Family: Solanaceae
Common name: Angel’s trumpets, Brazil’s white angel trumpet, Snowy angel’s trumpet, Angel’s star, Trumpet flower, Night bells, Angel’s tears, Dhatura, Ummata,
Angel’s trumpets are beautiful ornamental plants that can adorn a corner of your garden where pets or small children cannot reach them, since all parts of the plant are toxic.
Brugmansia is a genus of 7 flowering plants, all of them characterized by beautiful, translucent, trumpet-like, droopy flowers.
Plant Characteristics
Angel’s Trumpets plants can reach a height of 3-5 meters with large green leaves having wavy edges. They are hardly seen in the wild now, since the species that used to disperse the seeds is now extinct. But they are cultivated in public gardens and parks quite extensively as ornamental plants.
Angel’s trumpets flowers are 25-30 cm long with prominent cup-like sepals, and long tubular flowers in shades of white, greenish, yellow, pink, orange, and red.
A plant in full bloom looks very beautiful with numerous hanging trumpets or chandeliers hanging down from the branches.
Angel’s trumpet plants also produce small berry-like fruits that are 8-10 cm long, containing numerous seeds.
Gardening Tips
Angel Trumpets plants are very easy to grow in home gardens, parks, or landscaped areas since they do not need much care and maintenance.
Plant them in an area with direct or indirect sunlight, water for a few initial months, and then they can pretty much fend for themselves.
These plants can grow quite tall like a large shrub or a small tree. So make sure they have enough space to grow and thrive.
Watering is needed only when the plant is small. Fertilize just before spring to help the plant produce abundant flowers.
Since Angel’s trumpet plants are reasonably resistant to pests, they do not normally need pesticide applications.
These plants are very closely related to Datura metel or Devil’s trumpet and Datura innoxia or Downy thorn-apple, both having similar trumpet-shaped flowers.
Uses of Angel’s Trumpets
These plants are grown as ornamentals because of their large green leaves, and beautiful pendulous flowers.
Angel’s trumpets flowers exude a heady fragrance at night to attract pollinating insects and moths. Hummingbirds are also known to pollinate some species of these plants.
Angel’s Trumpets plants have several alkaloids that can cause hallucinations, confusion, paralysis, heart rhythm disorders, etc. All parts of the plant are toxic and should be handled with a lot of care.
You should wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling the plant, since exposure to the eyes, nose, or mouth can cause adverse reactions.
There have been many instances of accidental consumption causing severe reactions that took hours to subside. In spite of this, Angel’s trumpets plants have many uses in traditional herbal medicine in the treatment of wounds, skin diseases, stomach ailments; and are also used as a sedative.
However, these are not scientifically proven, and no attempts should be made to self-medicate as the toxicity of the plant can cause severe side effects.
Propagation
Propagation is through seeds or stem cuttings, both methods having a good success rate.
Photographed at: Sobha Petunia, Bangalore; Nandi hills, Bangalore
