Jimson weed became a recurring subject in Georgia O'Keeffe's New Mexico paintings.
O'Keeffe painted the large white trumpet-shaped flower of jimson weed many times. Her 1932 work Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 is especially famous and was sold for a record price at auction in 2014. The plant is also called sacred datura and is native to parts of the American Southwest.
The flowers' dramatic shape and pale color suited O'Keeffe's practice of enlarging natural forms. She often gathered objects and plants around her New Mexico homes, then transformed them into highly focused compositions rather than literal botanical illustrations.
Jimson weed is poisonous, so it should not be confused with harmless garden flowers that look similar. O'Keeffe's subject was the plant commonly identified as Datura wrightii in the Southwest. Her paintings made the flower visually familiar to a wide audience, even though its toxicity is an important botanical fact.