We find in herbaria a number of specimens gathered in Peru without indication that they were cultivated or that they grew near plantations. Boissier’s herbarium contains two specimens collected by Pavon, from different localities.[678] Pavon says in his flora that the species grows in the moist warm forests of the Peruvian Andes, and that it is cultivated. But—and this is more significant—Edouard André gathered specimens in the republic of Ecquador at Saint Nicholas, on the western slope of the volcano of Corazon in a virgin forest. These he was kind enough to send me. They are evidently the tall variety (four to six feet) of _N. Tabacum_, with the upper leaves narrow and acuminate, as they are represented in the plates of Hayne and Miller.[679] The lower leaves are wanting. The flower, which gives the true characters of the species, is certainly that of _N. Tabacum_, and it is well known that the height of this plant and the breadth of the leaves vary in cultivation.[680] It is very possible that its original country extended north as far as Mexico, as far south as Bolivia, and eastward to Venezuela.
_Nicotiana rustica_, Linnæus, a species with yellow flowers, very different from _Tabacum_,[681] and which yields a coarse kind of tobacco, was more often cultivated by the Mexicans and the native tribes north of Mexico. I have a specimen brought from California by Douglas in 1837, a time when colonists were still few; but American authorities do not admit that the plant is wild, and Dr. Asa Gray says that it sows itself in waste places.[682] This was perhaps the case with the specimens in Boissier’s herbarium, gathered in Peru by Pavon, and which he does not mention in the Peruvian flora. The species grows in abundance about Cordova in the Argentine Republic,[683] but from what epoch is unknown. From the ancient use of the plant and the home of the most analogous species, the probabilities are in favour of a Mexican, Texan, or Californian origin.
Several botanists, even Americans, have believed that the species came from the old world. This is certainly a mistake, although the plant has spread here and there even into our forests, and sometimes in abundance,[684] having escaped from cultivation. Authors of the sixteenth century spoke of it as a foreign plant introduced into gardens and sometimes spreading from them.[685] It occurs in some herbaria under the names of _N. tartarica_, _turcica_, or _sibirica_; but these are garden-grown specimens, and no botanist has found the species in Asia, or on the borders of Asia, with any appearance of wildness.