mauve depending on the form. They open at dusk and stay open for part of the night, releasing their scent to attract the moths (hawkmoths) that pollinate them. This night flowering recalls that of Datura inoxia, its hairier Mexican cousin, and that of the Brugmansia, the "angel's trumpets" of exotic gardens. These were described as a separate genus as early as 1805, but long continued to be classed with Datura; their separation was only definitively accepted in the 1970s.
Fruits that whisper deadly promises
If the flowers are the invitation, the fruits are the trap. Egg-shaped capsules covered in spines — hence the names thorn apple in English and pomme épineuse in French — they recall medieval weapons of war, spiked maces, or the forbidden fruits of allegorical engravings. When ripe, they split open into four valves and release black, matt, kidney-shaped seeds 3 to 4 mm long, each fruit holding several hundred. The seeds are the most poisonous part, but all parts of the plant — root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit — contain active alkaloids.
The chemical arsenal of Datura stramonium is dominated by hyoscyamine and scopolamine (or hyoscine). Atropine, often mentioned, is simply the racemic form of hyoscyamine, which appears notably during drying and extraction. These tropane alkaloids block the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, and therefore parasympathetic nerve transmission. In practice, ingestion triggers a cascade of symptoms: dilated pupils that no longer react to light, an extremely dry mouth, hot and flushed skin, a racing pulse, urinary retention, confusion, agitation, often terrifying hallucinations — victims describe seeing swarming insects, feeling spiders on their skin — then, in severe cases, seizures, coma and respiratory or cardiac failure. There is no safe dose: alkaloid content varies enormously from one plant to another, and small amounts can be enough to cause serious poisoning.
What I find particularly insidious is how thin the line between remedy and poison is. Purified and dosed under medical supervision, these molecules have valuable uses: atropine in ophthalmology (to dilate the pupil) and in emergency medicine, scopolamine against motion sickness. Combined with morphine, scopolamine was also the basis of the twilight sleep favoured by obstetricians in the early 20th century. Here the line is measured in milligrams, and the history of Datura is strewn with tragedies in which it was crossed through ignorance or bravado.
A wanderer across continents
Datura stramonium probably originated in Mexico and the south of North America, from where it followed human movements to colonise practically every temperate and warm region of the globe. Its tough, long-lived seeds travel in batches of grain and seed, in the soil of plants and on farm machinery; they can lie dormant in the soil for decades, waiting for the ideal conditions to germinate — ploughing, disturbed soil, a particularly hot summer. It is a typical weed of row crops, rubble and recently abandoned land.
In Belgium and northern France, it is found mainly in maize, beet and potato fields, along paths, and sometimes in gardens where it turns up uninvited. It copes with poor soils and summer drought, but it dislikes cold: it only germinates once the soil has warmed up, in late spring, and the first frosts kill it. It is an annual that completes its cycle in a few months and seeds abundantly before disappearing. This opportunistic strategy makes it a dreaded weed, all the more so because its seeds can contaminate harvests.
The shadows of history
I cannot write about Datura without mentioning the dark pages in which it appears as an actor, sometimes unwittingly, in tragic human stories. The peoples of the south-western United States and Mexico have known the powers of datura (above all Datura wrightii and Datura inoxia) for centuries; several of them used it in divination or initiation rites, supervised by specialists, a practice ethnologists associate with shamanism. The Aztecs called Datura stramonium tlapatl, and 16th-century Spanish chroniclers reported its ritual and medicinal uses.
In Europe, Datura stramonium spread from the 16th century onwards and became part of both folk medicine and magic. The "witches' ointments", salves rubbed on the skin to bring on visions of night flights, are said to have contained nightshades such as deadly nightshade, henbane, mandrake and sometimes datura; their real composition is still debated. The historian Carlo Ginzburg, in his work on the benandanti of Friuli, showed how peasant beliefs in night-time battles were gradually reinterpreted as a satanic sabbath by the inquisitors.
Closer to our time, datura is regularly involved in poisonings. Some are collective and accidental: seeds mixed into harvests (buckwheat flour has been implicated several times in Europe) or leaves mistaken for leafy vegetables. Others affect young people who try it as a "drug" after reading accounts online. These accidents show a persistent lack of awareness: datura is not a recreational drug, it is a poison, and the experience it brings — when not fatal — is most often described as a waking nightmare, a total loss of contact with reality, without the slightest euphoria.
Facing this plant: respect and vigilance
If you come across Datura stramonium on a walk or — more worryingly — in your garden or vegetable plot, what to do is simple but essential. Do not touch it without gloves, do not taste it under any circumstances, and if you have children or animals, pull it up before the fruits ripen. Wearing thick gloves, remove the whole plant, then put it in the household rubbish in a closed bag — never on the compost heap, where the seeds would survive and spread. Then keep an eye on the plot: more plants will come up, sometimes for years.
In case of ingestion, even of a small amount, do not wait for symptoms: in Belgium, call the Poison Centre on 070 245 245 (elsewhere, your local poison control centre); if there are serious signs (agitation, hallucinations, drowsiness), call 112 or your local emergency number.
And in the ornamental garden?
Some gardeners, won over by its spectacular beauty, grow datura as an ornamental plant, and garden centres commonly sell large-flowered datura (Datura inoxia, Datura metel) or Brugmansia. Yes, datura is a poisonous plant, but it won't jump out at you: it can be grown if you know the precautions to take. In a pot, it is a magnificent, imposing plant.
The rules are simple: do not place it where children or curious animals play, wear gloves when pruning, cut off the fruits before they ripen to prevent self-seeding, and warn your visitors. And don't assume that Brugmansia are a harmless alternative: they contain the same alkaloids. Their only advantage is their shrubby habit in a pot, which places the flowers higher, out of reach of small hands.
The white demon's last word
I still have the image of that night in the abandoned field, where Datura stramonium stood like a phosphorescent ghost. I did not touch the plant, I did not pick a flower, but I stayed a long time watching it, fascinated by the duality that defines it: beauty as bait, toxicity as defence, life and death intimately mixed in every molecule. Datura is not a demon, of course: it is a plant that has developed chemical defences against herbivores. But it carries something of nature's fundamental ambivalence, its ability to be at once a source of healing and destruction, of knowledge and of losing one's way.
It has been said that Solanum, the genus that gave the nightshade family its name, comes from solamen, consolation, because some species soothed pain. For datura, I prefer another etymology: dhattūra, the Sanskrit name of its Asian cousin Datura metel, a plant offered to Shiva, the god of destruction and rebirth. For perhaps that is its real lesson: in nature as in life, the purest beauty can hide the most absolute danger, and knowledge — rigorous, respectful, never reckless — remains our best protection.
Bibliography and sources
- Ginzburg, C. (1966; English trans. The Night Battles, 1983). I benandanti. Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento. Turin: Einaudi.
- Rätsch, C. (2005). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants. Rochester: Park Street Press.
- Tison, J.-M. and de Foucault, B. (eds) (2014). Flora Gallica. Flore de France. Mèze: Biotope.
- Dewick, P. M. (2009). Medicinal Natural Products: A Biosynthetic Approach (3rd ed.). Chichester: Wiley. (Chapter on tropane alkaloids.)
- International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS), Poisons Information Monograph: Datura stramonium, on INCHEM.
- Belgian Poison Centre: toxic plant information.