[Illustration: Datura meteloides]
Common Names: WESTERN-JIMSON, THORNAPPLE, GIANT-JIMSON, SACRED DATURA
Arizona, California, and Texas deserts. (_Datura meteloides_). White.
May-October.
Potato family. Size: Up to 3 feet tall, and spreading over as much as
50 square feet of ground.
All portions of this coarse, vine-like herb are poisonous, and are used
by some Indians as a narcotic to induce visions.
Seeds are sometimes administered to prevent miscarriage.
The plants with their large, gray-green leaves and showy, white,
sometimes lavender-tinted flowers which open at night and close soon
after contact by rays of the morning sun, are a common and arresting
sight along roadsides and washes at elevations from 1,000 to 6,500 feet
in Texas, New Mexico, southern Utah, southern California, and Mexico.