Fiction Authors Get It Wrong
Steve Marak (Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:29:56 PDT)

On Fri, 12 Jun 2009, Jim McKenney wrote:

My wife and I had similar reactions. As you might expect with such a
dedicated fan base, there is commentary on anomalies in Middle Earth
botany on the web. Here's a link that's not bad:

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/faq/newworld.html

To our recollection, Tolkien always referred to "pipe-weed" rather than
tobacco, leaving himself an out. But somewhere I found a note that he
specified (I think not in text of LOTR itself, but in something ancillary
to it) that pipe-weed was the leaf of a strain of nicotiana. I don't
recall the details. (But he also declared it to be introduced to Middle
Earth during the Second Age - one of the advantages of creating your own
universe, I suppose.)

Steve

(at least the potatoes are geophytes!)

-- Steve Marak
-- samarak@gizmoworks.com