Nicotiana tabacum
L. TabaccoErect viscid annual or short-lived perennial herb to 3 m high; branches with dense glandular hairs. Leaves nearly all cauline, sessile, ovate, elliptic or lanceolate, 20–50 cm long, 3–15 cm wide, with dense glandular hairs, apex acuminate, base attenuate, broadly winged and stem-clasping; upper cauline leaves oblanceolate to elliptic or ovate. Inflorescences terminal, panicle-like, much-branched. Flowers on pedicels 5–10(–15) mm long; calyx tubular to tubular-capanulate, 12–20(–25) mm long, viscid; corolla white or pink, tube (7–)10–15 mm long, outer surface puberulent, limb 10–15 mm diam., lobes acute to apiculate; stamens unequal, upper 4 filaments to 32 mm long, lower filament c. 26 mm long. Capsule narrowly elliptic, ovoid or orbicular, 15–20 mm long; seeds spherical or broadly elliptic, c. 0.5 mm long, wrinkled. Flowers spring–summer.
VVP, GipP, HSF. Also naturalised Qld, NSW. Central and South America. Infrequently recorded in Victoria from vacant lots and weed infested land bordering residencies in the Melbourne metropolitan area.
The major species in commercial tobacco production. Cultivated throughout the West Indies, Central America and northern South America since pre-Columbian times and not known with certainty from the wild although based on its probably evolutionary origins it may have originated from north-western Argentina and adjacent Bolivia (Goodspeed 1954).
Goodspeed, T.H. (1954). The genus Nicotiana. Chronica Botanica: an Annual Record of Pure and Applied Botany 16.
