Thorn Apple, Devil’s Trumpet, Jamestown Weed. Common names applied to Datura
stramonium and related species of the Nightshade family.
2.
Jimsonweed: Tall annual herb found in pastures, roadsides, waste areas, and
barnyards. Large, coarsely toothed, blunt-pointed leaves. In Mississippi, “Jimpsonweed.”
3.
Conspicuous white or purplish trumpet-shaped flowers resembling petunias.
4.
Strangely narcotic, poisonous, hallucinogenic. Containing tropane alkaloids.
5.
A common sensation of people who consume tropane alkaloids is that of floating
through the air.
6.
Jimsonweed brings its name from Jamestown, Virginia, where the plant was first
observed in the New World. It derives from the mass poisoning of British
soldiers sent to Jamestown in 1676 to quell the uprising known as Bacon’s
Rebellion. “After consuming the black fruit of Jamestown weed, for eleven
days we were in another world.” This according to Robert Beverley, historian
of early Virginia.
7.
The large violet or white flowers stand erect and resemble morning glories. In
late afternoon and evening they are visited by sphinx moths and hummingbirds.
8.
Jimsonweed, the literary magazine of Clinch Valley College, a division of
the University of Virginia. “Poems and art having to do with Jimsonweed are
especially welcome.”
9.
“A Datura
flower opened in my garden last night: a great showy bloom, white as moonlight.”
Andrew Weil
The Marriage of the Sun and Moon
10.
Datura, of the nightshade family. Cousin to
mandrake,
belladonna,
henbane.
All over the world it is a drug of poisoners, criminals, and black magicians.
11.
An old Zuni tradition tells of a boy and girl dwelling in the underworld who
found a trail leading up to the world of light. They emerged wearing garlands of
Datura flowers on their heads, permitting them to put people to sleep and make
them see ghosts. The gods became alarmed and sent the boy and girl back to the
world of darkness. But where they vanished, the same white blossoms that had
adorned their hair sprang forth on a vine and soon spread across the far deserts
and mesas.
Told by Marc Simmons in Witchcraft of the Southwest
12.
In Colombia there are Tree Daturas, almost always in flower with foot-long
scarlet trumpets that give off a heady fragrance. Local brujos use them to
induce altered states of consciousness. “In this way we unravel the mysteries
of the universe.”
13.
I dreamed I was in Colombia, in a grove of Tree Daturas.
14.
In New Mexico, at the corner of a busy street, a great Datura was blooming in
the white delirium of noonday sun. In the sky, a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of
white Jimsonweed hovered above the horizon, then floated away, toward South
America.
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