After my wild swim with the Blue tits last week, I noticed several plant members of the Witch’s garden growing around the car park. Methinks somebody has done some secret sowing…

(Probably someone whose Mum won’t let them keep it in the house.)

Here’s what I found:

TOBACCO (Nicotiana)

The Tobacco plant is the most socially acceptable ally here. Easily recognised by its trumpet like white flowers, though they can be pink or a few other colours. An old boyfriend of mine grew his own and dried the leaves in the shed. It smelt and tasted awful.

Tobacco grows better in hot climates, which is why we don’t have fields of it growing here in rainy Blighty.

Tobacco has been used by Native Americans as a ceremonial drug for thousands of years. It is traditional to offer tobacco to the spirits when you passed certain rocks or trees, or if you asked someone for help. It connects the living with the dead.

I suspect Native American baccy may be of higher quality than Amber Leaf.

OPIUM POPPY & RED POPPY(Papaver somniferum/ P. rhoeas)

These blowsy flowers manufacture sedative and painkilling compounds. Red Poppy does so in a small way. Opium poppy does so in a big way. Opium poppy flowers can be light pink, hot pink or white. Opium poppy leaves are much larger, turquoise and curled up the stem.

The world’s most powerful painkiller, morphine, is extracted and created from its seed cases. Also the world’s most addictive drug, heroin.

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE/BELLADONNA (Atropa belladonna)

This poisonous plant was historically used by posh Italian ladies to make their eyes look bigger. Deadly Nightshade contains atropine. This is a tropane alkaloid, one of the poisons made by the great Solanaceae (Tomato) family of plants.

Atropine also, in the right dosage, causes one to hallucinate. (Erm, I’m told, and have read.) Cigarettes with Belladonna in were available up til the 1970’s. They were called “Asthmador”. People who wanted to get high would eat one. They would then get arrested for public nudity.

Deadly Nightshade acts on the heart too. It can cause it to slow down or speed up at higher doses. A few of the berries can kill a small or frail person.

JIMSON WEED (Datura stramonium)

I was so excited when I first saw this rare plant growing at my local bathing spot. Another member of the Solanaceae family, it has a venerable and terrible history.

Datura has unforgettable spiny fruits. It has big, soft leaves with beautiful, jaggedly lobed edges. It’s flowers are big creamy white trumpets.

Datura contains high levels of scopolamine, another tropane alkaloid. This is powerful enough to make someone believe they have turned into a crow or a fish. No small amount of poisonings have happened when would-be students of shamanism tried to copy Carlos Castaneda. He made an account of taking Datura and shifting into a crow’s body.

Datura is used for spiritual coming of age purposes by some Californian tribes. It is also used in Africa. Young men or women of the village are taken to a hut in the wilderness and fed nothing but a solution of Datura seed for betweeen 18 and 20 days. They become temporarily insane.

The intention is for them to shed their childish ways (by forgetting their past life, and their name).

Datura is very dangerous. It is very hard to judge what is a correct dose. It has been used by prostitutes to stupify their clients before they robbed them. It was used by the Indian Kali-worshipping cult of ‘Thuggies’. They would feed their victims Datura and then strangle them.

Amazingly, Datura is still legal!

Personally, I’ll stick to a glass of Carnivor Zinfandel. With some yarrow in it.

xx Hedgewitch Kat xx