You remember that Solanum nigrum post?
Strangely enough each time I am shooting a psychoactive plant some locals speak to me.
This here is Datura stramonium (Stechapfel, Angel's trumpet) and there's an almost unnaturally big population right in the centre of the town, on one of those wastelands we call 'Gstettn' here. The plant is not native but has become native since the 16th century - its origins are in Mexico.
So anyway, I'm standing there taking some shots (this usually takes some time, in this case I guess at least ten minutes but probably longer - I like to try different angles, light is important, and so on) - when an older women asks me wether this is Datura. Which is quite untypical, usually people do not refer to plants with their Latin names, except if they're gardeners (or biologists) (or specialists in psychoactive plants).
Well, she wasn't that old really, probably just the right age for a girl of the Flower Power generation. Anyway, she's asking me now wether this is Datura, and then she tells me that she thought that someone seems to be pissing in public again without even bothering to hide behind a bush (this 'someone' of course being me) (and me of course was not doing any pissing at all), until she discovered that this guy is photographing those plants which, in her opinion, look very much like Datura.
Which they do of course because they are Datura, as I confirmed. The following exchange just was about how such an extensive growth of this plant really is very much unusual and that she is highly suspicious that someone planted them there on purpose for use as a drug. I said I had the same suspicion and that probably someone might be harvesting them for food which seems to have been a mistake as she tells me that they're smoked, not eaten. (Which only confirms that I am neither the one who planted them nor will I be the one who's smoking them.) And she even goes on that Datura is very bad for your health and if only it could be 'proper' grass (you know what I mean, that kind of grass) - so if it were proper grass then she could understand it. (That is, planting that stuff.)
As you see, I did learn plenty today. For example that probably quite some people know psychoactive plants by their Latin name, either because they've tried them or because they know from people who did. And that not anybody using Latin name necessarily is a biologists. And also that the Flower Power generation prefers grass over Datura.
Well, I prefer beer over all that other stuff, consumed in moderate quantities. ;-)
