Hello! My husband and I bought a house in Lake in the Hills, Illinois spring of last year. there are a couple of beds on the property that the prior owner had planted with perennials. we have mostly left them alone, we are new to gardening so we figured we’d see what she had planted that would come back. The bed that this plant is in is entirely lily of the valley. For the first part of the summer, it looked like that’s what all that was in there. I think sometime in July, we started to notice that there was a larger plant growing in the shaded area in the corner of that bed. Google ID seems to think it’s datura. It feels like a strange choice, it looks very out of place. This woman seemed pretty meticulous about her gardening. She even had warranties on some of the bushes so that we could get them replaced if they didn’t come back in the spring. Anyways, thanks for the help!
by BattyAbby
5 Comments
Datura genus for sure… Wear gloves!
Definitely a datura species
Datura is an excellent self-seeder. The former owner probably either had some planted in that bed years ago and seedlings are still coming up every year, or she had some planted nearby and a stray seed got into this bed. Datura seed pods are really neat, in that when they’re fully matured, they pop open to release their seeds.
Your plant is either D. wrightii or D. innoxia. They are safe to touch, and it’s safe to smell the flowers. Datura flowers open at night and smell heavenly. They attract interesting nighttime pollinators (hawkmoths) too. People usually freak out about this plant, but it’s no more dangerous than some of the other plants people commonly put in their gardens or use in landscaping (foxglove, oleander, castor bean, etc). As long as no one is putting it in their mouth, there’s no danger.
I love Datura but I only have it in the front yard so my dogs can’t get to it. It’s not worth taking a chance with it IMHO. Also FYI it spreads like crazy. I cut most of the seed pods off this year because last spring I ended up pulling hundreds and hundreds of seedlings that came up.
Datura. Highly poisonous. Notoriously difficult to eradicate. More lives than a cat. Left alone it will eventually take over your yard and choke off other plants. Grows literally anywhere. Hot, cold, dry, wet,… almost indestructible. Good luck.