Sacred Datura — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Georgia O’Keeffe photographed and painted this intoxicating flower found in the southwestern US and northern Mexico.
It is easy to develop a passion for these night blooming flowers and therefore easy to see why Georgia O’Keeffe works include
photographs and painting of the white, trumpet-shaped bloom of the Sacred Datura. Providing a fairyland of delicate beauty,
moths, butterflies, long-tongued bees, hummingbirds and mystical, moonlit nights. It gives rise to some of the plant’s other names:
Angel’s Trumpet, Moon Lily, Moonflower or Belladonna (beautiful lady).
An ancient plant with unknown origins
Datura bridges continents,
passed on by Indigenous story and feet.
A muse full of secrets
she is known by those
(who have been initiated into her ways)
as “Grandmother,” whose poison is deadly.
She is also a visionary and healer.
She comes to some through dreams.
The un- initiated fear her.
They call her devil, thorn apple,
witches wildflower, in woeful ignorance
of the breadth of her power.
“Dementia!” they sling arrows of ignorance,
accuse her as one who would kill or maim.
As well she might.
To those who would use her
without respect or care,
she mutters a warning:
Beware.
— from Emergence: Poem to a Plant Goddess by Sara Wright
(Georgia O’Keeffe’s photography is currently on exhibit at The Museum of Fine Art Houston.)
Images by kenne
