Datura

By Rachel Nelson

Piece description from the artist

I am an herbalist, and recently I'm been learning about our poisonous neighbors and approaching herbalism with more respect to the spiritual aspects of the practice. In which, I've been asking, can plants hear us? Can they respond? And one night I sat underneath this plant and my boyfriend started talking about a recent school-shooting, and she chose that moment to open the seedpod and drop hundreds of her poison poison seeds into my outstretched hand. It’s unreal, but all the same, the pod split open and confirmed what many witches, herbalists, and indigenous people have know for a long time: the plants talk back.

In India, it is said Datura sprouted from Shiva’s Chest, but she’s been in the Americas so long, I wonder if Shiva sprouted here. Called tolohuaxihuital and toloatzien by the Aztecs, she calmly walked human sacrifices to their deaths. There are 9 different species of Datura, this one is classified as Datura innoxia. She was there at Jamestown and wreaked havoc among unsuspecting colonists who gathered her for food, killing many. This earned her the names Devil’s Trumpet and Jimsonweed. And she was there six feet tall, in a construction wastefield in Vermont on my walk in summer sun, and a tiny two inch datura metal was there to welcome me to my first job site in the city. Today, still used for medicine, divination, and love spells as she has done for ages, she grows in our gardens. watching. listening.