Angel's Trumpets & Thornapples
By Rand B. Lee

Divinely scented and beautiful in flower, plants in the genera Brugmansia and Datura are also steeped in legend and lore.

Angel’s trumpets—members of the genera Brugmansia and Datura—are the sexiest members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), an interesting and diverse group that includes among its ranks food plants such as peppers (Capsicum spp.), tomatoes (Lycopersicon spp.), and potatoes (Solanum spp.); plants with medicinal or pharmaceutical characteristics such as tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) and belladonna (Atropa belladona); and ornamentals such as petunias, chalice vine (Solandra spp.), and Chinese lantern (Physalis alkekengi).

The soft, voluptuous textures, exuberant growth, and lusciously night-fragrant flowers of angel’s trumpets make them stand-outs in the garden and as house plants. They are also extremely dangerous, when ingested, to humans and livestock (for more on this, see the article “Dangerously Pretty,” page 36). Angel’s trumpets do not belong in gardens frequented by toddlers, vegetation-noshing pets, or dimwits seeking what they imagine will be a cheap high. The rest of us may indulge ourselves, however, for nothing under the moon is as magnificent as a garden of angel’s trumpets in full, intoxicating bloom.

BRUGMANSIA OR DATURA?

Originally all angel’s trumpets were classified in the genus Datura. Now they are divided into two groups that I distinguish by thinking of them as the little, sprawly, upward-facing ones and the big, honking, dangly ones.

For the more technically minded, daturas are generally lax, sprawling herbaceous annuals or tender perennials with upward-facing flowers and prickly seed pods that are dehiscent (they split open when ripe), while brugmansias tend to be taller and more upright, semi-woody plants with drooping flowers and generally smoother seed pods that remain intact at maturity.

Plants now included under the umbrella of Brugmansia are definitely native to the Americas, but botanists disagree over where daturas originated. Current opinion is that they also probably evolved in the New World, because the greatest variety of wild species occurs in Mexico and Central America. Others suggest that some species, at least, arose in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, arriving in Europe in the Middle Ages by way of Africa and Asia. Certainly this would explain the very well documented presence of Datura in the Old World centuries before Europeans set foot in the Americas.

BRUGMANSIAS

Brugmansias—“brugs” to aficionados—are the more fashionable and respectable of the two genera. These are the big, tropical, woody, evergreen, shrubby or treelike angel’s trumpets, about six species in all. Most are root-hardy, with protection, to about USDA Zone 8, but their foliage and flowers are very sensitive to frost and they will only thrive growing outdoors year-round in Zones 10 and above. In temperate regions, most gardeners grow them in containers that can be moved inside for the winter (see sidebar, page 29). They are generally very heat tolerant (AHS Zones 12–1) as long as they receive adequate watering.

In cultivation, most species and hybrids top out at anywhere from six to 15 feet tall by eight feet in diameter (some of the taller species grow to 30 feet in the wild). Their leaves are large and dark green; most are smooth, but a few are covered in downy hairs. The seed pods tend to be egg-shaped or elongated.

The eight- to 12-inch-long flowers, which dangle from their branch-ends, come in a broad spectrum of colors from white to red. They tend to deepen in color as they age, so that in many cultivars several shades are displayed on the plant simultaneously. Brugmansias tend to bloom in monthly flushes, followed by three- to six-week resting periods. The blossoms open at night and most release a fragrance that is described as jasminelike with an undertone of lemon. The exception is Brugmansia sanguinea, which, like most of nature’s red bloomers, relies on color rather than scent to attract pollinators.

One of the largest brugmansia groups is B. 5candida, which includes both natural and contrived hybrids of B. aurea and B. versicolor. Generally speaking, these hybrids get six to 15 feet tall and five to eight feet wide, bearing long, toothed or smooth, wavy-edged leaves and foot-long, pendulous, very fragrant, white, soft yellow, or pink flowers, each with winged spurs accenting its flared mouth. The flowers come in singles, doubles, and triples.

