Hyoscyamus niger, commonly known as henbane, black henbane or stinking nightshade, is a poisonous plant in the family Solanaceae.
The name henbane dates at least to AD 1265. The origins of the word are unclear, but 'hen' probably originally meant death rather than referring to chickens. Other etymologies of the word associate it with the Indo-European stem *bhelena whose hypothetical meaning is 'crazy plant' and with the Proto-Germanic element bil meaning ‘vision, hallucination; magical power, miraculous ...