Plants pubescent perennial herbs, each with a long, tuberous root. Leaves petiolate; blades ovate, 10-23 cm long, 5-12 cm wide, lower surfaces canescent, particularly over the veins, upper surfaces puberulent to glabrescent, bases unequal, cuneate to rounded margins entire or irregularly few-dentate to lobed, tips acute. Flowers axillary, pedicellate, pedicels initally erect, becoming recurved in fruit; calyces 6.5-14.5 cm long, unequally 5-toothed, teeth 10-35 mm long, acute to acuminate; corollas funnelform, (14)16-26 cm long, opening to 7-15 cm wide, white to pale violet or lavender, with 5 sets of 3 veins, these terminating in 5 acute to linear-triangular teeth (acumina) 7-40 mm long, tips often tendril-like. Capsules pendent, subglobose to globose, 4-6 cm in diameter, surrounded by the usually appressed, sometimes rotate or reflexed, calyx base, surface puberulent, spines 300-400, 6-10 mm long; seeds usually brown to red-brown, sometimes black, reniform, 4-6 mm long, 3-5 mm wide, smooth but with a cord-like triple-ridged edge and, when fresh, a white caruncle.
Datura wrightii grows from California across southern Nevada, Utah and Colorado to Texas and south to Baja California, northern Sonoroa and Chihuahua. Older references (before the 1960s) often called it D.meteloides. It is frequently associated with disturbed habitats