BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
Series II Brooklyn, N. Y., October 21, 1914 Number 12 
THE HISTORY OF NICOTIANA II 
AN ACCOUNT OF THE HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT OF 
A FAMILY OF TOBACCO PLANTS 
Near the village of Alquiza, in the department of Partidos, 
Cuba, large plantations of tobacco are annually grown. The 
particular type of tobacco plant common to these plantations is 
about six feet tall, unbranched, round-stemmed and ordinarily 
clothed with from eighteen to twenty-four medium-sized, dark- 
green leaves. The flowers, though seldom seen, as they are cut 
off in the bud stage to prevent them from taking nourishment 
from the leaves, are pink in color and made up of four whorls, 
three of which consist of five parts, the fourth being two-parted. 
The whorls are botanically described as the calyx, the corolla, the 
androecium (stamens), and the gynoecium (pistil). The first 
two are protective and showy, while the last two are inconspic- 
uous and concerned with reproduction. The androecium contains 
the male organs, while the gynoecium is devoted to producing 
plant eggs. Ordinarily in tobacco, the union (pollination and 
fertilization) of the two kinds of organs takes place in the bud, 
before it opens into a flower, so that the seed, which are really 
little plantlets in protective cases, have but one parent, both 
father and mother being represented by one plant. I mention 
this because most flowering plants are cross-fertilized, which in 
ordinary English means they have two separate plants as 
parents,— that the father (pollen parent) is a separate and dis- 
tinct plant from the mother, or egg-parent. The fact that these 
tobacco plants are generally inbred, or self-fertilized, is important 
to my story, because it leads us to believe that perhaps through 
thousands of generations, made up of millions of plant individ- 
