page_title: Datura metel
section_title: Ancient cultivars likely created through pre-Columbian horticultural selection
hierarchical_section_title: Datura metel / Description / Ancient cultivars likely created through pre-Columbian horticultural selection
context_page_description: Datura metel is a shrub-like annual or short-lived, shrubby perennial, commonly known in Europe as Indian Thornapple, Hindu Datura, or Metel and in the U.S.A as Devil's Trumpet. Datura metel is naturalised in all the warmer countries of the world - notably in India, where it is known by the ancient, Sanskrit-derived, Hindi name धतूरा -from which the genus name Datura is derived, and in Tamil as ஊமத்தை. The plant is cultivated worldwide, both as an ornamental and for its medicinal properties, the latter being due to its tropane alkaloid content. Like its hardier and smaller-flowered relative Datura stramonium, it is now of widespread occurrence, although showing a preference for warmer climates and of more attractive appearance. Datura metel was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, but few botanically correct illustrations were made until after the New World was settled. The original home of the plant is now known to have been somewhere in the Americas, probably the Greater Antilles. As late as 1992 it was still being claimed that the plant was "...native probably to the mountainous regions of Pakistan or Afghanistan westward..."
context_section_description: ...it seems clear that D. metel is essentially a collection of cultivars and recent critical authors have found it impossible to recognise a wild type for the species. This view is supported by the tuberculate capsules found in D. metel (as compared with the spinose capsules of other species) and the retention of seeds on the placenta, at least in cultivars 'Fastuosa' and 'Chlorantha'. Both of these traits suggest cultivar selection...The variants of D. metel have been widely grown as ornamentals over a long period of time...There is no evidence that the variants arose from horticultural plant breeding in the Old World...These facts taken together strongly suggest that D. metel was a well-established cultivated species with a range of forms in its place of origin and that these forms arrived ready-made in Europe.
  A cultivar of D. metel with a glossy, purple-black stem (Hindi: काला धतूरा kāla dhatūra - "black datura") has long existed as a garden plant under the obsolete name "Datura fastuosa" (coined originally by Linnaeus and featuring the Latin epithet fastuosa, meaning "haughty" or "proud"). Its flowers normally have a double or triple corolla, each corolla having a deep purple exterior and white or off-white interior. The same double or triple corolla is also a feature of the yellow-flowered cultivar 'Chlorantha'. The purple-flowered 'Fastuosa' has recently been reported to have become naturalised in Israel, where it may yet become as common a roadside weed as the related D innoxia.
  D. metel 'Fastuosa' has in recent times become known under a variety of superfluous cultivar names such as 'Black', 'Blackcurrant Swirl', 'Cornucopaea', 'Double Blackcurrant Swirl', 'Double Purple', and 'Purple Hindu'. It has also received many scientific names which should not be used for a cultivar:
  Datura hummatu var. fastuosa (L.) Bernh.
  Datura fastuosa L.
  Datura metel f. fastuosa (L.) Danert
  Datura metel var. fastuosa (L.) Saff.
  Stramonium fastuosum (L.) Moench
  Likewise the yellow-flowered D. metel 'Chlorantha' has recently acquired such superfluous cultivar names as 'Ballerina Yellow'.
caption: D. metel 'Fastuosa' showing glossy, purple-black stems. Note double (nested) corollas of the type depicted in image of Chola bronze Nataraja in section above.
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