Beautiful But Deadly Angel Trumpet

Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia hybrid), watercolor, 15"h x 12.5"w.

I've been working on this piece for the "Beautiful But Deadly" show that the Botanic Artists Society of the National Capital Regions (BASNCR) is scheduled to have next summer at the Athenaeum in Alexandria. I grew this plant for several years when I lived in Columbia, Maryland. After three years or so, it had reached some four to five feet in height. Being a tender tropical, it needs to be kept indoors during  freezing weather.

During the winter I kept the plant in our unfinished basement by the glass door of the walk-out, and I usually checked it only once a week to water it. I never noticed the buds developing, and then one day, as I was going downstairs to our basement, lo and behold, an amazingly beautiful trumpet flower greeted me! The plant had a number of flower buds, and these bloomed over the next few weeks.

The following summer, I set the pot outside by the walk-out basement door, since it seemed to like the conditions there, and it bloomed profusely. I took many photos of it at various stages. After a few years, the plant wore out, and stopped blooming. I moved it to our new home in Virginia, and re-potted it, but it never put out any more flowers. It was so large and hard to move, one fall I finally gave up and decided to let it die over the winter.  That was a few years ago.

When BASNCR'a proposal for a show on toxic plants was accepted last year, I regretted my decision--an Angel Trumpet would be just the flower to submit for this show! I started working on the painting above from my photos, but the information on the photos wasn't enough.

As fate would have it, this summer I was shopping for plants to bring to my botanical watercolor class at a local nursery, and there I saw a tiny Brugmansia in a 4" pot on sale for $3.99. I was looking it over, wondering if there was still time to bring it into bloom before the first frost struck, when another customer, noticing that I seemed to be mulling over it, came over to me. This lady started telling me that she had bought one just like it a few weeks before and after potting into a much larger pot, her plant had grown very quickly and was now about three and a  half feet tall and covered with buds!  I thanked her for the information and bought the Brugmansia.

After re-potting my plant grew at an amazing rate. Toward the end of August it was about three feet tall, but I hadn't noticed that it had started to branch until I saw one tiny flower bud emerging. Brugmansias won't bloom until the main stem has branched--that's the sign that the plant is ready to bloom.

Brugmansia flower

The first bud opened in September, and more have followed. After seeing the flowers again, I realize that I had not remembered how large they actually are, and I can see so much more detail in real life than in my old photos. I feel the need to re-do my painting, the one above hardly does it justice!

Interior

The interior of the trumpet looks very like a Georgia O'Keefe painting I'm familiar with, her "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1", which sold for millions at auction a few years back. Jimsonweed is  Datura stramonium, another member of the same family as the Brugmansia genus whose flowers differ in being upright or nodding, rather than pendulous.

I've brought my plant inside in case we have an overnight frost. Now, I'm struggling to do more sketches of my buds and flowers from life while they last and work on a composition where I could show several views of the Angel Trumpet in all its intricate beauty.