Datura

If you will notice in the comment section of the "Unexpected Beauty" post, Candace identified the mystery plant in my front yar...dirt.  It is called 'datura stramonium' which, according to Wikipedia, belongs to the "witches weeds" because most of the plant contains toxic hallucinogens and was used in witches love potions in the days of old.  A wonderful addition to the family home, right?  I also read somewhere online (take this with a grain of salt because I don't remember where I read it) that some kids were experimenting with this plant and ended up crippled and blind.  Yikes!

At first I was thinking that our plant was different because it was lacking the spiky balls of death:

But, as it turns out, this ugly weed-like "fruit" comes after the flower dies and falls off.  DUH!  Sometimes it seems that my brain just doesn't work properly.  This spiky ball opens up and drops out a load of seeds that spread all over the place.  Although I don't mind having the datura in our yar-dirt this year, I can foresee loathing as they invade my future utopia.  So, I have been pulling off the stem of the flower after it dies so as to prevent the growth of seeds.  I was delighted to see several datura growing happily in our lovely wastelands out past my yar-dirt.  As long as they stay out there I will be happy to welcome them every summer.