When we moved house we held a moving in party of sorts, a day in the garden when friends could drop by and see us. Several friends brought gifts, but the biggest and most impressive after two years is a Tree Tobacco plant, Nicotiana glauca, from our friends Mark and Charlotte.

It is a monster of a plant, a big, amiable thug that towers above the fence at the bottom of the garden. It has thick, rubbery blue-green leaves (hence the name glauca) up to 20cm long and it grows as a large, bush, up to about nine feet (2.7 metres) tall. The tubular, yellow flowers are about 5 cm long and 1 cm wide.

Tree tobacco is related to the cultivated tobacco used in cigarettes (Nicotiana tabacum) but differs in several ways: tree tobacco is a perennial, it isn’t hairy or sticky and its leaves are attached to the stalk by petioles. It is a member of the family Solanaceae, which includes some of my favourite plants – some of which I’ve already written about, such as Sticky Nightshade and Henbane.

Nicotiana glauca comes from South America and is an invasive weed in several parts of the world. It has been naturalised in Europe, Africa, temperate Asia, Australia, New Zealand, United States (including Hawaii), Mexico and Macaronesia. In colder climates it can be grown like a hardy perennial, with its top growth dying back in the winter and new growth starting from the base. Here in Norfolk, the last two winters have been quite mild, so apart from some very slight frost damage, our specimen has not been kept in check. Our sandy soil and the sheltered spot in which it is growing will have helped it to thrive. Our plant has a tendency to lean forward so last autumn I cut back one of the shoots, which has tidied the plant up a bit.

The only disappointment is that insects don’t seem to like the flowers. According to the paper ‘Pollination ecology of the invasive tree tobacco Nicotiana glauca: comparisons across native and non-native ranges’ (Ollerton, Watts et. al., Journal of Pollination Ecology, Vol. 12, 2009), the plant is pollinated by hummingbirds in California and sunbirds in South Africa and Israel, where it sets seed by both out-crossing and selfing. But in areas where there are no such birds, such as the Canary Islands and Greece (and Norfolk), the plant still sets lots of viable seed by self-pollination.

Last year I took cuttings from our plant and this year I have raised some plants from seed. So if you want a monster of your own you know where to come.

All parts of Nicotiana glauca are poisonous. In Israel, a 73-year-old French tourist died after cooking the leaves and her 18-year-old grandson suffered slight poisoning. In California cattle suffered poisoning after grazing on the plant. However, ‘Floating Tuxedo’ has documented his experiences of smoking tree tobacco and reports that the dried leaves “smelled like oregano, and people at the Barnes and Noble bookstore cafe gave me funny looks as I rolled it.” The Cahuilla Indians in California used the leaves interchangeably with other tobacco species in hunting rituals and as a poultice to treat swellings, bruises, cuts, wounds, boils, sores, inflamed throat, and swollen glands.

Nicotiana glauca contains two poisonous alkaloids: nicotine and anabasine. (The two compounds are isomers of each other.)

If you want to grow your own tree tobacco, there is more information on the Hardy Tropicals UK and, for the United States, the Daves Garden websites.