Angel Trumpets

A few moments spent photographing the lovely Angel Trumpet flowers in our yard lead to a surprising little discovery.   Hubby and I purchased a single plant a few years ago at a small greenhouse near us.  Neither of us had seen one before and thought it was so lovely that we had to have it.  It grew well the first year, even in our sandy and poor soil, and yielded many prickly seed pods which we harvested to plant the following year.  Since then, the plant has spread and grown back on its own, despite being an annual, and despite our wicked winter temps.  It's hardy and beautiful.

 It's one of my favorite photographic subjects, and out of curiosity I looked it up and found that this lovely and prolific plant goes by the name of Datura, Jimson Weed, and Moonflower, and is poisonous and hallucinogenic.  All parts of it.  Yikes. 

I have small children at home and though they've never bothered with the plant, I can't help but wonder if we should pull them.  To put thing in perspective though, we have a lot of poisonous plants around here... and dangerous things like bears and whatnot (it is the woods after all) so I'm not quite in panic mode. 
It does make me wonder if this hallucinogenic quality is why the little green frogs love to hang out on it so much...

Clearly this little couple find them rather moving.

You may recognize that Georgia O'Keeffe did a number of paintings of these plants. 

Poisonous or not, they are beautiful though, aren't they?

Wordless Wednesday

Unexpected

Unexpected beauty. This morning I awoke to find a singular white bloom on a rogue angel trumpet plant tucked in a potted plant in our dining room. The seeds had wandered there either by chance or by toddler, not sure which. We noticed a new plant growing in the pot and didn't give it much thought as weeds commonly pop up in our greenery (we set them outside whenever the weather permits and they gather hitchhikers), and then this morning there she was, a beauty in white. A very fine way to start the day.