Category — Plant uses

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

This flower may look very like the one in my last post.

But wait. Check out the leaves. This is a fig-leafed hollyhock, a different variety from all the hollyhocks we have discussed before.

Then check out the edges of the flowers: they’re pinked. Just another of the mutations hollyhocks seem to specialize in.

This plant is probably some hybrid of Alcea ficifolia (fig-leafed hollyhock) and Alcea rosea (all the other hollyhocks we’ve been looking at in this series). I’ve never grown the species version of Alcea ficifolia, but two sources tell me it has pale yellow flowers. (Maybe Chater used some ficifolia blood in the flower that became ‘Peaches ‘n’ Dreams’.)

Since hollyhocks seem to be given to variation, a lot of interbreeding has probably gone on over the years, with human help or without it. (Remember the bees I talked about a couple of posts ago? They are the ones who are responsible for most of the hollyhock breeding down the centuries.) Wuv’n Acres has a Black Cherry fig-leafed hollyhock, plus a multicolored mix of fig-leafed hollyhocks called ‘Happy Lights’. Select Seeds also carries ‘Happy Lights’, among other hollyhocks which include another species, Alcea rugosa.

Alcea rugosa is rumored to be a longer-lived perennial than the rosea types. (It’s also rumored to be from Russia, and since I read about this in the Plant Delights catalogue as well as another source, I’m willing to accept that. Provisionally.) Presumably it has wrinkled leaves, since that’s what ‘rugosa’ means. According to Plant Delights, it’s 6-7 feet tall, has typical Alcea rosea foliage, and blooms “all summer with large 4-inch single buttery-yellow flowers.” It’s also supposed to be more disease-resistant than other varieties.

The last species I’ve heard of is Alcea setosa, another one with yellow blooms. I don’t know of any more detailed descriptions or pictures of this type. Just the name and the yellow flowers.

All right. These are little-known varieties of hollyhocks (and you might rightly say that, after reading this, you still know very little about them).

What are the little-known uses of hollyhocks? I’ve already discussed how hollyhocks have been used for food and medicine. But did you know they were once under consideration as a fiber crop plant?

In 1821, 280 acres of land near Flint (England) were sown with hollyhocks, in order to use the fiber of stems like hemp or flax. Since cotton was very fashionable as dress material in the early 1800s, it was a major import crop for England at that time. I’d guess that this was an attempt to produce fiber locally and reduce dependency on cotton shipments from India and the southern U.S. Something along the lines of modern attempts at reducing dependency on foreign oil by producing local power.

In fact, hollyhocks are related to cotton (Gossypium herbaceum), though, of course, we get cotton from the fluffy innards of the seedpods, not from the stalks of the plant.

In any case, hollyhock fiber was not a success with 1821 technology. It might be possible today, given that we have created fibers out of bamboo and wood. Maybe it’ll be the next designer material.

The Great Hollyhock Experiment wasn’t entirely futile. In the process, the growers discovered that hollyhock flowers produced a blue dye, “as good as indigo”—the best blue dye at the time. Since indigo requires a lot of time-consuming and smelly processing (hint: large fermenting vats are involved), I was a little surprised that nobody followed up on the possibilities of dyeing with hollyhock flowers, which would not have needed nearly so much processing. Especially since indigo was another one of the big cash crops of the era. (It was grown in the southern U.S. on big plantations that depended on slave labor, much like cotton, tobacco, and rice.)

Maybe the experimenters were so discouraged and discredited that they didn’t have the means or energy to pursue it further. Maybe hollyhock flower dye really wasn’t as good as indigo. We’ll probably never know.

We humans have helped hollyhocks grow and travel, and give them a multitude of names and uses. But hollyhocks are clearly capable of changing, spreading, and thriving without us.

References:

Wuv’n Acres

Alice M. Coats, Flowers and Their Histories, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956, 1968

Plant Delights catalogue, spring 2009

Hollyhock seed and plant sources:

JL Hudson

Jung’s Seed

Loghouse Plants

Morrison Home and Garden

Plant Delights Nursery

Select Seeds

Thompson & Morgan

Ricinus communis ‘Carmencita’: the spectacular castor bean pods almost obscure the inconspicuous flowers, just visible below.

Sad news. Gophers and castor oil do mix. At least in some gardens.

Last report, I was experimenting with saturating some cutting-flower bed soils with castor oil solution. This had worked for me before in my tulip beds, where I didn’t water in summer.

I was also keeping tabs on a friend’s garden: she planted castor bean plants around the perimeter of her garden in New Mexico, and had good results keeping gophers away. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be working in her garden here. Gophers are happily working away amongst these castor bean plants. (They are ‘Carmencita’ plants, by the way, for those of you who just want to grow them because they look so cool.)

