Plant Name
Scientific Name: Nicotiana glauca
Common Name: Tree Tobacco
Plant Characteristics
Duration: Perennial
Growth Habit: Tree, Shrub. These plants are frost sensitive, so their size is limited here by cold winter weather.
Arizona Native Status: Introduced. This naturalized small, weedy tree is native to South America.
Habitat: Desert, Riparian
Flower Color: Yellow
Flowering Season: Spring, Summer, Fall
Height: To 25 feet (7.6 m) tall, but half that or less here
Description: The flowers are loosely clustered at the branch tips. The individual flowers are tubular and up to 2 inches (5 cm) long. The leaves are alternate, petioled, up to 7 inches (18 cm) long, egg-shaped, and a glaucous blue-green color. These fast-growing plants are slender, arching, and often lopsided with a leaning trunk.
Special Characteristics
Hummingbird Flower – Even though yellow is not a favorite hummingbird flower color, the nectar-filled flowers do attract hummingbirds.
Poisonous – All parts of the plants are highly poisonous and contain the toxic pyridine alkaloids nicotine and anabasine.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Asteridae
Order: Solanales
Family: Solanaceae – Potato family
Genus: Nicotiana L. – tobacco
Species: Nicotiana glauca Graham – tree tobacco
More About This Plant