Datura metel
Considering its allegedly recent introduction to the Old World from the New, beginning in the sixteenth century, "Datura metel" has indeed been integrated with remarkable thoroughness into the religious and magical practices of Asia and Africa as an intoxicant and entheogen: Schultes and Hofmann later devote much of a chapter in their 1980 work " Plants of the Gods" on the use of "Datura" as a hallucinogen to Chinese, Indian and African practices involving the use of "Datura metel" as diverse as its employment in Taoist magic, in the worship of the Hindu deity Shiva and in the magical rites of the Eritrean Kunama people. They quote the oft-repeated idea that the plant is to be equated with the herb "Jouz-mathal" (= "metel-nut"), described in the eleventh-century writings of Persian polymath Avicenna (drawing in turn upon the work of Dioscorides), and thus has an Old World pedigree predating Columbus's arrival in the New. It is certainly the case that "D. metel" is not one of the species mentioned as being used in the ancient Datura cults of the southwestern U.S.A. and Mexico - a result possibly of its lacking the large, tuberous roots of the desert-adapted "Datura" species. A great deal of work undoubtedly still remains to be done on the unraveling of the early history and folklore of the plant and its wide dissemination in lands far from its place of origin.