I had a theory going for awhile: the studies attesting to the efficacy of castor oil sprays on the soil were done by the University of Michigan. And the woman who recommended it in Gardener’s Supply (a catalogue where I’ve found lots of useful and interesting, well, garden supplies) is also from the midwest.

So my theory was this: in the midwest, where it rains all summer (to excess, this summer), the soil is always moist. The midwest also has a lot of naturally fluffy soil (where it hasn’t been eroded away by bad agribusiness practices). That means that there are green things growing in fluffy moist soil all over. So a gopher has a choice between plants in fluffy moist soil without nasty castor oil, or with it. Any sensible gopher would choose without.

In my dry-summer area, though, the only place you see green plants in summer is where people are watering or where there’s a creek. And while there are some deposits of naturally fluffy soil, they are few. Clay, decomposed granite, and composed granite are the lot of most of us. If we want fluffy soil, we have to work at it. So in my area, if a gopher wants nice fluffy easy soil to burrow through, and moisture and plants, it’s most likely going to find them in a garden. And nowhere else.

The thing that throws a wrench in this theory is the New Mexico story. New Mexico has dry summers, too, and as far as I know is not known for fluffy soil. (If I’m wrong about this, let me know.) So why did the castor bean plants work there? Was it just that the gophers hadn’t found that garden yet? (It does take them awhile.) Or something else?

Life is an ever-turning mystery.

Another friend of mine, who has a master’s in agriculture, gave me some things to think about when I relayed this story to her. Was the type of gopher different in the places where the castor oil was effective? That could be crucial. Do all cultivars of castor bean have the same amount of toxins? It is often true that medicinal plants that are bred to have better looks lose some of the medicinal qualities. (Yarrow is just one example of this.)

I took her advice and delved a little deeper: it turns out the University of Michigan study was for moles, not gophers, and Glenn Dudderer is testing it as a chipmunk and squirrel repellent.

But, you will notice, not as a gopher repellent. And even as a mole repellent, castor oil seems to have gotten mixed reviews: Mole Patrol is now the latest in anti-mole materiel. And even the Gardener’s Supply catalogue now concentrates on moles and downplays the gophers when it comes to castor-oil repellents.

Even though it might not be the heavenly gopher cure-all, castor bean plants are really beautiful. Just be aware that, though the oil is edible, and has many medicinal uses, every other part of the plant is highly poisonous. (In fact, I read a gruesome true story of how a woman poisoned her husband by putting the crushed-up beans in his food. Truly a case of an unfortunate U.S. cultural trait: kill first, talk about it later.) Don’t plant them where small children can investigate the pretty seedpods and attractive leaves.

If you have success in keeping gophers out of your garden with castor bean plants or castor oil, let me know. I’m still trying to figure out why they work in some circumstances, and not others.

References:

Gardener’s Supply catalogue

Herbalhut.com, “Natural Animal Repellents”

Michigan State University Extension: Pests

Earlier in the year, I posted a picture of California buckeye (Aesculus californica) leaf buds. I thought it was only fair to show the rest of it. The most spectacular part, of course, is the amazing flower spikes, about 8 to 12 inches (20 t0 30 cm) long, with a mild scent and amazing coloration, if you look closely.

But even apart from their flowers, buckeyes are stellar plants. Many might disagree with me, calling them shrubby or weedy. And it is true that, while they are the first trees to show that brilliant chartreuse-green in spring and then fan their leaves out, they are also the first to drop their leaves, usually sometime in September, when all the other leaves are still growing strong, and the dying falling buckeye leaves are a bit depressing in an already-sere landscape.

Buckeyes are prominent natives in my landscape, and they used to be a major food for the Pomo Indians, who leached the poisons out of them in order to eat the meaty, chestnut-like nut. Their name for this tree was De-sa Ka-la, which means “food tree”.

It may sound odd, then, to hear that other native Californians (possibly the Pomo, too) used them unleached, to stun fish: put in a river pool, fish die and float to the surface. Not a method for sport-fishing, but used judiciously, a good way to be sure of fish when you depend on them for food.

The substances that poison the fish can also poison human beings with nerve and respiratory failure: the bark, twigs, flowers, and leaves are as dangerous as the unleached nuts, which are a beautiful shiny glossy brown and fit beautifully in the palm for stroking with your fingers. (I’m sure this is stress-reducing). These toxins are also in the Ohio buckeye Aesculus glabra.

