Datura stramonium Thorn Apple I
This American introduction is found scattered all over England and Wales with the heaviest concentration of records in the south of England. There is some D. stramonium in Scotland and little in Ireland.
It is supposedly a bird-seed alien, or arrives via wool or soybean. The field in which this one grew also had Helianthus annuus (Sunflower) as a weed but was supposed to be a crop of potatoes the seeds of which were obtained from Scotland. There were two or three plants last year but about twenty this year and unusually there were a few Datura ferox (Angle's-trumpets) plants just to confuse matters. Since D. stramonium and D. ferox are known to produce fertile hybrids perhaps next year there will be intermediates.
The book describes it as a foetid annual and I can vouch for the smell. Crush the leaves and take a sniff - it is really disgusting - worse than Stachys sylvatica (Hedge Woundwort) and almost as bad as Diplotaxis muralis (Stinkweed). The thorny fruits look like oval horse chestnuts but with short spines of more or less equal length (c.f. Datura ferox) In late Autumn it splits revealing small black seeds inside.
The plants re-appeared for four years and have not re-appeared since (now 2016).
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| Datura stramonium Thorn Apple |
Cheshire Potato field 27th Oct 2005, 17th September 2006 (Flower)
Added on 2nd November 2006, updated 12th December 2008, updated 28th March 2010, corrected 6th Aug 2010, updated Sept 4th 2016