Naturalised on Moroccan Shores. Nicotiana glauca, Wild Tobacco, Dunes of Diabat, Essaouira, Morocco
There's not really all that much growing in the windy - and I mean: gales - dunes of Essaouira on the Atlantic seaboard of Morocco just opposite Mogador. A lot of scrub, of course, populated by large herds of goats and various kinds of reptilian life like turtles and lizards. And curiously a couple of colorful naturalised plants originally from Southern Africa and South America. The dunes are just now blazingly alive with the vivid yellows of Carpobrotus edulis, Hottentot Fig. Remarkably, the red variety acinaciformis is much less in evidence. Lots of solitary bees browsing for food in edulis!
Then there's a sizable population of Tree Tobacco or Wild Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca. It's quite amazing how the long tubular flowers 'hold on' to their branches in the fierce winds. And just look at the beautifully green pistils!
I don't know when our Nicotiana was first prevalent on these coasts. But it was introduced to Europe in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden where it flowered in 1828. Seed had been sent over to his father Mr James Smith (†1848), nursery man at Monkswood Grove, Ayrshire, by Robert Smith (on a collecting trip in North America some years later he got lost and was never heard from again...). Smith had sent it on to Europe from Buenos Aires. The elder Smith supplied that seed to Robert Graham (1786-1845), botany professor at Edinburgh. I imagine introduction to Northern Africa must have been by (a) different way(s)...
PS Internet is still painfully slow and intermittent here... Please bear with me!
Naturalised on Moroccan Shores. Nicotiana glauca, Wild Tobacco, Dunes of Diabat, Essaouira, Morocco
There's not really all that much growing in the windy - and I mean: gales - dunes of Essaouira on the Atlantic seaboard of Morocco just opposite Mogador. A lot of scrub, of course, populated by large herds of goats and various kinds of reptilian life like turtles and lizards. And curiously a couple of colorful naturalised plants originally from Southern Africa and South America. The dunes are just now blazingly alive with the vivid yellows of Carpobrotus edulis, Hottentot Fig. Remarkably, the red variety acinaciformis is much less in evidence. Lots of solitary bees browsing for food in edulis!
Then there's a sizable population of Tree Tobacco or Wild Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca. It's quite amazing how the long tubular flowers 'hold on' to their branches in the fierce winds. And just look at the beautifully green pistils!
I don't know when our Nicotiana was first prevalent on these coasts. But it was introduced to Europe in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden where it flowered in 1828. Seed had been sent over to his father Mr James Smith (†1848), nursery man at Monkswood Grove, Ayrshire, by Robert Smith (on a collecting trip in North America some years later he got lost and was never heard from again...). Smith had sent it on to Europe from Buenos Aires. The elder Smith supplied that seed to Robert Graham (1786-1845), botany professor at Edinburgh. I imagine introduction to Northern Africa must have been by (a) different way(s)...
PS Internet is still painfully slow and intermittent here... Please bear with me!