Help please

[chasw]

Can anyone identify this please for a friend,she bought it because it looked odd  ,but does not know the name of it

[Lori S.]

Datura metel.

[Maggi Young]

I thought is was a dangerous Puffer Fish, accidentally caught up in  a shrub - but even if you go with Lori's ( very sensible!) suggestion - they're both poisonous. 

[Lori S.]

 
Yes, poisonous though widely grown, like many other poisonous plants.  As long as one is careful while... I dunno... grazing out in one's garden?... no harm should result.   

[Maggi Young]

Quite right Lori - HUGE number of common garden plants very poisonous - it's just that no-one with any sense eats 'em!

[johnw]

Actually the Datura are banned here,  Ten or fifteen years ago the Ag. Dept. raided all the garden centres and ordered all the Daturas destroyed, they mistakenly also confiscated Brugsmansia not realizing the name change and had to eat crow.  The Daturas are problematic in the Annapolis Valley where they can colonize pastureland and can poison livestock.  We still see a lot grown in gardens about...

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

I'm not sure that Daturas are regularly eaten, as a food anyway, but rather taken (how?) for their drug content, maybe hallucenogenic, A few years back a couple of people here died after playing fast and loose with plants found growing naturalized on the Otago Peninsula.