A group of teachers and I recently attended a workshop on Harper Lee and Truman Capote in Monroeville, Alabama. On the long ride into the deep South, we discussed all kinds of trivia related to "To Kill a Mockingbird." Rabbit-tobacco came up. I happened to have a dictionary page with a very pretty photograph of the plant to show the group, but one teacher said, "I don't think this is rabbit-tobacco. The botanical name is Nicotiana sylvestris." My photograph was of Gnaphalium obtusifolium, which is a well-documented name for rabbit-tobacco. Nicotiana sylvestris is referred to as 'flowering tobacco' sometimes, but I can't find it referred to as 'rabbit-tobacco.' However, common names can cause uncommon confusion when it comes to identifying plants.
How would I best go about knowing which of these tobaccos was the more likely plant to have been growing wildly in the Radley 'swept yard' of Mockingbird?
*Of interest: The American tobacco that is grown for cigarettes is Nicotiana tabacum, and is in the nightshade family along with tomatoes, belladonna, potatoes, eggplant, and the rest of this enormous family. (And seeing that list makes me wonder why is it we add 'es' to tomato and potato, but only 's' to tobacco? English has GOT to be the dadburndest language on earth.)
Just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion: contact the Alabama state ag. extension program (probably HQ'ed at Bama).
I thought rabbit tobacco would be some variation on Roald Dahl's goat's tobacco, but I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of it in TKAM. You could email someone in the horticulture department or something like that at the University of Alabama. Tell us more about your workshop on Lee and Capote, please.
Every July a panel of Monroeville's citizens sit to tell their individual tales in the old courthouse--the one after which the interior design for Mockingbird of Gregory Peck fame was nearly identically designed. These citizens spend three hours reminiscing about Monroeville's history, which has a similar history to the Maycomb of Mockingbird, and about their knowledge of Harper Lee and Truman Capote in their youth. I can unconditionally recommend this teachers' workshop to anyone who has an interest in Lee and Capote, who were nextdoor neighbors for many years of their childhood and attended the same elementary school together, although Capote was in a slightly higher grade than Lee. It was entirely providential that the two knew each other as children: both were highly imaginative, both loved writing, the girls thought of Lee as a tomboy with fisticuff tendencies, and the boys thought of Capote as an easy target to knock down as long as Harper Lee wasn't around to defend him. Even after Capote permanently moved to the North, the friendship between the two remained firm, and Lee, of course, later moved to New York where she continues to live most of the year with the rest of the time spent in Monroeville with her sister. The likelihood of two such children growing up together in such a backwater area as Monroeville is amazing, and that's why I believe their being nextdoor neighbors was providential. Lee is now 78 years old, and the people on the panel are getting on in years. In the not-too-distant future, these people will pass on, so this opportunity of hearing people who knew the two authors firsthand as children will be no more. Additionaly, the panelists readily entertain questions from the courthouse audience. Among the many interesting stories I've heard about the two is the one told about their having an old typewriter on which they pounded out stories when they were quite young. It is how they spent a good deal of their time.
Monroeville casts its charm securely on any who would visit there. My heart rate slows down; a calm claims me for the time I'm there. And it is an immediate calm I sense whenever remembering it. Monroeville is now a yearly pilgrimmage for me.
#Note to Jackie: I intentionally used the plural verb with the word 'panel' in the first sentence.
Here's a bit more on tobacco at large. Nicotiana covers the genus of tobacco, but I found this information interesting about the genus:
NICOTIANA-This name is taken from Nicot who was at one time a French consul to Portugal and who introduced the use of tobacco to the courts of those countries.http://www.backyardgardener.com/article/latinwords.html...and, of course, the 'nicotine' connection between that and Nicotiana.
Say, Wordwind, you are quite the teacher. Your enlivening questions make me want to raise my hand whether I know the correct answer or not. And once again I not, but this time I have a plan...tomorrow I'm going to visit with an old farmer in Chilton County (About 60 miles north of Monroeville) and will ask him to show me some rabbit tobacco. Great idea, huh?
This...
http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/okwild/rabbitob.html ... is like the rabbit tobacco that I never smoked in my youth. The plant grew mostly in grassless soil, often near trees. The leaves were fuzzy and about five inches long. To make a smoke the plant's dried brown leaves were gently crumbled into a store-bought slip of white tobacco paper and then rolled into a proper cigarette.
But some of my know-it-all friends back then also called the
Gnaphalium obtusifolium plant "rabbit tobacco" as well.
This plant is high stemmed and tall and would have likely grown in the surrounding weeds of a yard that could be swept.
I, myself, was a good boy and never smoked until I started going out with girls at age twenty-three.
But one time I did smoke an Indian Cigar, which was crafted from the long seed pods of the Southern Catalpa tree. First we boys toasted the pods slowly in a oven until the green pods turned a respectable brown. Next we cut the long pods into little cheroots and then smoked the foul smelling Indian sticks until we all turned green. What fun!
