{"id":4373,"date":"2010-11-14T23:38:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T04:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=4373"},"modified":"2017-07-17T15:32:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T15:32:32","slug":"datura-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/plant-highlights\/datura-a-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Datura, a Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to rains through July this year, a lot of self sown Datura inoxia (I think) sprouted. Most of these were seedlings from plants passed along from Diana at Sharing Nature’s Garden<\/a>. One of the plants she gave me survived two winters in the ground. It didn’t even die back in the warm winter of 2008\/9. However, it froze to the ground in the severe freeze of January 2010. I wasn’t too disappointed because it had sown plenty of seed. I knew there would be no shortage of plants this summer. I was very surprised, though, when it came back from its roots.<\/p>\n

In October, I was watering when I noticed a lovely lemon scent. I followed my nose to this datura. None of the other datura flowers had a scent. I looked more carefully and noticed that the flowers on this one plant were larger and that the petals curved back at the lip.
\n\"datura\"
2010-10-04. The lemon-scented flower.<\/i><\/p>\n

The flowers on the other datura plants did not open as fully and the petals didn’t curl back as much.
\n\"datura\"
2010-10-04. The unscented flower.<\/i><\/p>\n

The leaves were different, too. The leaves of the scented datura were much wider at the base. The leaves of the unscented datura were more lanceolate.<\/p>\n

As the seedpods formed, I could see more differences.
\n\"datura\"<\/p>\n

The seeds from the scented plant were fat, round globes. When they split to drop their seeds, the bottom fell out of the globe.
\n\"datura\"<\/p>\n

The pods from the unscented plant were more elongated, more egg-shaped. When they split to drop their seeds, the four sides curled back like a banana skin.
\n\"datura\"<\/p>\n

The seeds inside differed as well. The seeds from the unscented flowers (left) were smaller and slightly darker brown than the seeds from the lemon scented flowers (right).
\n\"datura\"<\/p>\n

I’m not that surprised to discover a lemon-scented datura in my garden. Ten years ago I bought seeds for Datura metel ‘Belle Blanche’ because it was described as having the scent of lemon chiffon pie.<\/p>\n

Note: Wikipedia says that Datura metel has fruits that are “knobby, not spiny”. Both of these seedpods look pretty spiny to me. So I’m still not sure I can tell the difference between Datura inoxia and Datura metel. And I don’t know where Datura meteloides comes into it. But at least I can see the difference between these two datura in my garden. If my eyes fail me, the nose knows.<\/p>\n

Update: March 1, 2011<\/h3>\n

\nThe lemon-scented datura is sprouting back from its roots after freezing to the ground during Austin’s two hard freezes in February 2011.\n<\/p>\n

Update: April 5, 2011<\/h3>\n

\nFirst flower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"datura\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[39,139,432,480],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5150,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions\/5150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}