Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Datura innoxia? stramonium? metel? meteloides?, 1 by

wrote:

If we consider, that the name D. meteloides became illegal in the fifties - i think - because no botanist ever found a plant, that matched the fruit of the drawing, I put that on a test some years ago. I grew out all speciments I had at hand of D. inoxia, D. meteloides and D. wrightii to look for such a fruit. I grouped the plants and grew each group under different kind of ecological pressures (water deficit, nutrition deficit, very hot, cool shade).

Well, normally these specimens would have formed fully normal seedpods, but under these experiments I discovered soething. Some of the pannts still grew a certain percentage normal pods, while other pods was either missing the calyx remains under the fruits or that the calyxes remained intact and covered the fruits.

A single specimen would under severe water stress develop both grrowing habit, leafshape (the rare with entire leaf edges) and esp. the peculiar looking fruits elsewhere only known from De Candolles drawing.

The botanists of today don`t recognize the species D. meteloides. Well, after the experiments I do. I saw it with my own eyes, smelled the flowers and my hands was stung by its spiny fruits.

Here are a comparative picture from that experiment. :)