Will report back Sunday.
Cannot be that
Nicotiana sylvestris has any connection to the comic character Sylvester the Rabbit!?
EDIT : Ooops! Should have looked before I leaped. Sylvester is is a comic cat.
Here is the results of my investigation to answer the question...
In South Alabama, what is considered "rabbit tobacco"?
Methodology: I showed a rabbit tobacco photograph that I had copied earlier from the Internet to a farmer's wife in Clanton Alabama and to a pal of mine from Tallassee, Alabama; both are citizens of a farming culture similar to the farming culture around Monroeville, Alabama.
Results...
The farmers wife: (giggling) Nosiree, that ain't no rabbit Tobacco. I oughta know I smoked aplenty when I was young. Rabbit tobacco is tall and curly at the end; ain't bad when you get use to it.
Pal from Tallasee: Well could be, but that ain't what we call rabbit tobacco around Tallasee, and I've lived there nigh forty-eight years now. Rabbit tobacco is tall like goldenrod but shorter.
Conclusion: In Mid-Alabama this is considered Rabbit Tobacco...
http://www.dreamyland.org/photos/flora/pages/rabbit-tobacco1.htm
Well, what in Sam's hill is that plant, Milo?
(Thanks very much for the research. But, good golly, Miss Molly, it would be really terrific to have genus and species, you know? Thanks again. Sincerely.)
Ok, my bad, your good, the genus is
Gnaphalium and the species is
obtusifolium and I am still bad, and you are still good.
Whatever that means.
"Gnaphalium obtusifolium"? Well, then, I was correct in my first surmise of the correct genus and species if your Alabamian friends are correct.
Thanks a lot, Milo. I'll print this out for my team to do with what they will--agreeing or still disagreeing. It's all part of the process--and I don't mind lengthy processes.
Harper Lee wasn't particularly brilliant botanically in Mockingbird, although the gifts she did possess in writing her one and only novel were impressive. She calls the oaks around the county courthouse "live oaks" (Quercus virginiana) when, in fact, they are a variety of water oak (Quercus nigra), but I doubt there is much interest in this kind of writer's peccadillo.) The fact that she can take such subjects as extreme racial prejudice, rape, and a problematical court system and cause one to smile and laugh throughout the novel (especially that provision of many warm smiles) is a testimony to her creative gifts. I wouldn't mind at all if she had, in fact, misnamed every plant in the book--it would simply give the scholars something to be busy with to earn their keep. And you know what James Joyces had to say about the scholars.
Jackie,
Are the photographs are of two varieties of Gnaphalium obtusifolium? The reason I ask is there is no mention on the photograph page of genus and species. Did you google by looking under Nicotiana sylvestris and Gnaphalium obtusifolium, or just Gnaphalium? The reason I ask is they both look like Gnaphalium to me--one early and one later in the growing season. Neither looks like Nicotiana.
The second photograph looks like Gnaphalium after it has grown a long stalk up out of the composite of leaves that form in the spring--the stalk forms and then the flower heads form in the fall. But if you have two distinct varieties here, specifically which genus and species do you have and what are the Latinate names of the varieties? Many thanks.
Edit: I just read over what I wrote and better add that I don't see that these are necessarily two different botanical varieties, but a single genus and species during different points in the growing season, and I suspect that genus is Gnaphalium. Hope this makes sense. As I wrote much earlier above, common names cause uncommon problems in botanical classification. Thank heaven for Latin.
Oops, sorry: neither. I went to Google Images and typed in rabbit tobacco. I've seen the tall spindly one often, without knowing what it was. I would never have thought it was the same plant as that nasty-looking thing lying along the ground.
Here's the Google Images link to Nicotiana sylvestris:
http://images.google.com/images?q=Nicotiana+sylvestris&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+SearchAnd for Gnaphalium obtusifolium:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=Gnaphalium+obtusifolium
I'm pretty sure both of your images of rabbit tobacco are Gnaphalium, Jackie: one early and the other matured to the flowering stage. I'll run them past our botanist at school, although I don't know whether his area of expertise is herbaceous or woody plants. Will report back tomorrow after I print out your images. They are lovely and they do look like Gnaphalium to me, which resembles lamb's ear (a little) in the early stage.
Also, although Google images are terrific--and when you google rabbit toboacco you'll get lots of good hits--some of the hits will be entirely incorrect. In fact, when we use the Google Images function, we pull up all kinds of things that may not have anything to do with botanical specimens at all.
But your two images of rabbit tobacco look like Gnaphalium to me.
