SOLANACEAE (NIGHTSHADE FAMILY) 



375 



JAMESTOWN OR JIMSON WEED 

 Datura Stramdnium, L. 



Other English names : Jamestown Lily, Thorn Apple, Mad Apple, 

 Devil's Apple, Devil's Trumpet, Dewtry, Stinkwort, Stinkweed. 

 Introduced. Annual. Propagates by seeds. 

 Time of bloom : June to September. 

 Seed-time: September to December. 



Range : Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Florida and Texas. 

 Habitat: Fields and waste places. 



A coarse, ill-scented, dangerously poisonous plant, much too 

 common; children have been poisoned by eating its seeds and 

 taking its flowers into their mouths. 

 Although cattle will not touch the 

 plant when green, they have been 

 poisoned by the young leaves when 

 cured in hay. 



Stem one to five feet tall, stout, 

 smooth, or slightly hairy when young, 

 pale green, branching by forking. 

 Leaves alternate, three to eight inches 

 long, pointed oval in outline but ir- 

 regularly cut and toothed, dark green 

 above, lighter below, thin, smooth, 

 with large veins and stout petioles. 

 Flowers solitary on short peduncles in 

 the forks of the branches, the corolla 

 white, trumpet-shaped, sometimes four 

 inches long, the five-lobed mouth of 

 the trumpet flaring to a width of about two inches ; five stamens 

 included, their filaments inserted a little below the middle of the 

 corolla tube; calyx five-lobed and ridged, enclosing the tube for 

 nearly half its length. Capsule about two inches long when 

 mature, ovoid, prickly, incompletely four-celled, opening at the 

 top; seeds many, dark brown,' wrinkled, and flat. (Fig. 261.) 



Both leaves and seeds of Stramonium are used in medicine. 

 About one hundred and fifty thousand pounds of the dried leaves 

 are imported yearly at a cost of two to eight cents a pound, and 



FIG. 261. Jamestown or 

 Jimson Weed (Datura Stramo- 

 nium). X i- 



