datura

plural daturas

1. A plant of the genus Datura, known for its trumpet-shaped flowers and poisonous properties.First known use 16th c.

   Datura did grow in Haiti, three species, all of them introduced from the Old World.

   1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 37

   4 more examples

   Garcias ab Horto [...] makes mention of an herb called datura, “which, if it be eaten for twenty-four hours following, takes away all sense of grief, makes them incline to laughter and mirth” [...].

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section 5, member 1, subsection 5

   "Apple of Death" is what the Jungle call thorn-apple or dhatura, the readiest poison in all India.

   1895, Rudyard Kipling, “The King’s Ankus”, in The Second Jungle Book, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 188

   "Suffice it that it was of the datura family which supplies deadly poisons as well as powerful medicines."

   1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

   It was a decoction of datura that wrung the truth from the old woman, by sending her into a trance from which she never recovered.

   2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin, published 2015, page 38