Well, let me know. And yes, I believe the Google things, at least the images, are brought up by however they're titled; so if someone has a picture of real tobacco, say, and posts it as rabbit tobacco, then it's going to get a hit as rabbit tobacco. No guaranteeing that all these titlers have been correct.
if someone has a picture of real tobacco, say, and posts it as rabbit tobacco, then it's going to get a hit as rabbit tobacco
So true, Jackie. I find it helpful to add .edu to my search terms when I'm looking up something like this; kinda weeds out the tobacco from the rabbits.
The teacher in the biology department I talked to yesterday knows mostly about woody plants, but he gave me the name of another teacher who specializes in herbaceous plants. Next week will be a little crazy with school's opening for students, but I'll try to track him down and see whether he can recognize the photos. As I was talking to the 'woody plant biologist' yesterday, another teacher from the history dept. overheard our conversation about rabbit-tobacco and immediately began to recount the time in his childhood when friends and he had smoked rabbit-tobacco. I said, "Well, at least it has medicinal properties!"
What I'd really like to do at some point is write to Harper Lee and let her know what a lark this has been trying to track down the rabbit-tobacco in Mockingbird. My mother says it used to grow all about Dinwiddie County, Virginia, but she hasn't seen it for years. Wonder why?
An aside: The most recent studies in educational theory are stressing the importance of students finding a personal interest hook into studies to investigate as throughly as possible, building webs between new subject areas, deepening knowledge of areas that are of personal interest, and making as many connections between areas investigated and areas in curriculum. I'll use my own interest in botany to demonstrate to my ninth graders a model for their own investigations of areas from Mockingbird. The possibilities offered by that novel are many and rich. Our final product will be an illustrated Mockingbird lexicon from each of my three ninth grade classes.
At first glance, it might seem that this kind of investigation of rabbit-tobacco trivializes the content of Mockingbird, but actually, in presenting this example to my classes, I'll address:
The descriptive details of the Radley yard: specific details in the weeds Ms. Lee chose to place there (i.e., rabbit-tobacco and the noxious weed Johnson grass);
Open-ended questions of what these two details might suggest about the appearance of a 'swept yard'--and how the reader might visualize such a yard; how community members might react to such a yard, including adults' reactions as opposed to that of children;
How Lee's use of such a yard ties into the repeated themes in the novel: poverty, prejudice, the oppression of the pariah, etc.
In other words, even with the mention of two specific details, such as Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco, much can be suggested. And I hope this will impress upon my students that in their own writing, specific details will add depth.
The other point of fascination to me is what the reader brings to a work of literature. Perhaps Lee simply used Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco because that is what she had seen in bleak-looking yards in her own Monroeville--and nothing more. Perhaps she herself used them to suggest a yard with weeds--a yard that lacked tender-loving care and nothing more. And perhaps my own tendency to take connections as far as I can when considering themes in a novel causes me to think of connections Lee never herself considered. Well, that's exciting, I think. I believe readers create novels in their own reading that the writer herself or himself didn't visualize while writing the work because readers bring information into the work that the writer may have not been privy to. And that is very exciting because it makes novels burst with new life. However, this kind of thinking I will probably not touch on with my ninth graders because it is most likely too abstract. I'll share it with you all, however, because we tend to take topics here in so many directions.
another teacher from the history dept. overheard our conversation about rabbit-tobacco and immediately began to recount the time in his childhood when friends and he had smoked rabbit-tobaccoReminds me of the time when a bunch of us 15 year olds at summer camp started to smoke something we called "Bumwado Cedarettes".
We took strips of bark off the cedar trees which were everywhere and ground them up in our hands into something that looked like tobacco. Then we hand-rolled them in what was known as "bumwad" from the Kibos and lit them up.
And I do mean we "LIT" them up. When the flame hit the bumwad, they flared like a butane lighter on wide open gas. But then they would settle out to a raspy smoke that lasted perhaps 5 minutes or more.
Voila! Bumwado cedarettes.
It was more of a style than a substance thing, you know.
It was a little disconcerting to see all the dust come out of the cedar strips when we ground them up. But that was in the days before we knew anything about all the crap in regular tobacco.
No-one's ever died of a "Bumwado Cedarette", as far as I know. And no durn government ever put a tax on it.
Hell, no tabaccky company ever made a puff of profit from our cedarettes. And there ain't a billboard nowheres boostin' them to kids.
Excellent thinking, Wordwind, write Harper Lee now. If you can reach her I'll bet that she will be delighted to respond. Please let us know if she does.
As for your three classes of ninth graders, I'll bet that the method of teaching by establishing conections with subects of personal intrests to your students will also spill over into their understanding of the symbolism and subtleties of literature. This enjoyment of living that you might add to only one of your ingrateful and socially self-centered urchins is a gift beyond measure. I know, I myself am a reformed self-centered urchin.
Of course,I know that you are well aware of the good that you do, but I just wanted to say it myself as a way of saying "thank you".
(If can find any of the so-called rabbit tobacco in the woods this week-end I will have a sample identified at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham Tuesday and repot back.)