Thorn Apple

The ‘thorn apple’ is a noxious weed found along roadsides and waste places from 914-2286 m. The plant parts, as in Atropa contain alkaloids as hyoscyamine, which have a powerful narcotic effect. The plant parts are also medicinal; being used in fevers, for worms, skin diseases, boils and indigestion (Dymock et al. Pharmcog. Ind. Reprint. edit. 2:584. 1891).

Cultivated in gardens as a medicinal and decorative plant.

The whole plant is toxic and is used medicinally as anaesthetic and for sedating and relieving muscular spasm. Seed oil can be used for soap making.

Plant 60-120 cm or more tall, branched, pubescent; the branches often purplish. Leaves 8-17 x 4-13 cm, ovate or broadly so, sinuately dentate, minutely puberulose, cuneate. Petiole 2-5 cm long. Calyx 3.5-5.5 cm long, tubular, 5-dentate, puberulous, persistent. Lobes 6-9 mm long, strongly reflexed in fruit, apiculate. Corolla 7-10 cm long, white or purplish suffused; limb up to 8 cm broad. shallowy 5-lobed, with the lobes, ± triangular-acuminate. Anthers ± 5 mm long, with the lobes narrow oblong, usually white. Capsule erect, 3-4 cm long, ovoid, spiny and densely pubescent, splitting by 4 valves; spines up to 5 mm long. Seeds 3 mm long, reniform, reticulate-foveolate, black.

Herbs or subshrubs, sometimes robust, 0.5-1.5 m tall, glabrescent. Petiole 3-5.5 cm; leaf blade broadly ovate, 8-17 × 4-14 cm, membranous, glabrescent, base asymmetric, cuneate, irregularly sinuous or dentate-lobed, apex acuminate, veins 3-5 pairs. Flowers erect. Pedicel 5-12 mm. Calyx tubular, 5-angular, 3-5 cm. Corolla white or pale purple, greenish at base, sometimes purple distally, funnelform; limb 3-5 cm in diam.; lobes 6-10 cm, mucronate at apex. Filaments ca. 3 cm; anthers 3-4 mm. Capsules erect, globose or ovoid, 3-4.5 × 2-4 cm, with copious prickles, rarely smooth, dehiscent by 4 equal valves, subtended by remnants of persistent calyx. Seeds black, ovate or discoid, ca. 4 mm in diam. Fl. Jun-Oct, fr. Jul-Nov.

Tropical America, widely cultivated and naturalised.

Distribution: In most temperate and subtropical regions of both the hemispheres.

Throughout China [native of Mexico, now worldwide]

200-2200 m

Fl. Per.: June-July.

Near houses, roadsides, grasslands; 600-1600 m.

Datura stramonium var. tatula (Linnaeus) Torrey; D. tatula Linnaeus.