CHAPTER III. 



VAEIETIES OF THE TOBACCO PLANT. 



Tobacco belongs to the nightshade (Solanacece) 

 family, which embraces in its genera a number of well- 

 known plants and vegetables. Among them are red 

 pepper, Jamestown or jimson weed, petunia, Irish po- 

 tato, tomato, egg plant and tobacco. The genus Nico- 

 tiana is of American origin, and embraces fifty or more 

 species, one of which, Tabacum, supplies nearly all the 

 tobacco of commerce. The tobacco plant (Nicotiana 

 Tabacum} grows from two to nine feet high, with wide- 

 spreading leaves, ovate, oblong or lanceolate in form. 

 The leaves are alternately attached to the stalk spirally, 

 so that the ninth leaf overhangs the first, and the tenth 

 leaf the second. The distance between the leaves, on 

 the stalk, is about two inches, in ordinary varieties. 

 The flowers are in large clusters, with corollas of rose 

 color, or white tinged with pink, and about two inches 

 long, funnel-shaped, with inflated throats. Tobacco is 

 a rank, acrid narcotic, viscidly pubescent, leaves and 

 stalk covered with soft, downy hair. The seed pods 

 have two valves. 



In Mexico and tropical countries the tobacco plant 

 becomes perennial. The writer has seen it growing in 

 the deep, narrow valleys, or barrancas, of the Sierra Madre 

 mountains in Mexico, without cultivation. The same 

 stalk sends forth new sprouts from year to year, the 

 leaves from which are gathered by the natives just before 

 the seed matures, cured in the sun to a dull, greenish 

 color, and when crumbled, are used by the peons and 

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