It stands 5 feet tall, sprouting huge trumpet leaves and spiny pods.
For decades, it has been mostly known as the bane of Midwestern farmers, who annually unleash a flood of spring herbicide to stamp out the jimson weed that chokes their fields.
But lately, more than farmers appear to be interested in jimson weed. McHenry County authorities are concerned that suburban teenagers, attracted by tales of jimson weed’s hallucinogenic powers but unaware of its intense toxicity, are once again turning to the plant for a cheap high.
Two weeks ago, McHenry County sheriff’s police found and destroyed about 600 carefully cultivated plants growing in a cornfield north of Crystal Lake. Then on Tuesday, Cary police removed several hundred jimson weed plants growing wild on an empty lot near an elementary school.
The attraction for teens is easy to understand. Not only is jimson weed cheap and accessible, but, unlike controlled substances, it’s not illegal. Whoever planted the jimson weed in the cornfield probably would face no more than a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
But the problem is jimson weed is highly toxic, and those who smoke, chew or eat the plant or its seeds can wind up in the hospital or dead.
“It’s not something to mess with,” said Cary Police Detective Denise Anderson, as she yanked the weeds from atop a 12-foot high mound of earth Tuesday.
“You take a good dose of this, and you’ll get a good lesson,” said Wayne Roques, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official who now works as a drug-prevention consultant. “People are not going to use it over and over again–unless they are idiots.”
Jimson weed has been around for centuries. The Puritans who settled Jamestown, Va., tried it. In fact, the weed’s name is a corrupted form of “Jamestown Weed.”
Jimson weed also was integrated into the rituals of some Native Americans, and it was chronicled in the writings of Mark Twain and the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe.
But despite the lore, jimson weed is more likely to make a person sick than high. Users may suffer hypertension, fever and hallucinations. Their hearts can beat quickly, and their pupils can dilate severely. Symptoms can last two days.
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Deaths are uncommon, but the American Association of Poison Control Centers said there are nearly 300 cases of jimson poisoning reported annually. Local health officials said jimson cases come in waves, as the weed goes through cycles of popularity with teens.
“Jimson weed has always been around,” said John Dellinger, director of the Illinois Poison Center in Chicago. “So it’s not unusual to have this thing pop up now and again.”
A check of hospital emergency rooms in McHenry County and elsewhere in the Chicago area found no recent cases of jimson-weed poisoning. But the discovery of the plants in McHenry County has local officials concerned.
Police said the crop found in the middle of the cornfield appeared to have been deliberately planted. The jimson weed found Tuesday appeared to be growing wild.
But authorities’ quick response Tuesday to destroy the plants after they were alerted by a neighbor illustrated their concern.
Anderson and Cary Police Sgt. Edward Fetzer were working up a sweat pulling out the jimson plants when two workers from the Cary Public Works Department pulled up with a truck with a small loading bed.
They joined Anderson and Fetzer in pulling out the weeds and throwing them onto the truck bed, filling it in about 30 minutes.
The weeds were 3 to 5 feet high, with branching rhubarb-like stalks, maple-like leaves, squash-like flowers and oblong seed pods covered with cactus-like spines.
After the truck was loaded, the weeds were taken to the Public Works Department garage, where they were burned.
“I’ve never heard of jimson weed,” said Public Works Department employee Jarrett Wika. “Heck, I’ve never even seen it before.”
But the weed grows wild throughout the area. It seems to favor disturbed soil, such as at construction sites. It also is commonly found near railroad tracks.
Originally a central Asian plant, jimson weed now grows throughout the world.
Douglas Kinghorn, a professor of pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said its easy accessibility is one of the weed’s most alarming characteristics. Indeed, there are Internet sites offering jimson seeds for sale.
“People might try it because it is so cheap to do. It essentially grows everywhere,” Kinghorn said. “That’s pretty worrying because it can actually kill a few kids.”
In a seven-year span beginning in the late 1980s, the American Association of Poison Control Centers reported 1,458 cases of jimson weed poisoning, and a majority of the cases involved teenagers.
Two years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Scharman, director of the West Virginia Poison Center, dealt with a mini-epidemic when 18 cases of jimson-weed poisoning were reported to the clinic within a couple of weeks.
The teenagers and young adults were eating the seeds, smoking the leaves and brewing teas from the plant.
“The weed was growing right along the fences at a couple of schools,” Scharman said. “We had to educate the teachers and had to remove the plants.”
But the weed’s popularity usually wanes, she said, once word of its side-effects spread.