''Hyoscyamus'' — known as the henbanes — is a small

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. It comprises 11 species, all of which are toxic. It, along with other genera in the same family, is a source of the drug hyoscyamine (daturine).Cruciferous type of stomata present in Hyoscyamus. ''Hyoscyamus'' means "hog-bean" in

botanical Latin Botanical Latin is a technical language based on New Latin, used for descriptions of botanical taxa. Until 2012, International Code of Botanical Nomenclature mandated Botanical Latin to be used for the descriptions of most new taxa. It is still the ...

and was a name derogatorily applied to the plant by

Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of ''De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vol ...

Selected species

References

External links