Datura innoxia

2. Datura innoxia Mill. (syn.: D. meteloides DC. ex Dun.) (trop. Am.) – A very rare and ephemeral alien. First recorded as a wool alien in the Vesdre valley in 1949 and on waste land in Verviers in 1950. Found on a dump in Louvain-la-Neuve in 1981 and near a grain mill in Izegem in 1996. Also recorded after road works in Sint-Andries-Brugge in 2008 and probably slightly increasing in the past years.

In Belgium Datura innoxia nowadays is the most frequent species of the genus in cultivation (but not hardy) and probably occurs more regularly on dumps.

A very similar species, Datura wrightii Regel, a native of the southern U.S. and Mexico, is widely confused with D. innoxia (Verloove 2008) and possibly also occurs in Belgium. It has an indumentum of very short, appressed or retrorse eglandular hairs (versus long, erect, multicellular, glandular hairs in Datura innoxia).

 Datura innoxia, Izegem (Noordkaai), roadside near grain mill, September 1996, F. Verloove

Datura innoxia, Lauwe (Wevelgem), former clay pit, ground heap, October 2011, F. Verloove

Datura innoxia, Deurne (Antwerpen), waste land, August 2009, E. Molenaar.

 

Herbarium specimen

 


Selected literature:

Lemoine G. (2018) Brèves botaniques de comptoir - Plantes de friches urbaines. Bull. Soc. Bot. N. Fr. 71: 29-30.

Verloove F. (2008) Datura wrightii (Solanaceae), a neglected xenophyte, new to Spain. Bouteloua 4: 37-40.

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith