The Angel’s Trumpet: A Historical Story

Imagine a garden in the high Andes at dusk. The leaves are darkening, the mountain air is cooling, and enormous trumpet-shaped flowers hang downward from the branches. As evening comes, their perfume becomes stronger. The flowers seem almost otherworldly: white, cream, yellow, pink, or red, depending on the kind.

This is Brugmansia, the Angel’s Trumpet.

Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez, Datura arborea [Brugmansia arborea], 1798, in Flora Peruviana, et Chilensis, vol. 1, pl. 128. Public domain.

Long before it became a prized ornamental in European and American gardens, Andean peoples cultivated these plants for ritual, medicinal, and cultural purposes. Modern botanical authorities believe the genus arose in South America, particularly the Andes, and that the plants have been so extensively cultivated that some botanists consider the surviving forms essentially domesticated rather than truly wild. 

The plant’s relationship with humans was therefore never simply ornamental.

It belonged to the dangerous world of the Solanaceae ~ the nightshade family; alongside plants such as mandrake, henbane, belladonna and Datura. Brugmansia contains powerful tropane alkaloids, including scopolamine, atropine and related compounds. These substances can produce delirium and profound alterations of perception, but can also cause coma and death. 

That combination ~ extraordinary beauty and extraordinary danger ~ is at the heart of its mythology.

The flower of second sight

One of the most fascinating historical accounts comes from nineteenth-century Colombia.

In 1853, Samuel Bond, working around the gold mines of Marmato in what was then New Granada, described a plant called tonga, identified with Datura sanguinea, now treated as Brugmansia sanguinea. Local tradition held that the plant could give someone a form of second sight.

The purpose wasn’t merely visionary experience.

According to Bond’s account, people believed that the altered state could reveal things normally hidden, particularly buried gold and hidden mines. Kew’s historical account preserves Bond’s correspondence describing miners who sought this supposed ability. 

There is something almost archetypal about that story:

The trumpet flower becomes a doorway between the visible world and the invisible one.

But the historical records also show the danger. Bond described people who became severely delirious after taking the plant, sometimes remaining disturbed for prolonged periods. The colonial authorities had attempted to prohibit its use, although the practice continued. 

The plant of ancestors

Elsewhere in South America, Brugmansia became associated with communication with spirits and ancestors.

Ethnohistorical and botanical sources describe its use in ritual contexts involving divination, prophecy, and contact with the dead. The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle notes that shamans used Angel’s Trumpet in some traditions in attempts to see the future and communicate with ancestors. 

And there is an especially striking historical theme surrounding the plant: its ability to make the ordinary world seem permeable.

The living could seek visions.

The future might supposedly become visible.

The dead might seem to speak.

Hidden things might appear.

And the boundary between waking and dreaming could become uncertain.

These aren’t simply modern psychedelic interpretations; historical records from colonial Ecuador document the sacred plant wanduc, identified as Brugmansia, in ritual and shamanic contexts. A 2022 anthropological study examined colonial legal records from 1782–1802 that preserve evidence of such plant-centered practices. 

The healer and the dangerous plant

Brugmansia also had medicinal traditions.

Different South American cultures used preparations of the plant for various purposes, including external applications. Historical sources record medicinal and social uses alongside its ritual role. 

This is important because the old distinction between “medicine,” “poison,” and “sacred plant” wasn’t necessarily the same as our modern categories.

A plant could be all three.

The same plant that was regarded as a healer could become a poison at another dose or preparation. The same flower cultivated around a home could be associated with spirits and divination.

And unlike many legendary plants, Brugmansia’s reputation for danger isn’t merely folklore: all parts of the plant are poisonous, and poisoning can result in delirium, coma, or death. 

And then came the “Angel”

The European name Angel’s Trumpet is almost wonderfully misleading.

The flowers resemble enormous trumpets hanging from the branches, and the fragrance can be extraordinarily sweet. But their history is much darker than the innocent name suggests.

The scientific genus Brugmansia was named for the Dutch naturalist Sebald Justinus Brugmans (1763–1819). The genus was formally published by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon in 1805. 

For a long time, botanists placed these plants within Datura. Brugmansia arborea, for example, was originally described by Linnaeus in 1753 as Datura arborea. Robert Sweet subsequently used the combination Brugmansia arborea in 1818. Modern taxonomy generally recognizes Brugmansia as a separate genus. 

And then something rather paradoxical happened.

The plant that had such powerful associations with indigenous ritual became fashionable in European horticulture.

By the eighteenth century, Brugmansia was being cultivated as an exotic greenhouse plant, prized particularly for its magnificent flowers and fragrance. 

A plant once associated with spirits and visions became a Victorian garden treasure.

A flower between worlds

That’s perhaps the most compelling way to tell the story of Angel’s Trumpet.

It isn’t really a story about an “evil” flower.

Nor is it simply a story about a beautiful garden plant.

It is a story about a plant humans have repeatedly placed at the boundary between worlds.

Between:

medicine and poison

dream and waking

beauty and danger

the living and the dead

knowledge and madness

garden and wilderness

And perhaps that’s why the flowers are so evocative. They don’t point upward like ordinary trumpets. They hang downward as though the flower isn’t calling the heavens but listening for something coming from below.

Continue Exploring October in the Apothecary

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Old plants, strange histories, medicine, mythology, folklore, and the stories humans have woven around the botanical world.

→ Explore the Poisonous Plants, Medicine & Myth Series

Haunted Trails & Forgotten Places

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→ Explore the Haunted Trails & Forgotten Places Series

More October stories will be added throughout the month.