Datura

Datura

Taxonomic Position According to Cronquist (1981)

Kingdom: Plantae

Phyllum: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Solanales

Family: Solanaceae

Genus: Datura

Species: Datura metel L.

Botanical Description

Habit: A robust herb or undershrub, up to 2 m tall, glabrous or minutely pubescent, branches green or purplish, spreading, often somewhat zigzag, green or tinged red to almost black.

Leaves: Leaves 8-17 x 4-12 cm, ovate to angular or broad-ovate, entire, sinuate or deeply toothed, acute to acuminate, membranous, base oblique, petioles 5-10 cm long.

Flowers: Flowers axillary, solitary, pedicels 1-2 cm long. Calyx 3-8 cm long, tubular, glabrous or minutely hairy, unequally divided at the apex, lobes 0.5-1.0 cm long, free, ovate-triangular, acute to acuminate.Corolla 1-7 cm long, funnel-shaped,limb 5-8 cm across, creamy-white or purplish or streaked with red or mauve, glabrous or minutely hairy, lobes usually 5; rarely 6 or more, ovale, acuminate or cuspidate, occasionally with double form (corolla within corolla) or very rarely triple.

Androecium: Filaments much longer than anthers, upper half glabrous, lower half hairy, anthers oblong.

Gynoecium: Ovary superior, glabrous, styles filiform, as long as filaments, glabrous, stigmas swollen, 2-lobed.

Fruits: Fruit a globular capsule, deflexed when mature, with numerous conical tubercles of approximately equal length, tubercles 0.3-0.5 cm or more long, fruit base adorned with a 0.5 cm or broader collar of the persisting calyx.

Seeds: Seeds 0.4-0.5 cm long, many, compressed, roughly triangular, brown,rugose.

Economic Importance:Dried leaves of Datura metel are traditionally used as ‘asthma cigarettes’ to relieve asthma.