The Asian horse chestnut (Aesculus hipposcastanum), on the other hand, was used medicinally in Europe for intermittent fevers and respiratory problems-though it was also known to be a nerve poison, like its American relatives. (If you find this strange, think for a moment about the toxicity of many medical drugs today.) Its folk use was in salves for rheumatism and hemorrhoids. The skin probably filtered the active ingredients somewhat, so that it was relatively safe. These trees are often found in the eastern U.S., and have looser flower spikes with hints of pink and yellow in them, if you look close.

California buckeyes have adapted well to their environment; while they tend to like streamsides and wet places, they also grow in places with no obvious water. I don’t know if they indicate a high water table or if they are just very tolerant of a wide range of places. They grow in semishade as well as full sun.

Buckeyes also range in size and shape: they can be small shrubby plants several feet high, and they can be many-branched tall trees up to about thirty feet. I’d guess this has to do with available water and nutrients. Their bark is smooth and pale, although in my area it tends to accrue lichen and moss-both of which accentuate its appearance, to my mind, rather than mar it.

I’ve never grown a buckeye, simply because there are so many around already, I’ve never felt the need. If you want to try, I’d suggest choosing a variety that suits your area. Rather than struggling to fit the dry-summer-loving California buckeye into a cold or wet-summer place, choose A. glabra (Ohio buckeye) or A. hippocastanum (horse chestnut). Horse chestnuts are tall beautiful thick-trunked trees, so if you want to grow one of them, make room.

Winter hardiness is another thing to consider when choosing your variety. California buckeyes grow only in lower elevations, which means they will take some freezing, but probably would not do well in prolonged-cold winters.

It’s interesting to ponder that a tree that is entirely toxic can also be a food staple. Yet more proof that inconsistency is not a strictly human trait.

References

LoLo Westrich, California Herbal Remedies, Gulf Publishing Company, 1989

Charles F. Millspaugh, American Medicinal Plants, originally published in 1892. Mine is a Dover reprint.

Nicotiana alata (jasmine tobacco) has bigger flowers than some tobaccos do, so you can see right into their innards when they are fully open. You do have to get underneath them to do that, though, since they hang gracefully down from the stem. (Just another good reason for putting them in a container on your porch, where they will be higher up and you will be sitting down.)

They’re great commuter plants: Nicotia alata opens in the evening, so it can greet you on the porch each evening with freshly-opened flowers that spread a light, sweet scent. Some people also recommend planting night-fragrant plants under bedroom windows. Near an outdoor summertime bed would be another good place.

N. alata is one of those rewarding plants that takes almost no energy. And yet it comes back year after year, through hard freezes (to 15 degrees F/-9.5 C) and through summers that go well over 100 degrees F ( 38 C). Jasmine tobacco mostly blooms in early summer for me, with a few scattered blooms here and there through the rest of the season. Other kinds of fragrant night flowers (including other tobaccos) tend to get going later in the season, so N. alata fills a gap.

After years of trying to grow different tobaccos from seed (JL Hudson has an enticing assortment of varieties bred for both smoking and ornament) and failing utterly, I got my jasmine tobacco plant from Select Seeds. It arrived, took off, and is still doing nicely some years hence. I put it in a self-watering container in semi-shade where it seems to be happy without any extra attention from me: I give it the same fertilizing treatment that the whole garden gets, and I water it. Voila tout.

If anyone out there has successfully grown tobacco from seed, or knows of someone who has, I’d be interested to hear. Trying and failing multiple times has given me a new respect for tobacco farmers.

While tobacco gets its share of criticism (I admit I don’t like being shut in smoky rooms myself), it can be useful in the garden as well as pretty. Ornamental tobaccos have pretty much the same set of alkaloids as smoking tobaccos, although as you can see their leaves are nowhere near as dense. Still, you can use them the way the Victorians did, as an all-purpose pesticide (tobacco was the DDT of the Victorian age). Soak the dried leaves in water to make a kind of tea, then spray on plants to kill and repel bugs. (If you have bugs on your tobacco plants, you’re on your own.) Civilized smokers—people who smoke outside—can follow one of the pleasant traditions of the 1930s: smoking near the rose bushes. The tobacco-laden exhalations help the roses keep clear of fungal diseases.

This picture of the newly-opened blooms shows the greenish tint they have before they mature, also some of the hairiness that I find so appealing in a plant. Maturing, for a tobacco flower, happens in what humans would call a blip: these blooms will last only through the next morning. The following night will bring fresh blooms.

Evening’s also a good time to see the silhouette of the blooms that are coming on and the blooms that are passing away, with the little hairs glowing like a halo around each one. (The little brown-red flower behind it is a California figwort, which I must post about sometime, another great plant.)

Jasmine tobacco gives sensuous pleasure along with intimations of mortality. I think most sensuous pleasures are sweetened by the scent of approaching death. But few pleasures are so carefree as jasmine tobacco.