''Duboisia hopwoodii'' is a shrub native to the arid interior region of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. Common names include pituri, pitchuri thornapple or pitcheri.

Description

The species has an erect habit, usually growing to between 1 and 3 metres in height, with long, narrow leaves. Flowers are white and bell-shaped with violet-striped throats. These appear between June and November in the species' native range followed by purple-black, rounded berries which are 3 to 6 mm in diameter. Like other members of the Solanaceae family such as

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

, ''D. hopwoodii'' contains

nicotine Nicotine is a natural product, naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreational drug use, recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As ...

Pituri

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

mix the dried leaves of a small population of ''D. hopwoodii'' growing around the

Mulligan River The Mulligan River is a tributary of Eyre Creek in the Channel Country region of southwest Queensland. It is in the Lake Eyre Basin. The river rises in Glenormiston Station and flows generally south through Marion Downs Station into Eyre Cre ...

with wood ash to make a variety of pituri, the traditional Aboriginal chewing mixture. ''D. hopwoodii'' plants from this region are high in

and low in

nornicotine Nornicotine is an alkaloid found in various plants including ''Nicotiana'', the tobacco plant. It is chemically similar to nicotine, but does not contain a methyl group. It is a precursor to the carcinogen ''N''-nitrosonornicotine that is produc ...

, whereas those found in some other parts of Australia can have very high levels of nornicotine and are sometimes used to contaminate water holes and stun animals to help in hunting. Unlike nicotine, nornicotine forms the carcinogen

n-nitrosonornicotine ''N''-Nitrosonornicotine (NNN) is a tobacco-specific nitrosamine produced during the curing and processing of tobacco. Toxicity It has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen. Although no adequate studies of the relationship between exposure to ...

in the human saliva. The

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Dr Gavin Young named the fossil agnathan ''

Pituriaspis doylei ''Pituriaspis doylei'' is one of two known species of jawless fish belonging to the Class Pituriaspida, and is the better known of the two. The species lived in estuaries during the Givetian epoch of the Middle Devonian, 390 million years ago in ...

'' after the plant, as he thought he might be hallucinating, as though under the effects of pituri, upon viewing the fossil fish's bizarre form.Long, John A. ''The Rise of Fishes: 500 Million Years of Evolution''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by botanist

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

in 1861 in '' Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae'' and given the name ''Anthocercis hopwoodii''. In 1876, von Mueller transferred the species to the genus ''

Duboisia :''The orchid genus described by Karsten as ''Duboisia'' is now included in '' Myoxanthus. For the prehistoric antelope genus, see '' Duboisia (antelope).'' ''Duboisia'' (commonly called corkwood tree) is a genus of small perennial shrubs and tr ...

''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1263158 Nicotianoideae Solanales of Australia Trees of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of the Northern Territory Flora of Queensland Flora of South Australia Eudicots of Western Australia Plants described in 1861 Crops originating from Australia Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller