Thorn apple
Datura stramonium
Family · Solanaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The white trumpet that opens at dusk on waste ground, followed by a spiny capsule. Everything about it is toxic, and serious poisonings in Portugal almost always come from recreational use.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Town and roadside
Also known asjimsonweed, devil's snare
How to tell it
A white trumpet flower 6 to 10 cm long, with a sickly smell. A walnut-sized green fruit covered in stiff spines, splitting into four. Large leaves with irregular margins and an unpleasant smell.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. The tropane alkaloids it contains cause delirium, tachycardia and death, and the concentration varies so much between plants that there is no predictable dose. That is why this sheet exists.