Category — Night-blooming plants

The datura in these pictures, ‘Evening Fragrance’, is identified as Datura meteloides, the same species as a wild datura that grows in my area. I got the wild datura to grow in my garden from seed once. Then I moved, and it wouldn’t. So basically, I bought a tame cultivar of a plant that grows wild in my area.

Probably.

There’s a lot of confusion in the botany of this genus. It’s pretty well agreed that the shrubbier plants whose flowers hang down are brugmansias, and the more herbaceous plants whose flowers point out or up are daturas. So now the hanging-down flowers have their own genus. But things are still murky in the genus datura, with a lot of argument over who belongs in what species, or whether it’s really a species at all. Since many of the daturas look a great deal alike (like Evening Fragrance, in fact) with only small variations, it’s not an easy question to settle. Someday I’m going to research it in depth so at least I know what the botanists are arguing about.

And then I suppose I’ll have to put any online sources on my RSS, so I can keep up with all the changes. When I was in high school and first learning Latin plant names, I remember feeling so satisfied with myself. “Once I learn these binomials, I’ll never have to learn them again,” I thought to myself. “Knowledge for life.” I knew that little about science, and the vagaries of human nature. Lumpers and splitters (the two categorizing types) have been with us forever. New DNA research has only churned up the delirium over who knows best.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep growing daturas.

Evening Fragrance is, like many other daturas, not easy from seed. The seeds of daturas and brugmansias are hard to germinate; they seem to have very specific ideas about when they will sprout. But, while I have grown one or two daturas from seed, I’m still not sure what those ideas are, beyond the basics of warm and moist. J. L. Hudson ‘s genus description says that the annuals are easy from seed. Maybe so. But I notice that, along with regular datura seed, they offer datura seeds treated with gibberillic acid, which makes them easier to sprout.

For someone with a small garden and primitive breeding facilities, like me, it’s easier just to buy a plant. The trick is finding plants who like your climate. Some varieties of datura are hardier than others. There are daturas from India and Mexico; from the Northeastern, Southwestern, and Western U.S.; and from many places in Central and South America. The hardy ones from colder climates generally have smaller lavender flowers, without the intoxicating scent. Sorry.

By choosing a datura that grows wild in my area, I could be pretty sure that I’d picked one that would last. I have grown other daturas and brugmansias, but they haven’t liked my garden for long. Part of the reason for this may be that I can only offer them part sun, not the full baking sun they prefer. Or it may be something else.

So keep trying with datura species. Once you find the plants that like your climate, they will obligingly come up year after year.

They come up late, though. Each year I think, “Oh, it was too cold this winter. I’ve finally lost them. They froze.”

And then, sometime in May, I see this:

Fulfilled hope of beauty: sometimes confusing, but always the best intoxication.

References:

J. L. Hudson
Select Seeds

They say that datura’s intoxicating.

Well yes, it is. Is that bad?

Well, it is bad if you’re taking datura leaves internally. Or even if you make a paste and spread them on your skin. You can have respiratory failure, which in plain English means you stop breathing.

In the U.S. Pharmacopoeia of the 1800s, smoking datura leaves (a less drastic way of introducing the alkaloids to your body) was prescribed for asthma. So if you get it just right, instead of stopping breathing, you can stop from breathing fast and spasmodically. I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home, though. Remember, “intoxication” comes from the same root as “toxin”.

Eating datura, or rubbing a paste or salve on your skin, can have multitude of effects. You can hallucinate most unpleasantly, and be very sick to your stomach, for a very long time. Daturas can be used by experts to good effect-some tradtional healers have different kinds of datura or brugmansias growing in their yard. Each variety is good for divining a particular problem or illness in the village. Datura is said to be an herb used by European witches (who were, generally, shamans who were demonized by the Church) to travel to other realms and learn wisdom. In India, daturas are also regarded as sacred.

In fact, wherever it appears, datura is regarded as a holy plant. But holy means powerful. I have known datura to drive a person in a delicately balanced state over the edge, so there was no better solution than an institution. Treat daturas with respect. If you don’t know what you’re doing, back off.

But not too far.

Datura flowers can send me into an altered state even when they’re dead, as in the photo at the top of this post. And it’s a very pleasant sensation.

The slow bursting from velvety buds, the tight scroll unfurling in the evening, is a spectacular show.

And when the huge flower fully opens, you can bury your face deep within it. To me, it’s like a combination of fresh line-dried laundry, a hint of lemon, a whisper of sweet orange blossom, and a touch of something else.

Whatever it is, inhale it while you can, because by late morning, the flowers will be done.

Fortunately, there are more to come.

Next post: I go on about this datura

Cucuzzi in the evening.

Cucuzzi in the morning.

Cucuzzi all around: ornamental, fragrant, edible, and a rapid grower.

Because this vine is an edible gourd, it takes the same rich soil, water, and heat that garden squashes do. But its flowers are more delicate, and, like all gourds, white-at least in the evening, when it first opens and gives you a chance to inhale a fresh, gentle fragrance. If you plant them by your door, as I did, they can greet you coming home from work. By morning, they’ve turned a gentle pale tan.

Cucuzzi seeds are different from squash seeds, too: more or less rectangular, with stubby little antennae on each end.

Unlike squash, the smaller leaves of cucuzzi won’t overpower everything else.

In fact, I think they mix quite fetchingly with these Oriental lilies. (I’m a sucker for tendrils.)

I first heard about cucuzzi in The 20-Minute Gardener, Tom Christopher and Marty Asher’s treatise on how not to let gardening take over your life. Gardeners who take things too seriously should be laid in a hammock with this book and a nice glass of lemon balm iced tea.

The only bad thing about The 20-Minute Gardener is that it lacks an index, so I must flip through page after page to find the entry. And after some flipping, I did find one, but not one with the recipe I remembered. Oh well.

These Italian-bred young gourds can be eaten like summer squash. Rumor has it that they are even more flavorful than regular summer squash, but so far I’ve had only male flowers, so I can’t report. I am happy to find a vine that looks as if it’s going over the top of my trellis-shade, fragrant flowers, and fruit all in one season.

And I really like my garden chair.

References:

Tom Christopher and Marty Asher, The 20-Minute Gardener, Random House, 1997

JL Hudson - you can get cucuzzi seeds here.