My Datura Has Grown Up

You may recall that this spring, frustrated by my attempts to grow datura from seed, I bought a seedling up at Flagstaff Native Plant & Seed. Pragmatic, yes. Nonetheless, a defeat -- after all, the plant grows wild in my immediate neighborhood and I've collected plenty of seed over the years. In any event, the seedling has prospered and is now a largish plant. Big enough to produce one blossom this summer and possibly many more in the years ahead.

Here is the large bud, looking like a candlestick.

The blossom has emerged and is thinking of uncoiling.

I waited patiently the evening that the flower was to open; there was only a small amount of movement. I had once before caught a datura blossom as it suddenly sprang open at dusk. A wonderful sight -- and wonderful scent, as well, like many night blooming plants. This particular night, I lost patience, figuring that I could photograph the open flower the next morning.

Hah! No such luck -- in the morning, the blossom was spent!

I had to make do with another plant just up the street from me -- a plant that has grown wild by the roadside for several years, with neither watering nor other TLC.

Developing seed pods on the nearby plant; my own datura has one healthy seed pod. Easy to see why the name thorn apple. Other names for the plant include jimson weed, gypsum weed, loco weed, jamestown weed, angel's trumpet, devil's trumpet, devil's snare, according to Wikipedia. It is found in almost every state and belongs to the solanaceae family, which includes everything from belladonna to tomatoes, potatoes, chilis, tobacco and deadly nightshade.

BTW, I found this reproduction from Georgia O'Keefe among my pictures. Not only beautiful, the datura is seductively dangerous. "Most parts of the plant contain atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine. It has a long history of [medicinal and magical] use both in S. America and Europe and is known for causing delerious states and poisonings in uninformed users," notes the Erowid Organization, whose pages are concerned with hallucinogenic plants. There is, of course, also an association of fanciers and breeders, the American Brugmansia & Datura Society. For the record, brugmansia is the name given to tree daturas, native to South America.

Garden Wildflowers

In case you haven't already guessed, I'm an enthusiast for growing native wild flowers in local gardens. It can be a problem obtaining them, however. At this time of year, Watters carries some natives, primarily the shrubbier specimens, but also some penstemons and other flowering plants.

For the best selection of high country wild flowers, however, drive up I-17 to Flagstaff Native Plant and Seed. Most of the plants they carry will survive at our lower elevation (5200 ft. vs. Flag's 7000.)


A good native for the Prescott landscape is bear grass, which really should take the place of pampas grass all over town. It's in bloom right now among the granites out Iron Springs Road (on the right hand side as you head out of town), along western- most Gurley, and up Coronado. This plant was photographed by a friend; it is a feature of his garden.

The seed heads are even showier than the flowers. Besides, if our world comes to an end, you could always grind the seeds into a flour and weave baskets or shoes from the leaves, Indian-style.

And don't worry about bear grass taking over. It will, but the process takes some 50 or so year for this slow growing plant.


The commercial nursery folk have finally discovered just how spectacular native milkweed plants can be. The butterfly weed above is growing out of the rocks near Gurley Place. I have one, too, which is happy on my hillside.

This is the first of the asclepias to be gentrified (note that you'll never see the term "milkweed" in a garden catalog -- unless it is a highly specialized offering for butterfly fanciers!) The butterfly weeds in these parts are a rich buttery yellow. In the Midwest, they are more of a red orange.

Back in the Midwest many years ago, I tamed not only the Chicago- namesake wild onion, but also a common milkweed, which has huge leaves and a very pretty ball of dusty pink flowerettes. That was the year I got a ticket from an officious city minion for having broken the weed ordinance!

In these parts, you'll find butterfly weed out at Granite Basin Lake, uphill from the concrete picnic tables ... along Iron Springs Road (I saw one today) ... and, if you're up to a trip, the very very best displays of all are along the West Fork trail in Oak Creek Canyon.

Among other milkweeds in these parts are antelope horns and an interesting vining milkweed, which I first saw along the Agua Fria River at Badger Springs.


You wouldn't think that anything as completely adapted to to the high desert as penstemon barbatus would be so happy potted and watered, but this plant of mine has prospered. It is one of two red penstemons found in the Prescott area -- and one of eight penstemon varieties I've located growing wild between the Bradshaws and the Upper Verde River. But more about these wonderful humming bird flowers later, when I have the necessary time and references.!

Prescott Is a Hollyhock Kind of Town

"Do you know where I could get seed for single hollyhocks?" The clerk, toting up my overly ambitious purchases at Flagstaff Native Plants last summer, added, "I've had several inquiries lately."

"Not in commercial quanitities." I told her I had a small collection of seed at home which had started gardens in Texas and a couple of Arizona towns, as well. Seed I had gathered walking the older neighborhoods of Prescott where you can't miss the hollyhocks at this time of year.

What I didn't know at the time was that finally a commercial seed company was again packaging single hollyhock seed. None other than Burpee, the gold standard for gardeners.

And available at Wal-Mart, at that.

For years, the only plants or seeds available commercially have been the overly bred, fancy, fluffy doubles. Attributable, no doubt, to an American mind-set that goes for giant radishes and "blossoms as big as saucers."


Interest in the old-fashioned kind of flower might be attributed to the current fad of down-home chic that we suffer as comfortable old-time Western towns are repurposed (suitable, that horrid word!) into boutique mountain towns.

But in my better moments, I credit it to the plants' beauty. After all, what other flower can get made into a pretty little doll so easily?

If there were to be a vote, I'd choose the hollyhock as Prescott's civic flower! It's settled in and happy in our climate -- and is especially suited to the local Victorians, such as the Grove studio (above) on, yes, Grove St. or the buildings on the Sharlot Hall grounds.

You'll find old-fashioned single hollyhocks growing all around the older section of town. I suspect the reason is that over on Grove St., down on Granite, in many alleys and elsewhere, the hollyhocks are the next thing to wild.


(Don't forget, there are native Arizona plants that are close cousins to the hollyhock. Bright apricot to orange globe mallows that grace the roadsides from Prescott all the way down to The Valley. And at higher elevations, near permanent water sources, delicate pink checker mallows.)

Hollyhocks are amazingly persistent. That thriving plant above is in among other species dried up because the drip system hasn't been delivering. The plant below comes up every year right at the street on Park Avenue. (This year of serious drought is the first time I've seen it give up completely. The leaves are brown and on their way to dust.)

Even when the soil covers our basic granite only a couple of inches deep, the hollyhocks really try! I've got a plant, several years old, which has found (or made) a crack in the stone; it comes up every year, may get as high as 8 inches, opens a blossom or two and produces a single seed pod before the frost nips it. There's one median strip on west Gurley where the property owner keeps mowing; when I last counted, there were 27 hollyhock plants trying their damndest to grow up. Most have been there several years.


Even the formerly Valley National, formerly BankOne, now Chase bank on Gurley has its own hollyhock (below), if the maintenance people don't discover it before it blooms!

And I noticed that down along the bank of Granite Creek at the mural below the Bank of America, there are a couple of hollyhocks. I think you can thank me -- I made a point of scattering seeds down there several years in a row. Or was it columbine seeds?


Even if the more stiff-necked tidiers manage to corral all the downtown hollyhocks and make them behave, there are still some more-laid-back business folk who don't mind if a flower or two (or several) jump the bounds of the planter and make themselves comfortable right at the sidewalk. Long may they live and prosper.