Nicotiana clevelandii

Cleveland's tobacco

Family: Solanaceae · Type: annual · Native

Cleveland's tobacco is a California native annual found in southern California, the Channel Islands, and southern desert regions in sandy washes, dunes, sea cliffs, and desert scrub at elevations below 500 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces greenish white or purple-tinged flowers with a star-shaped, pentagonal corolla limb 6 to 8 millimeters in diameter. Growing 20 to 60 centimeters tall with slender, glandular-hairy stems that have persistent hair bases, it develops a rough texture. Its leaves vary from elliptic to lanceolate, with basal and lower stem leaves having petioles and upper leaves becoming progressively narrower and sessile. The plant produces small fruits 4 to 6 millimeters long with tiny seeds barely half a millimeter in size.

Habitat: Sandy washes, dunes, sea cliffs, desert scrub

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 500 m

Bioregions: SCo, ChI (Santa Catalina, Santa Cruz islands), DSon

California counties: Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Imperial

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.