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Anyone investigated Nicotania?

I was at someone's house a few days ago and noticed a large plant with flowers that looked nightshade related. I was told the plant is Nicotania. It had several large sticky leaves with a lot of fungus gnats stuck to them. The leaves were sticky but not mucilaginous like a sundew. Has anyone investigated Nicotania for insectivory or quasi-insectivory?
 
Not sure, but that genus kills lots of bugs in more than one way. I grow N. sylvestris and have noticed insects stuck to the plants on occasion. But the nicotine the genus contains is a dandy insecticide.
 
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Nicotine is a paralytic poison to any animal with a muscle. And its addictive and stimulant properties, upon lacing nectar in nonlethal doses, enhance pollination dramatically. Along with caffeine, it's one of the most amazing secondary metabolites in the plant kingdom.

In many Solanaceae, not only do the plants dispense nicotine, but the trichomes release a powerful superglue. When broken, the liquid glue solidifies in contact with air. It's freaking amazing. Primarily protective in nature rather than carnivorous, but there's always the hope that evolution will take an even more sinister turn with that family.

The topic of plant defense absolutely fascinates me.
 
That sounds soOo cool ThePlantMan!
This species sounds very interesting to study i have to look info on this species :)
 
You can buy a pack of 20 and investigate them one by one. Usually fire is involved
 
I smoke so i kno this, but i mean a plant as a whole to study not the processed/dried and packaged with additives and other stuff like with ciggarettes.
 
I grow two types of tobacco they are very neat indeed.
My sprouts are only a few weeks old.

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They need to be sown on top of the soil they need light to sprout. Unfortunately with lower light this makes for very leggy plants Indoors but still nice to have. I've used my n. Rustica with a whopping 13%? Nicotine as bug spray. Bye bye ants and every other living organism that got hit with that spray rest in peice. I have tried smoking the n. Rustica it is very potent only a small pinch and I was "full" but still very nice to smoke through a pipe. Growing your own tobacco is very rewarding and much better then store bought tobacco with all those preservatives.

May I inquire as to if there will be seeds from this strain of tobacco? I may very well be interested in a new type of tobacco.
 
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Again I can only speak to my experience with N. sylvestris, but I find that it self seeds vigorously. I find it popping up all over. But being grown outside those fragrant flowers do their job of attracting pollinators very well.
 
  • #10
I grow my n. Rustica and n. Tobacum "burley" inside during the winter. Mine don't flower a lot being indoors.
 
  • #11
I grow my n. Rustica and n. Tobacum "burley" inside during the winter. Mine don't flower a lot being indoors.

Well if they don't flower they certainly won't set seed.......
 
  • #13
I haven't noticed seeds, yet. The plant looks like Nicotiana sylvestris. Also, I finally noticed I misspelled Nicotiana in earlier posts.
 
  • #14
I watched an interesting documentary about plant defenses. There is a Bush called Acai I think that distributes pheromones when animals feed on it that triggers itself and all plants like it within a wide radius to secret a bitter poison to repel the intruding animals. Nicotine did something similar if I recall.

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  • #15
Kronos, I think it was Acacia in Africa. As animals (springbok?) browsed the plants the plants released phenols (maybe?) to alert the other plants in the area. Also, the plants increased levels of toxins in their leaves as the herbivore ate them. The documentary showed a herbivore drop dead from eating plants in the same area for too long.
 
  • #16
Yep that's it.

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