''Nicotiana acuminata'' is a species of wild tobacco known by the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

common name manyflower tobacco. It is native to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

but it is known on other continents, including

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, as an

introduced species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there ...

. It is an annual herb exceeding a meter in maximum height. The leaf blades may be 25 centimeters long and are borne on petioles. The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

bears several white or green-tinged flowers with tubular throats up to 4 centimeters long, their bases enclosed in green-striped

sepal A sepal () is a part of the flower of angiosperms (flowering plants). Usually green, sepals typically function as protection for the flower in bud, and often as support for the petals when in bloom., p. 106 The term ''sepalum'' was coined b ...

s. It was first described by Robert Graham in 1828 as ''Petunia acuminata'', but was transferred to the genus, ''

Nicotiana ''Nicotiana'' () is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the Family (biology), family Solanaceae, that is Native plant, indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various ''Nicotiana'' species, common ...

'' in 1829 by

William Jackson Hooker Sir William Jackson Hooker (6 July 178512 August 1865) was an English botanist and botanical illustrator, who became the first director of Kew when in 1841 it was recommended to be placed under state ownership as a botanic garden. At Kew he ...

In ''

On The Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

'',

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

mentions that ''N. acuminata'' is not a particularly distinct species, which is failed to fertilise or to be fertilised, by no less than eight other species of ''

''.

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment: var. ''multiflora''Photo gallery
acuminata Flora of Argentina Flora of Chile Taxa named by Robert Graham Taxa described in 1828 {{Solanales-stub