SOLANACEAE (NIGHTSHADE FAMILY) 375 
JAMESTOWN OR JIMSON WEED 
Datura Straménium, 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 Fie. 261.— Jamestown or 
white, trumpet-shaped, sometimes four Jimson Weed (Datura Stramo- 
inches long, the five-lobed mouth of mtn Aas 
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 
