pipeweed | the pipe f.a.q. | tobaccos | other varieties

PIPEWEED OF MIDDLE-EARTH

"Gimli took some and rubbed it in his palms and sniffed it. ‘It feels good, and it smells good,’ he said. ‘It is good!’ said Merry. ‘My dear Gimli, it is Longbottom Leaf! There were the Hornblower brandmarks on the barrels, as plain as plain."
- The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

... and then there are those "elusive" tobacco brands that, as pipe smokers, we all wish we could get our hands on. We speak here of truly elusive (read "unavailable" or "non-existent") leaf such as OLD TOBY, SOUTHERN STAR and LONGBOTTOM LEAF, famous in Tolkien's old Middle-Earth:

"'...all accounts agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his gardens in the days of Isengrim the Second ... The best home-grown still comes from that district, especially the varieties now known as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star... And certainly it was from Bree that the art of smoking the genuine weed spread in the recent centuries among Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The home and centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The Prancing Pony, that has been kept by the family of Butterbur from time beyond record.

"'All the same, observations that I have made on my own many journeys south have convinced me that the weed itself... was, I suspect, originally brought over Sea by the Men of Westemesse. It grows abundantly in Gondor, and there is richer and larger than in the North, where it is never found wild and flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom. The Men of Gondor call it sweet galenas, and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers. But even the Dúnedain of Gondor allow us this credit: Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did...'" --Meriadoc Brandybuck, from his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire.