I’ve been noticing patches of Datura stramonium popping up in a chaparral nearby. This year it has been tilled entirely and so the daturas are gaining momentum. I believe it is privately owned, but have no way of reaching the person in question. I’ve tried to report it repeatedly at invasoras.pt but somehow can’t manage to do it. Is there anything I can do besides merely monitoring them with iNaturalist ids + approximate location?
Thanks in advance :)
Please contact local authorities. Ecological surveillance and protection is hard and one of these things we’re still trying to figure out how to do appropriately and proactively. Let us know who you end up contacting and how they respond.
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Usually Datura spp. are somehow invasive on disturbed ground but not making ecological impacts.
For me it is more important to discourage their use a a drug
I had no idea Datura stramonium was an invasive plant! I found it in my area in Germany, should anything be done about it? I cannot find any specific information.
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No, let it be, it’s a waste of time. What blue_celery says also applies for Germany and Portugal.
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Regular people shouldn’t really clear up invasives not on their property without supervision, it’s risky and can lead to a worse situation because of disturbed ground, there’re hundreds of invasive plants in Europe, so don’t think too much about seeing one of them.
It can be locally invasive. It usually spread through as a seeds cntaminant. In the end, yes, here in Italy it can be somehow attributed to the invasive species depending on the definition of invasive species used.
No, nothing. Leave it there. In the end it’s a beautiful plant and I think it cannot make any ecological impact. In the case just raise people’s awareness on its dangerousness.
I do not know how accurate this may be, but here is Wikipedia’s take. It seems like it may be more invasive in temperate climates.
Datura stramonium , known by the common names thorn apple , jimsonweed (jimson weed ), devil’s snare , or devil’s trumpet ,[2] is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Its likely origin was in Central America,[2][3] and it has been introduced in many world regions.[4][5][6] It is an aggressive invasive weed in temperate climates across the world.[2] D. stramonium has frequently been employed in traditional medicine to treat a variety of ailments. It has also been used as a hallucinogen (of the anticholinergic/antimuscarinic, delirianttype), taken entheogenically to cause intense, sacred or occult visions.[2][7] It is unlikely ever to become a major drug of abuse owing to effects upon both mind and body frequently perceived subjectively as being highly unpleasant, giving rise to a state of profound and long-lasting disorientation or delirium (anticholinergic syndrome) with a potentially fatal outcome. It contains tropane alkaloids which are responsible for the psychoactive effects, and may be severely toxic.[2][8]
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aggressive… 
I was surely not thinking about taking it out myself, I was more thinking if I should alert some authorities.
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In South Africa it is not a serious invader in natural veld, but a serious pest in agricultural lands, where it is controlled with post-emergence herbicides. Contamination of maize at the level of 1 seed per 10kg (~ one plant per ha) will result in rejection. It is quite common in horse paddocks and arenas.
Used folk medicinally as “malpitte” (mad seeds), with the quip: “one seed cures, two seeds kill.”
I see that it (and or D. ferox) is grown commercially in Europe and South America for atropine production.
It can be very bad for livestock. If you found it in an agricultural area, I’d inform a relevant person.
From my experience in Southern Germany it turns up on disturbed, well-fertilized ground (rather rarely on agricultural lands) and usually disappears again soon. In some very warm regions with mostly sandy soils this may be different (Northern part of Upper Rhine Valley) and populations can be ± persistent but I don´t think they invade ± natural communities only take the opportunity after some heavy disturbance (one that doesn´t repair itself) has happened.
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