i86 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



THORN APPLE (Datura Stramonium) 



Though the Thorn Apple, the subject of Plate XXX., 

 possesses absolutely no claim to rank as one of our indigenous 

 plants, it is not uncommonly met with throughout southern 

 England on waste ground, by the country roadsides, and 

 on rubbish heaps, and it has been fully enrolled amongst 

 our wild plants. Of no other wild plant can we speak so 

 definitely as to its claims to be a native or otherwise, for 

 we know that it was introduced into England in 1590 ; 

 it is on record who sent its seeds, and where from, and 

 to whom they were sent. It is found in nearly all 

 temperate and sub-tropical countries, and is as much at 

 home in the New World as the Old. 



Why it should be called the thorn apple our 

 illustration amply attests. In the United States it is in 

 many parts of the country one of the commonest of plants. 

 Botanically it is the Datura Stramonium^ Datura being 

 applied to it by Linneus from its Arab name. Linneus, 

 himself a Swede, received specimens of this and other 

 plants from his fellow countryman, Forskal, a naturalist 

 who, at the cost of the King of Denmark, went 

 on a scientific expedition into Egypt and Arabia. The 

 specimens he sent home had their Arabic names appended 

 to them, and in this particular case the Eastern name was, 

 practically, adopted. Hence, from this scientific title 

 datura^ an old English name for the plant is the dewtry ; 

 we find it, for example, thus called in the pages of 

 Hudibras ; the illustrative passage is, from the context, 

 unfortunately unquotable. The herbalists of Italy called 

 the plant stramonia, but why they did so does not 



