Re: datura questions
At 09:14 PM 8/24/1999 -0400, you wrote:
>Help me out here. I have 'datura' growing in my garden as a volunteer. It
>gets huge, as big as pokeweed and is 'covered' with trumpet like flowers
>and eventually spiked pods, much like castor bean. It is my understanding
>that this is 'loco weed' and is highly toxic. (If you handle the stems, a
>rather unpleasant odor remains on your hands.)
Hmmm, sounds a lot like some sort of Datura species. *grin* While D.
stramonium grows wild in many places, so do most other Datura spp. D.
ferox is, I believe a common weed in europe. Or is that the sw US? I
forget anymore. The "unpleasant" odor is common to most of them, and as
far as I know, they all contain toxic tropane alkaloids. Atropine is
perhaps the best known of these, and has been used medicinally for
centuries, even now still in use in modern medicine. Atropine was once
believed to be a "cure" for poisoning by the fly agaric (Amanita muscara)
but know is thought to probably have killed more patients than saved.
Amanita muscara poisoning is very rarely fatal anyway.
Hyoscamine and scopolamine are two other major tropane alkaloid fractions
of the Datura genera's chemical composition as well. Both were thought to
be responsible for the hallicinogenic (more accurately delerient) effects
of locoweed, devil's weed, devil's trumpets, and the whole host of common
names these plants have. These tropane containing plants of the Datura,
Atropa, Mandragora, and Hyoscamus genera were widely used in the flying
potions of the medieval witches. Scopolamine, as far as I understand, is
now believed to be the major factor in producing these inebriations, with
variations if experienced effect stemming from other relatively minor
quantites of related chemicals.
These tropanes tend to be readily absorbed through the skin, thus the
effectiveness of the flying ointments in inducing a sensation of flight
when applied to certain capillary rich areas of the skin (arm pits, groin,
neck, etc). Also effective are smoke inhalations (datura cigarettes tend
to be the safest form of ingestion, and were used for years as a
bronchodialator for asthma patients, apparently an effective if somewhat
mildly dangerous treatment), eating the plant material, and drinking
decotions of the plant material. The tropane alkaloids are found
throughout the plant in varying concentrations with seeds and seed pods as
well as roots having the highest concentrations, and flowers believed to
have the lowest concentrations.
From season to season, day to day, and hour to hour the levels of alkaloids
in this plant are constantly changing in regards to total percent makeup of
the plant, as well as in relative conentrations to one another. This makes
accurate dosing as a medicine, shamanistic trance inducer, or recreational
drug exceptionally tricky. This does not stop a few young people from
reading a one or two paragraph blurb about in in an encyclopedia from
experimenting with this plant. Every year there are a few across our great
nation who pay for their ignorance with their lives.
This plant most definitely is toxic, with the medicinal and/or delerient
dose very close to the lethal dose. Just as castor beans are poisonous,
just as dumb cane (deffenbachia) is poisonous, so is this plant, and anyone
growing it should be very careful to make sure that it is not accidently or
deliberately ingested by children or mislead adolescents.
As an interesting side note, cocaine and its derivitives are also tropane
alkaloids, but with very different biological activities of course.
Thanks for flying,
Glider
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