Datura - Fragrant Handsome

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Datura is a subtropical beauty on your site

Datura, or, in Russian, dope, is always spoken of as a poisonous plant. But, as you know, in a spoon - poison, in a drop - medicine. There are even tips not to plant this culture in flower beds. I want to defend this extraordinary flower.

Datura - belongs to the nightshade family, uniting many known genera. Of the decorative ones, one can name brunfelzia, brugmansia, solandra and others. These are mainly inhabitants of the tropics and subtropics, so they are found in our room culture. Datura suaveolens amazes with a waterfall of drooping aromatic phonographs. In greenhouses, it is an evergreen shrub up to 5 m tall.

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It occurs naturally in forests along river banks at an altitude of 250-1000 m above sea level in the Greater and Lesser Antilles, in Brazil. Blooms profusely and continuously in August-October.

Spring begins there at this time. This plant is not new to Russia. In 1906, gardener J. Mux from the estate of Count Zubov in Oranienbaum presented a beautiful flowering specimen for the exhibition of the Imperial Russian Society of Horticulture.

Datura is a perennial herb, but in our climate, like many of its thermophilic "fellow countrymen", for obvious reasons, it is grown as an annual

Tubular flowers open at night (during the day they sometimes resemble a yellowish candle) and the air is filled with such a delicate delicate aroma that the old Russian word reminds more of magic than of poison.

If there are hot, dry days, the life of one flower is only a day. The size of a flower can reach 20-25 cm, and the bush itself is up to a meter in girth. The fruit is a spiny ball, a bit like a chestnut fruit.

If the seeds are not allowed to set and ripen, flowering becomes continuous. One or two fruits filled with many seeds is enough for planting next year.

I sow datura seeds early, in January-February. They take a long time to sprout. In order not to get upset looking at empty containers, I add 1-2 seeds to tomatoes or peppers.

Seedlings appear when the owner of the pot already has 2-3 pairs of leaves. I carefully transplant the datura into a separate dish. Here the settlers begin to grow by leaps and bounds. The culture is very responsive to fertilizers, but I'm afraid to pamper it. It will be difficult to deliver to the dacha, because large leaves can break during transportation. After frost, I plant them in the ground, on rich soil. During the period of intensive growing season, I feed it with slurry every two weeks.

In the Volgograd region, dope bushes reach up to two meters in diameter. Of course, summer in the Volga region is longer, up to six months, but winter is no better than ours in St. Petersburg, i.e. then snow, then rain, then frost, then thaw, the aboveground part dies, and young shoots grow quickly from the roots in spring. This year I want to cover one bush with a layer of mulch of 10-20 cm, and the second one - to dig out and put in the cellar, I will check for resistance. In a cool room (in a larger container), the plant died, although such recommendations are found in magazines.

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Last year, I grew, in addition to the usual datura, its variety Ballerina. It turned out to be even smaller, up to half a meter. The pink and lilac flowers were also more modest, but the scent … There was nothing to compare it with. The neighbors came in and could not believe that one flower smelled fragrant at a distance of 10 m.

Recently in a seed store I saw two other densely double varieties of datura (without a name). One is yellow and the other is white with a light purple tint, and the edges are purple. The flower in the photo looks very unusual. In two "skirts" there is a skillfully twisted center, like a silk scarf in a jacket pocket.

And again I want to return to the problem of poisoning children and animals in summer cottages. Neither large leaves, nor large flowers, and even more so very thorny fruit hedgehogs do not cause appetite and desire to try them on the tooth. Children are usually attracted to beautiful berries, while datura does not. So decide for yourself: to plant or not plant dope grass in your gardens. I made my choice.