Nightshade; Blue Bindweed; Felonwort; Bittersweet; Scarlet or Snake
Berry; Poison-flower; Woody Nightshade
_Solanum Dulcamara_
_Flowers_--Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on each
lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping cymes. Calyx
5-lobed, oblong, persistent on the berry; corolla deeply, sharply
5-cleft, wheel-shaped, or points curved backward; 5 stamens inserted on
throat, yellow, protruding, the anthers united to form a cone; stigma
small. _Stem:_ Climbing or straggling, woody below, branched, 2 to 8 ft.
long. _Leaves:_ Alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 2 1/2 in. wide, pointed
at the apex, usually heart-shaped at base; some with 2 distinct leaflets
below on the petiole, others have leaflets united with leaf like lower
lobes or wings. _Fruit:_ A bright red, oval berry.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist thickets, fence rows.
_Flowering Season_--May-September.
_Distribution_--United States east of Kansas, north of New Jersey.
Canada, Europe, and Asia.
More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes of
bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange and
scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in autumn, when
the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its way through the
rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the eye. Another
bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with yellow berries
which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds. Rose hips and
mountain-ash berries, among many other conspicuous bits of color, arrest
attention, but not for us were they designed. Now the birds are
migrating, and, hungry with then-long flight, they gladly stop to feed
upon fare so attractive. Hard, indigestible seeds traverse the
alimentary canal without alteration and are deposited many miles from
the parent that bore them. Nature’s methods for widely distributing
plants cannot but stir the dullest imagination.
Jamestown Weed; Thorn Apple; Stramonium; Jimson Weed; Devil’s
Trumpet
_Datura Stramonium_
_Flowers_--Showy, large, about 4 in. high, solitary, erect, growing from
the forks of branches. Calyx tubular, nearly half as long as the
corolla, 5-toothed, prismatic; corolla funnel-form, deep-throated, the
spreading limb 2 in. across or less, plaited, 5-pointed; stamens 5; 1
pistil. _Stem:_ Stout, branching, smooth, 1 to 5 ft. high. _Leaves:_
Alternate, large, rather thin, petioled, egg-shaped in outline, the
edges irregularly wavy-toothed or angled; rank-scented. _Fruit:_ A
densely prickly, egg-shaped capsule, the lower prickles smallest. The
seeds and stems contain a powerful narcotic poison.
_Preferred Habitat_--Light soil, fields, waste land near dwellings,
rubbish heaps.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, westward beyond the
Mississippi.
When we consider that there are more than five million Gypsies wandering
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,” associate 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
relatives 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.