Nicotiana obtusifolia

Desert tobacco

Family: Solanaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Desert tobacco is a California native perennial found in southern Sierra Nevada and desert regions in gravelly or rocky washes and slopes at elevations below 1,600 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces dull white to green-white flowers with a throat 12 to 35 millimeters long, creating a subtle, delicate bloom. Growing with glandular-hairy stems 20 to 100 centimeters tall, often branched from the base with a somewhat woody foundation, it develops an irregular, open structure. Its leaves vary from oblong-obovate in the lower portions to elliptic and narrowly ovate in the upper portions, with the lower leaves having short wing-like petioles. The fruit is a small capsule 8 to 11 millimeters long, containing tiny seeds less than one millimeter in size.

Habitat: Gravelly or rocky washes, slopes

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 1600 m

Bioregions: s SNE, D

California counties: Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo, San Diego, Imperial, Los Angeles

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