What is tobacco?
What is tobacco?
The most important tobacco-producing country is China, and
the United States is the second most important tobacco-producing
country. North Carolina is the principal tobacco-
growing state and also other 5 states Kentucky, South Carolina,
Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. The leaves of the tobacco plant
are first cured(dried) and then used mainly in cigarettes.
Tobacco is also used in cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco,
and snuff.
American Indians smoked tobacco as a sacred herb long before the
arrival of European settlers. In the early 1600s the colonists of
Virginia and Maryland began growing tobacco to sell and it was North
America's first commercial crop. After the American Revolution,
other states also began producing tobacco and the main reason was
to sell them to England.
Clusters of star-shaped blossoms identify a tobacco plant.
Its matured leaves are cured (dired) for use in cigarettes,
cigars, and pipe tobacco.