Authors: Cole Statham, Katelyn Thomas
Mentors: Michael C Rotter
Insitution: Utah Valley University
Datura (Solanaceae) is a potent hallucinogenic genus of plants that has varied uses across cultures. Tropane alkaloids in these plants are potent compounds that, depending on dosage, can offer the user a psychoactive experience or cause severe reactions including death. For some, Datura is little more than an ornamental flower or an ideal source to have a psychedelic experience. While for others it is a sacred plant, used on special occasions, and only permitted to be handled by those who have been prepared and trained to do so. An explanation for these cultural differences could be that cultures with taboos surrounding this plant are likely those that have species of Datura with variable levels of tropane alkaloids, while cultures without taboos are likely to have species with consistent levels of tropane alkaloids. Here we focus on six species of Datura using literature reports of tropane alkaloid contents and compare the variability in these phytochemicals to cultural uses of these plants. We predict that societies with cultural taboos will be more likely to be those with species that have higher variability in tropane alkaloids.