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Concept
Datura metel
Summary
Datura metel is a shrub-like annual (zone 5–7) or short-lived, shrubby perennial (zone 8–10), commonly known in Europe as Indian thornapple, Hindu Datura, or metel and in the United States as devil's trumpet or angel's trumpet. Datura metel is naturalised in all the warmer countries of the world. It is found notably in India, where it is known by the ancient, Sanskrit-derived, Hindi name dhatūra (धतूरा), from which the genus name Datura is derived.
The plant is cultivated worldwide, both as an ornamental and for its medicinal properties, the latter being due to its tropane alkaloid content. Like its hardier and smaller-flowered relative Datura stramonium, it is now of widespread occurrence, although showing a preference for warmer, humid climates.
The plant is an annual or short-lived shrubby perennial herb. The roots are a branched tap root, and are not fleshy like roots found in perennial species such as Datura innoxia and Datura wrightii. The species can grow up to high. The stems are hollow, green or purple-black, somewhat woody, and have a strong odour. It is slightly pubescent, with green to dark violet shoots and oval to broad oval leaves that are often dark violet as well. The leaves are simple, alternate, petiolate, and exhibit entire or deeply lobed margins.
The pleasantly-scented flowers are immensely varied, and can be single or double. Corolla colour can range from white to cream, yellow, red, and violet. The seed capsule is covered with numerous conical warts or short, sparse spines. The fruits break up irregularly at maturity by not dehiscing in four equal valves like those of other Datura species. Seeds are endospermous.
D. metel was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, but few botanically correct illustrations were made until after the New World was settled. The original home of the plant, although long conjectured to have been India, is now known to have been somewhere in the Americas, probably the Greater Antilles. As late as 1992 it was still being claimed that the plant was "...
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