A genius of plants cultivated for their leaves, which are smoked, chewed made in snuff and in smaller measure used as a fertilizer and a fungicide. Common Tobacco, the most extensively cultivated variety is an annual plant growing from three to six feet tall. It has a shallow root, a thick central stem and long broad leaves. Both stem and leaves are coated with fine hairs and with a moist gummy substance. It's flowers which appears on a stalk on top of the stem are pinkish or reddish and resemble those of the potato in shape. As many as a million dust like seeds will be borne by a single plant. Tobacco is a member of the night shade family which as given us such useful plants as potato, the tomato and the egg plant. Also the poisonous species as the deadly nightshade itself.
Tobacco maybe broadly classified according to use as cigar and manufacturing types. Cigar tobacco cost most, and the one that costs the most of all are cigar wrappers, the leaves which are wound about the outside of the cigar. The best come from Sumatra and Cuba. In the United States, they are grown in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where the fields are tented with cheese cloth to improve the quality of the leaves by preventing too rapid transformation or loss of moisture. Other types of tobacco are cigar binders and cigar-fill tobaccos.
Throughout the world tobacco is the 9th most valuable crop and in the U.S it ranks sixth. United States produce about one fifth of the world supply and almost equal amounts are raised in India and China. It is an important crop in Russia, Brazil, Greece and Turkey; and large quantities are grown also in Indonesia and the West Indies...