Datura: The Otherworldly and the Ornamental
The nightshade family, Solanaceae, includes many species of significance to human cultures around the world, from familiar plants that provide sustenance (including potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers) to others that are the source of important narcotic compounds. This presentation focuses on the intersecting histories of Datura, Brugmansia, and Solandra plants. Drawing on approaches that range from oral histories in the Guianas to archival research in herbaria across the world, this exploration entwines the spiritual, biomedical, and political histories of these powerful Solanaceous beings from Tantric India and pre-Columbian Mexico to the fraught events of Jonestown in 1978 and beyond.
About the Speaker
Vikram Tamboli holds a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a Peter Buck Fellow of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He is the creator and co-director of the Healing and Harming Garden, a joint initiative of UCLA’s Department of History and the Mathias Botanical Garden.
Published in 1734–45 in Regensburg Germany, in the great botanical work Phytanthoza Iconographia. Among the artists in this enormous botanical series were Ehret, Haid, and Seutter from Augsburg; their individual initials are in the lower right corner of the plates. | Johann Wilhelm Weinmann, Phytanthoza Iconographia, 1734.