Remembering Groningen. Nicotiana tabacum, Cultivated Tobacco, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Just when I'd arrived in Groningen many years ago, the Theodorus Niemeyer Manufacturing Company was granted the predicate 'Royal'. It had been founded in 1819, and was principally a company which developed raw products from the wide-ranging Dutch colonial holdings. One of these was tobacco, especially from Sumatra in what is now Indonesia. When the wind came from the right direction, my little attic room was enveloped by the strong aroma of these products, especially of processing tobacco. In fact, I came to associate the smell of Groningen - the way cities often have their own smells - with that in the Autumn of beet sugar refining and throughout the year of tobacco. It must have been around 1990 or a bit later that environmental rules forced companies to cut down on their aromatic emissions...
It's hard to imagine today, that The Netherlands itself was also once a strong tobacco growing country. It is already reported in 1610 by Caspar Pelletier (?-1659 (?)), that tobacco is being grown in the province of Zeeland. No small wonder that, because much of Dutch trade with the Indies was based in the sea-faring towns of that province. Later, in the middle of the nineteenth century that tobacco industry had moved to the central Netherlands (around Amersfoort). But by 1959 tobacco growing was over due to the influx of Blue Mold, a devastating mildew on the plants. Niemeyer thereafter processed 'foreign' tobacco; so I never smelled 'Dutch processing tobacco'.
Here's a flower of Nicotiana tabacum, Cultivated Tobacco, in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
Remembering Groningen. Nicotiana tabacum, Cultivated Tobacco, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Just when I'd arrived in Groningen many years ago, the Theodorus Niemeyer Manufacturing Company was granted the predicate 'Royal'. It had been founded in 1819, and was principally a company which developed raw products from the wide-ranging Dutch colonial holdings. One of these was tobacco, especially from Sumatra in what is now Indonesia. When the wind came from the right direction, my little attic room was enveloped by the strong aroma of these products, especially of processing tobacco. In fact, I came to associate the smell of Groningen - the way cities often have their own smells - with that in the Autumn of beet sugar refining and throughout the year of tobacco. It must have been around 1990 or a bit later that environmental rules forced companies to cut down on their aromatic emissions...
It's hard to imagine today, that The Netherlands itself was also once a strong tobacco growing country. It is already reported in 1610 by Caspar Pelletier (?-1659 (?)), that tobacco is being grown in the province of Zeeland. No small wonder that, because much of Dutch trade with the Indies was based in the sea-faring towns of that province. Later, in the middle of the nineteenth century that tobacco industry had moved to the central Netherlands (around Amersfoort). But by 1959 tobacco growing was over due to the influx of Blue Mold, a devastating mildew on the plants. Niemeyer thereafter processed 'foreign' tobacco; so I never smelled 'Dutch processing tobacco'.
Here's a flower of Nicotiana tabacum, Cultivated Tobacco, in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.