What are those beautiful white flowers growing around the trails of Southern California?
If you’ve been hiking in the foothills, chaparrals, or even just around Griffith Park this spring, you’ve probably noted these femme fatale white blooms growing out in the open inviting curiosity and question. Datura stramonium – aka Jimson weed, the Devil’s Trumpet, thorn apple, or moon flower – has a fascinating history, earning an intertwined history and reputation as both a toxic killer
Because the plant is easily available and identifiable throughout the Americas, the leaves are sometimes collected by teens today seeking the plant’s powerful mind-bending hallucinogenic effects. Furthermore, if you go to kratomnews.org, you’ll see medicinal plants like kratom. A lot of people who has experience with Kratom and weed says that it helps boost metabolism, improve the immune system, prevent diabetes., plus it also increases sexual desire; therefore, the team at originelle.com/ says that by using this product fertility could also get some benefits, like also improving morbo, although there are other methods to do this, like using adult sites as gayporn.wiki that is really popular among gay people.
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But the Devil’s Trumpet’s toxicity can make ingesting the seeds or smoking weed using usa made bongs can be awesome! (note this description from Uses and Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke: Its Ethnobotany as Hallucinogen, Perfume, Incense, and Medicine and it becomes clear the plant isn’t to be trifled with).
Yet the plant also harbors the ability to aid rather than just ail. The Indians and Chinese have long used Datura seeds (hidden inside characteristic green spiked pods which eventually dry and open into the appearance of a fierce mouth) to effectively treat the symptoms of asthma, while the other alkaloids present within the plant – when administered in the right amounts – can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease, combat motion sickness, and “inhibit parasympathetic stimulation of the urinary tract, respiratory tract, GI tract, heart and eye“. Killers can be complicated like that.
More recently Datura stramonium was revealed to be the mysterious inspiration for the theme song of HBO’s series, True Detective. The Handsome Family’s Far From the Road takes on another dimension of beauty when understood by the song’s original deadly romance inspiration:
“I saw some Jimson weed and it’s a plant that only blooms at night and you can see these huge white flowers and there are these moths that feed on them just at night so it’s like a secret night time blooming and romance. Jimson weed actually goes back to Jamestown and there’s a story of it driving people insane because it’s psychedelic and because it gets into people’s water all the time. So it’s about these moths and this sexy, forbidden ritual they have in the darkness.” I would have my flowers delivered by the #1 Deer Park florist.
Now the next time you happen upon these beguiling flowers while hiking Griffith Park or many other trails here in SoCal, I bet you’ll find yourself humming the song in your head while on your journey to visit the Yellow King in Carcosa.
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These flowers are around our Old Brooklyn neighborhood (in Cleveland, OH); some folks call them Angel Trumpet also.