Brugmansia 5cubensis is a small group that includes some of the most decorative brugmansia hybrids; their forebears are B. aurea, B. suaveolens, and B. versicolor. Among the standouts in this group are ‘Charles Grimaldi’ and ‘Dr. Seuss’. The former grows to six feet, bearing numerous, moderately fragrant, strongly recurved, luminous bright yellow flowers aging to orange. A moderate grower, it is great for containers. ‘Dr. Seuss’ is a vigorous grower bearing many large, pendant, highly perfumed, pale pink flowers shading to creamy yellow at the throat. “This is the one brugmansia to have if you can only have one,” says Earl Mathews of Valley Grow Nursery (see “Sources,” page 31). “It has a very intense and wonderful fragrance, is very easy to root and grow, grows very large, and blooms heavy and often.”

Another large hybrid group is Brugmansia 5insignis, which involves crosses between B. suaveolens and B. versicolor. These plants tend to stand four to six feet tall in containers and bear 10- to 16-inch-long, dangling flowers with little or no petal recurve, followed by elongated pods that resemble okra fruits. The best of the pink-flowered cultivars is probably ‘Frosty Pink’, a natural hybrid considered one of the fastest and easiest brugs to grow. It bears huge, flaring blooms that open yellow, maturing to white and silvery rose.

Blooming in the yellow to orange range are ‘Jamaica Yellow’, which bears six- to nine-inch lemon-colored flowers that do not fade to orange; ‘Jean Pasco’, which bears numerous 10- to 12-inch, candy-scented, golden yellow blooms, rarely edged orange (a natural hybrid from Ecuador, it is one of the first to bloom in spring outdoors in warm climates); and ‘Orange’, which bears beautiful golden orange trumpets. Notable among the whites is ‘Frosty White Falcon’, which bears immense flowers covered in minute hairs.

DATURAS

Datura contains the herbaceous tender perennial or hardy annual angel’s trumpets, sometimes called thornapples. While datura plants are sensitive to frost, Wayne Winterrowd points out in his book, Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens (Random House, 2004), that datura seed “is surprisingly winter-hardy, so that several species are naturalized in Europe and in North America as far north as [USDA] Zone 5.” There are eight to 15 species in all, depending on which reference you consult, but, unlike the brugmansias, they have not attracted much attention from hybridizers.

One reason for this, perhaps, is that several daturas have proven weedy in temperate to tropical countries worldwide, where they are reviled as poisoners of livestock and poultry. Prejudice against daturas may also relate to their long use as ritual and medicinal plants in non-Christian societies, which earned them such common names as herbe aux sorciers (sorcerers’ herb), concombre-zombi (zombie cucumber), devil’s weed, and devil’s trumpet.

Daturas can stand anywhere from one to five feet tall by two to four feet wide. Their large, grayish-green, alternate leaves are lobed or toothed at the edge, sprouting from rubbery branches. The leaves are hairy and soft to the touch, but give off an unpleasant odor if bruised or crushed.

The funnel- or trumpet-shaped flowers, which emerge from the leaf axils, are night-blooming and intoxicatingly fragrant. And it is not only humans who find the perfume seductive. Most mornings during flowering season, I find stupefied insects sleeping it off deep within the still-open blossoms of my plants.

The color range for datura flowers, which are held more or less upright, is more limited than that for brugs: datura blossoms can come in white, white tinged lilac, or, more rarely, pale yellow. But what they lack in color range they make up for in size and shape. Depending on the species or cultivar, datura trumpets can get four to eight inches long and up to seven inches broad at the mouth, with single, double, triple, and even quadruple layers of petals.

The datura best known in Europe and Asia is D. metel. It is a fast growing, downy, two- to six-foot-tall annual with large, dark green leaves. It bears four- to eight-inch-long, erect, single to double, delightfully fragrant white flowers, sometimes tinged lavender or pale yellow. The flowers are followed by round, knobby or spiny pods. Drought tolerant, frost resistant, and thriving in full sun and deep, well-drained rich soil, D. metel is the species most often grown in the United States as a house plant, blooming continually in pots at only two to three feet tall.
There are a number of interesting color forms.


Photo credits: Brugmansia ‘Frosty Pink’ by Saxon Holt; Datura metel ‘Double Yellow’ by David Cavagnaro.
 

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