POTATO FAMILY. Solanaceae. 
Colorado and Texas, reaching an altitude of six thousand 
feet, and is strongly aromatic when crushed. 
POTATO FAMILY. Solanaceae. 
A large family, widely distributed, most abundant in the 
tropics. Ours are herbs, shrubs, or vines; leaves alternate, 
without stipules; flowers perfect, usually regular, in clusters; 
calyx and corolla usually with five united lobes; stamens on 
the throat of the corolla, as many as its lobes and alternate 
with them; ovary superior, two-celled, with a slender 
style; fruit a berry or capsule, with many seeds. Many 
important plants, such as Tobacco, Belladonna, Tomato, 
Egg-plant, Red-pepper, and Potato, belong to this family. 
Many have a strong odor. 
There are several kinds of Datura, widely distributed; 
ours are chiefly weeds, coarse, tall, branching herbs, with 
rank odor and narcotic properties; leaves large, toothed 
or lobed, with leaf-stalks; flowers large, single, erect, with 
short stalks, in the forks of the stems; calyx with a long 
tube and five teeth, the lower part remaining in the form 
of a collar or rim around the base of the capsule; corolla 
funnel-form, with a plaited border and broad lobes with 
pointed tips; stamens with very long, threadlike filaments, 
but not protruding; style threadlike, with a two-lipped 
stigma; fruit a large, roundish, usually prickly capsule, 
giving these plants the common name, Thorn-Apple. 
Datura is the Hindoo name. 
A handsome and exceedingly conspicu- 
acevo a ous plant, forming a large clump of rather 
Datncs coarse, dark foliage, adorned with many 
Datura meteloides Magnificent flowers. The stout, velvety 
White stems are bronze-color, from two to four 
ire FT feet high, the leaves are dark green, 
Utah velvety on the under side, and the flowers 
are sometimes ten inches long, white, 
tinged with lilac outside, drooping like wet tissue-paper 
in the heat of the afternoon, and with sweet though heavy 
scent. I remember seeing a grave in the desert, marked 
by a wooden cross and separated from a vast waste of sand 
by clumps of these great white flowers. It grows in valley 
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