This is handsome when growing in masses, though the flowers are not sufficiently positive in color. It grows from one to three feet high, with a stout, roughish stem, sometimes branching, and leaves which are thin and soft in texture, with a dull surface, but not rough, and more or less toothed. The flowers are nearly an inch long and project from crowded heads of conspicuous purplish bracts, tipped with bristles. The calyx is very hairy inside, the lobes tipped with long bristles, and the corolla is pale pink, lilac, or almost white, not spotted, with a very wide open, yawning mouth, the stamens and the curling tips of the pistil protruding from under the upper lip. This grows on dry plains, especially in sandy soil, as far east as Colorado and Texas, reaching an altitude of six thousand feet, and is strongly aromatic when crushed.
Giant Hyssop—Agastache urticifolia.
Horse-mint—Monarda pectinata.
POTATO FAMILY. Solanaceae.
A large family, widely distributed, most abundant in the tropics. Ours are herbs, shrubs, or vines; leaves alternate, without stipules; flowers perfect, usually regular, in clusters; calyx and corolla usually with five united lobes; stamens on the throat of the corolla, as many as its lobes and alternate with them; ovary superior, two-celled, with a slender style; fruit a berry or capsule, with many seeds. Many important plants, such as Tobacco, Belladonna, Tomato, Egg-plant, Red-pepper, and Potato, belong to this family. Many have a strong odor.
There are several kinds of Datura, widely distributed; ours are chiefly weeds, coarse, tall, branching herbs, with rank odor and narcotic properties; leaves large, toothed or lobed, with leaf-stalks; flowers large, single, erect, with short stalks, in the forks of the stems; calyx with a long tube and five teeth, the lower part remaining in the form of a collar or rim around the base of the capsule; corolla funnel-form, with a plaited border and broad lobes with pointed tips; stamens with very long, threadlike filaments, but not protruding; style threadlike, with a two-lipped stigma; fruit a large, roundish, usually prickly capsule, giving these plants the common name, Thorn-Apple. Datura is the Hindoo name.
Tolguacha, Large-flowered Datura
Datùra meteloìdes
White
Spring, summer
Southwest, Nev., Utah
A handsome and exceedingly conspicuous plant, forming a large clump of rather coarse, dark foliage, adorned with many magnificent flowers. The stout, velvety stems are bronze-color, from two to four feet high, the leaves are dark green, velvety on the under side, and the flowers are sometimes ten inches long, white, tinged with lilac outside, drooping like wet tissue-paper in the heat of the afternoon, and with sweet though heavy scent. I remember seeing a grave in the desert, marked by a wooden cross and separated from a vast waste of sand by clumps of these great white flowers. It grows in valley lands, reaching an altitude of six thousand feet. It is used as a narcotic by the Indians and resembles D. stramònium, Jimson-weed, from Asia, common in the East and found also in the West, but it is far handsomer. D. suaveòlens, Floriponda or Angels' Trumpets, is a large shrub, with very large, pendulous, creamy flowers, and is often cultivated in the old mission gardens in California. The flowers are very fragrant at night.
Tolguacha—Datura meteloides.