Posting yesterday's pic of the stone bench in Giverny made me a bit wistful for Paris and so I began browsing some of my photos. I realized I had not yet blogged about Datura metel, an annual I photographed at the Jardin du Plantes.
Datura is a lovely annual, reaching about 3' high and at the gardens here it's mixed with Verbena bonariensis. However, it is dreadfully toxic when ingested.
Most species of Datura are toxic and recently when art historian David Bellingham hypothesized that D. stramonium is featured in Botticelli's Venus and Mars. He noted a strange fruit in the hands of an imp surrounding Mars and had it identified by a botanist at Kew Gardens as Datura.
The story at NPR on this is terrific - as it elaborates on the plants toxicology and touches on the debate about whether or not Datura stramonium could have possibly been cultivated in Italy during Botticelli's time (there's some speculation on whether or not the plant is native to the new world and India, or only the new world).
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