Black and White Flower

Black and White Flower

Here are a couple of black and white pictures from this summer. The first one is a Datura (I think) or Jimson Weed. At first I thought it was a Brugmansia (broog-MAN-zee-ah) but read that the flowers point down (non-erect) on that genus where the Datura flowers point upwards which this flower did. One of the funny things I read about this plant is it is called Devil’s Trumpet since the flowers point upward toward heaven and the Brugmansia is called Angel’s Trumpet as those flowers point down from heaven. I really want to stress that all parts of both of the mentioned plants are poisonous. Small doses may produce a hallucinogenic effect but often times can cause an overdose and even death. Some towns and counties have outlawed its cultivation. I am not sure which species of Datura this is.

All that said it is a beautiful flower that can grow tall and is perennial in some areas. I had a patch growing that I didn’t think was perennial but produced a new crop of seedlings each year. It eventually thinned out and died off. I wouldn’t mind growing some more in an isolated area of the garden.

These are pictures shot with my Nikon CoolPix 8400 on the monochrome setting. I have the function button set up for the two User Settings and one is color and one is Black and white so it is easy to switch between the two.


This is a water garden I saw this summer at the Staten Island Botanical Garden. This picture turned out more effective than the color version.

Two of my favorite garden blogs are discussing content scraping of garden blogs by other sites. I don’t like it and so far people I have contacted have removed my posts from their sites. I have again gone to the shorter RSS feeds because of the scraping.

Discussion is ongoing here:
annie in austin

and here:
Mr. Brown Thumb