According to Peter T. Furst, “Datura, toloache from the Nahuatl toloatzin, in Mexico and also in Indian California, was, and in many places still is, the ritual intoxicant of choice among native peoples of the Southwest and northwestern Mexico, including the Tepehuan.” Also called Mexican Thorn Apple, this plant was used by the Aztecs (Mexica) to reduce fever, by the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) to fortify fermented drinks and by the Yaqui (Yoeme) to produce a visionary state. 

This sacred plant is associated with numerous Indigenous myths. For example, the authors of Plants of the Gods, Schultes and Hofmann, recount the Zuñi Indian story about the divine origin of Datura in which a brother and sister who knew too much about ghosts and the hidden things of the world and, consequently, offended the Divine Ones, who banished them forever.

The Datura flowers appeared where the two descended into the earth. 

The blooms were exactly the same as the ones with which the brother and sister would adorn themselves on each side of their heads when they used to visit the outer world.

Now that it is possible to include a more ample selection of confocal microscope images for the website, it is clear that some species really seem more “photogenic” than others. Datura really is a star, perhaps attributable in part to the fact that it was growing in Becky Harblin’s garden in upstate New York and was not one of the species that had to be transported from afar. A fresher specimen would not be possible! Especially notable are the grains of pink-tinted pollen and the striated textures of the vascular tissue in which the stomata are embedded. When botanical structures cede to the purely abstract dimension of Microcosmic Phytoformalism as they do in many of the Datura images here, these perfectly natural shapes that we have documented are every bit as interesting to contemplate aesthetically as the visual expression produced by professional artists. 

Guillermo Benítez, from the Department of Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy, at the University of Granada led a team of Spanish and Mexican scientists in a study of the genus Datura from what the researchers call “an ethnobotanical perspective at the interface of medical and illicit uses.” The article, published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2018, highlights “historical knowledge from post-colonial American Codices [e.g. the Badianus manuscript and Florentine Codex] and medieval texts” and also discusses “Datura’s current social emergency as a drug of recreation and leisure, as well as its link to crimes of sexual abuse” due to the “incapacitating” and “amnesia-producing properties” of its alkaloids, something that the authors believe is of “maximum relevance in the field of forensic botany and toxicology.” Table 2 of the study is an exhaustive list of Datura’s ethnobotanical medicinal uses in Mexico in Spain by species. The researchers also reviewed cases of poisoning related to Datura plants and found that in Mexico “the folkloric substance in traditional shamanic medicine” and love potions taken voluntarily were a source of intoxication. In Spain, Datura is considered an emerging drug linked to both recreational use and an increasing number of crimes against sexual freedom, specifically as “a substance used in cases of chemical submission for sexual purposes.”  The scientists believe that further research regarding “the ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological knowledge about these plants” could produce “an advance in the medical research and in the standardization of safer protocols” as well as a reduction in “severe cases of intoxication.” The article also includes an extensive bibliography.

Researchers led by Meenakshi Sharma from the Department of Chemistry at Ranchi University in India conducted a review in 2021 “to summarize the phytochemical composition and pharmacological and toxicological aspects of the plant Datura.”  The scientists cite numerous studies documenting the medicinal efficacy of Datura as possessing “antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anti-asthmatic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic, insecticidal, cytotoxic, wound healing, and neurological activities.” Rich in the tropane alkaloids scopolamine, hyoscyamine and atropine, Datura is also used for “mystic and religious purposes,” and as a means to achieve a “hallucinogenic experience” that can produce toxic, extremely harmful adverse effects such as “fever, dry skin, dry mouth, headache, hallucinations, convulsions, rapid and weak pulse, acute confusion, delirium, tachycardia, coma, and death.” These same powerful alkaloids, as muscarinic antagonists, can also be used to cure Parkinson´s disease and as a therapy for asthma symptoms through the plant’s bronchodilating effects when its leaves are smoked. In their conclusion, the authors highlight Datura’s “use in ayurvedic medicine for the treatment of wounds, inflammation, bruises and swellings, sciatica, ulcers, rheumatism, asthma, bronchitis, and body ache” and reiterate how the plant’s “toxic effects generally conceal its medicinal effects.”