Exotic Native

Jimson weed

Thorn apple

Illustration by Mary-Anne King

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

   The blossom is spectacular. The long buds can be as long as 10 inches, and are held upright. The petals are fused and swirl-folded around a central axis like an umbrella. Its white is tinged with ultra-violet at the base of the throat. When it unfurls, the "bell" of the horn is four to five inches across and bedecked with five trailing "horns."

   Datura meteloides a.k.a. thorn apple, a.k.a. Jimson weed, Like Marlene Dietrich’s Frenchy in "Destry Rides Again," looks as if it had thrown off the shackles of a sheltered aristocratic European for life in coarser western soils. In fact, Datura is a California native.

   It grows in a flat mound three to seven feet in diameter like a big dark-green oatmeal cookie. Its simple leaves are from 1 1/2 to to 4 inches long, covered with grayish fuzz and sporadically toothed like a poinsettia.

   Its fruit is a mace-like ball two to three inches in diameter and armed with thorny little spikes -- hence the common name, thorn-apple.

   In addition to its obvious charms, Datura has found its way into legend because of the "powers" ascribed to it. It is said that a liquid brewed from its crushed roots was used in the rites of manhood as well as to stimulate young, dancing women. The seeds contained in the thorny fruit were rumored to have been the source of shamans’ visions.

   Back in the days when we were young and foolish, a high-school friend tried ingesting some of the seeds. The only visions he saw were at the bottom of the toilet bowl, because the seeds contain a poison.

   It tends to grow in dry, sandy soils -- garden sandy, not beach sandy. I remember seeing it growing on the private road beside the old Hughes plant and high up on the Ballona bluffs, where I grew up.

   The wild place behind our old house was buried under asphalt and type-5 construction a few years ago, and sprinklers installed on the slope, so Datura no longer grows there, and I had to drag my poor illustrator (Mak, the-hot-house-flower) down past the canyon to the next bluff sans sprinklers before we found any.