The datura is a night-blooming plant. The buds are long, furled tubes, growing to a length of nine inches or more before opening. It is easy to determine, which buds will open during an approaching evening; for they are much whiter in appearance than the less-developed buds around them, and the tentacle-like tips of the petals will be slightly uncurled.
As soon as the sun drops below the horizon, an observer will notice movement beginning within the bud. Slowly the tube will unfurl, the tip of it becoming wider and wider, until it is somewhat star-shaped. At the point in time when a slight separation between the folded-together petal edges becomes apparent, there is a sudden releasing motion, the flower instantly springing to a half-opened position. From there the gradual opening continues, until the petals are fully extended, the whitish, lavender-tinged blooms exposing their wide surfaces to the night air.
Blooming takes place periodically during the entire growing season. A seedling will often produce one or two blossoms when it is only a few weeks old, and no more than six inches tall. An extremely large plant may produce several hundred blooms over a period of several nights during each monthly blooming period. Such a plant may have as many as one hundred blossoms opening during a single evening, and is vibrant with motion during the first hour or so after sunset.
The huge, white blossoms become a guiding beacon in the darkness, attracting many nightflying insects to the feast of pollen and nectar within. They also produce a sweet fragrance which is quite noticeable to human nostrils immediately following the opening of a large group of blooms. Such an odor wafting about upon the desert air must be quite detectable for great distances to the
Small moths and beetles light on the blossom's edge, crawling down into its depths to feast, while larger species, particularly the big sphinx moths, hover at the opening, uncurling their long, syphon-like tongues and thrusting them deep into the flower's throat. They quickly flit back and forth from flower to flower and from plant to plant, spreading the pollen from one to another.
When sunrise comes the datura's delicate petals begin to wilt and fade, and by mid-morning they have closed, hanging limp and pale, never to reopen. After a few days the dried-up remains of the florac tube fall away to expose the enlarging fruiting body at the base of the flower. Gradually it swells into a two-inch wide, prickly green ball. After a few weeks, the spiny fruit turns brown and splits, dropping a number of large, dark seeds from the four chambers within.
Scattered about by the wind and the rain, many of these seeds will perish, either drying up in the hot desert sun, or being buried too deeply to germinate. Those few that end up in places where there exists the proper combination of soil, moisture, heat, and light will become the new seedlings which will carry on the species.
Very few of the datura seeds are eaten by rodents or other small vertebrates, for their high content of the dangerous alkaloids atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine would be deadly to many creatures. These seeds, as well as the leaves and roots of the plant, have long been used by native tribes for medicinal purposes, and for their hallucinatory properties in religious ceremonies. A tea is made from the seeds by the Sen Indians of Sonora, Mexico, to be used for deadening the pain of sore throat, while a similar concoction was used by several southwestern Indian
