White and Greenish 



Distribution — Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, westward be- 

 yond the Mississippi. 



When we consider that there are over five million Gypsies wan- 

 dering about the globe, and that the narcotic seeds of the thorn 

 apple, which apparently heal, as well as poison, have been a favorite 

 medicine of theirs for ages, we can understand at least one means 

 of the weed reaching these shores from tropical Asia. (Hindoo, 

 dhatura). Our Indians, who call it " white man's plant," asso- 

 ciate it with the Jamestown settlement — a plausible connection, 

 for Raleigh's colonists would have been likely to carry with them 

 to the New World the seeds of an herb yielding an alkaloid more 

 esteemed in the England of their day than the alkaloid of opium 

 known as morphine. Daturina, the narcotic, and another product, 

 known in medicine as stramonium, smoked by asthmatics, are by 

 no means despised by up-to-date practitioners. Were it not for the 

 rank odor of its leaves, the vigorous weed, coarse as it is, would 

 be welcome in men's gardens. Indeed, many of its similar rela- 

 tives adorn them. The fragrant petunia and tobacco plants of 

 the flower beds, the potato, tomato, and egg-plant in the kitchen 

 garden, call it cousin. 



Late in the afternoon the plaited corolla of this long trumpet- 

 shaped flower expands to welcome the sphinx moths. So deep 

 a tube implies their tongues ; not that these are the benefactors to 

 which the blossom originally adapted itself — they were doubt- 

 less left behind in Asia — but apparently our moths make excel- 

 lent substitutes, for there is no abatement of the weed's vigor 

 here, as there surely would be did it habitually fertilize itself. Any 

 time after four o'clock in the afternoon, according to the light, 

 the sphinx moth, a creature of the gloaming, begins its rounds, to 

 be mistaken for a humming-bird seven times out often. Hover- 

 ing about its chosen white or yellow flowers, that open for it at 

 the approach of twilight, it remains poised above one a second, 

 as if motionless — although the faint hum of its wings, while Suck- 

 ing, indicates that no magic suspends it — then darts swift as 

 thought to another deep tube to feast again, of course transferring 

 pollen as it goes. But what if the Jamestown weed miscalcu- 

 late the hour of her lover's call and open too soon ? Mischiev- 

 ous bees, quick to seize so golden an opportunity, squeeze into 

 the flower when it begins to unfold (flies and beetles following 

 them), to steal pollen, which will sometimes be entirely removed 

 before the moth's arrival. 



The Purple Stramonium, or Thorn Apple (D. Tatula), a simi- 

 lar species, usually with darker leaves, and pale lavender or violet 

 flowers, or with its long, slender tube white, has become at 

 home in so many fields and waste lands east of Minnesota and 

 Texas that no one thinks of it as belonging to tropical America. 



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