On Fri, 12 Jun 2009, Jim McKenney wrote: > The ones which broke the spell for me were the appearance of potatoes > and tobacco in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. 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