Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Datura stramonium
Common name
Common thornapple, Thorn apple
Family
Solanaceae
Where found
Stream banks, roadsides, and disturbed sites. Western Slopes, tableands, ACT, and Sydney area. Sporadic elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced annual herb to 1.5 m tall. Seed cases with many sharp spines. Plant smells unpleasant. Stems hairless or sparsely hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, 6-36 cm long, 40-200 mm wide, hairless or sparsely hairy, margins coarsely and irregularly toothed or lobed, sometimes wavy, tips pointed. Flowers white or pale mauve, 55-100 mm long, tubular, with five lobes, the lobes ending in a slender point about 10 mm long. Flowers single. Flowers Summer to Autumn. Seed cases oval, 2–4.5 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm diameter, erect; spines 100–200, slender, variable in length, the longest < 2 cm long. Seeds poisonous.
Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Datura~stramonium (accessed 4 May 2021)
Online fact sheet published by the South Australian Herbarium: http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/efsa/lucid/Solanaceae/Solanaceae%20species/key/Australian%20Solanaceae%20species/Media/Html/Datura_stramonium.htm (accessed 4 May 2021)
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