Nature Photos: Sacred Datura

While on a trip to Lake Isabella, CA last year with my fiance, I noticed wild flowers growing near our campsite. Impressed with the size of their blooms and brilliant shade of white, I took a couple of photos.

These perennial flowers are called Datura Wrightii and are also known as "Sacred Datura" or "Jimsonweed." They are a species of plant within the Nightshade family and can often be found growing wild near sandy washes, roadsides with well-drained soil, and open areas of land in Southwestern North America and Mexico.

These eye-catching beauties are not only extremely poisonous but regarded as sacred to Native Americans. Native Americans of the southwest called the plant "Sacred Datura" and used the flowers to induce hallucinations, and as an anesthetic and narcotic for surgery.

It was also used to make and break hexes, induce dreams and sleep. It was most frequently used for ceremonies of rights of passage. Some of the young adults who ingested the plant did not survive. They contain dangerous levels of anticholinergic tropane alkaloids, which can be fatal if ingested by humans, cattle or pets.

Datura flowers are fragrant and pollinated by hawkmoths at night. The trumpets can grow up to 7.9 inches long and they are sometimes tinted purple at the margins. They bloom from April to October and will fully open in the morning and evening, avoiding the heat of the mid-day.