Datura metel L.
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Authority
Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.
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Family
Solanaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - Noteworthy as one of the largest-flowered plants, seen to best advantage in the morning, for the flowers usually wilt in the early afternoon, this stout, upright herb is very widely distributed throughout tropical and subtropical America, and the Old World tropics, ranging northward into the southeastern continental United States, in Porto Rico we have seen it only in waste and cultivated grounds, appearing like an introduced weed. Its original home is, perhaps, impossible to determine; when first described botanically it was recorded as African and Asiatic, and, in all probability is of Old World origin. Datura (the Hindoo name, dhatura) is a genus of about 12 species, mostly stout, narcotic herbs or shrubs, with broad, stalked, alternate leaves, and large, solitary, upright flowers. The calyx is long-tubular, or prismatic, 5-cleft, or split along one side; the funnelform corolla has a plaited, 5-lobed limb, with broad, long-pointed lobes; the 5, long stamens are borne on the corolla-tube, at or below the middle; the mostly 2-celled ovary contains many ovules, the style is long and slender, the stigma slightly 2-lobed. The fruit is a large capsule, which splits into 4 valves, or bursts irregularly. Datura Metel (Arabic name) is annual in duration, finely glandular hairy, branched, from 0.6 to 3 meters high. The thin and flaccid leaves are broadly ovate, pointed, unequal-sided, from 10 to 25 centimeters long, with a rounded or heart-shaped base; the white flowers are from 15 to 18 centimeters high, the calyx about one-half as long as the corolla, most of it falling away, leaving the base subtending the ripening capsule, which is nearly globular, nodding on a short stalk, from 2.5 to 4 centimeters in diameter, hairy and armed with long prickles.
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Discussion
Chamisco Prickly-bur Potato Family Datura Metel Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 179. 1753.