Bad: Hobbit pipeweed is probably just tobacco because [something from Tolkienās unpublished letters].
Also bad: Pipeweed is totally marijuana. All hobbits are stoners.
Good: āPipeweedā is a catch-all term for anything you can stick in a pipe and smoke. Some of it will give you a light nicotine buzz, and some of it will get you absolutely blasted out of your mind. Hobbits are perfectly aware which is which, but since their system of classification is based on what farm the pipeweed was grown on rather than what species of plants went into it, the distinctions are often opaque to outsiders. If a hobbit offers you a puff of āOld Tobyā, make sure you know how old Toby likes his pipeweed before you accept!
It is not something from Tolkienās unpublished letters. Itās literally in the forward to The Fellowship of the Ring.
Yup. Hereās an excerpt, emphasis mine:
2. Concerning Pipe-weed
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or āartā as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.
āThis,ā he says, āis the one art that we can certainly claim to be our own invention. When Hobbits first began to smoke is not known, all the legends and family histories take it for granted; for ages folk in the Shire smoked various herbs, some fouler, some sweeter. But all accounts agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his gardens in the days of Isengrim the Second, about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The best home-grown still comes from that district, especially the varieties now known as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star.ā
Old Toby is a specific cultivar of tobacco, one of many. Itās exported beyond the Shire and everyone knows what to expect from it.
I donāt mind the weed jokes, people are just having fun, but it matters to me that pipe-weed is canonically Nicotiana because of this:
āThe Men of Gondor call it sweet galenas, and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers.ā
I love this an unreasonable amount because ornamental tobacco species like Nicotiana alata and Nicotiana sylvestris (pictured below) have long been grown for their perfume in gardens around the world.
They are night-scented plants, most fragrant after the sun has set. That means you can walk out into your garden one quiet evening and your garden could smell like the gardens of Gondor in the olden days. That just makes me crazy in the best way.
