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Devil's Trumpet
Datura innoxia
-19.1922, 13.8249
Field Notes
Description:
This plant of thousand names (check the keywords for some of them...) of nightshade family is a subshrub, about 1 m tall, and roughly that much in diameter. This is one of the nine species of Datura, devil's trumpets or thorn-apples, and is recognized from others by the flower and leaf. Large non-dented dark-green leaf sports over 7 secondary nerves. Long (about 20cm in length) and large trumpet-like white flower has 10-toothed corolla. The fruit (pic N° 3) is egg-sized and shaped thorny capsule.
Habitat:
Originating from Americas, today this plant has cosmopolitan distribution. Here, observed in a communal vegetable garden on a periphery of a small town in Kunene province of Namibia. The town is surrounded by a very dry open acacia woodland, very dry after a three-year spell; but this garden is not in a such bad shape thanks to a small water point close by.
Notes:
Surprisingly, this bush was seen in an operating communal vegetable garden.... I was surprised to see it grown this much, after people warned me it was poisonous weed - I found it curious to let it grow knowing these facts. Whatever it was the reason this shrub was let to grow to its full maturity, all Datura species are highly toxic (contain atropine and other alkaloids) and can be fatal; but I often heard they are also used as a drug, or in mixture with other hallucinogens. In any case, dangerous stuff.
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