Indian tobacco

American  

noun

1. a common American plant, Lobelia inflata, of the lobelia family, having small, blue flowers and inflated capsules.

---

Indian tobacco British  

noun

1. a poisonous North American campanulaceous plant, Lobelia inflata, with small pale blue flowers and rounded inflated seed capsules

---

Etymology

Origin of Indian tobacco

First recorded in 1610–20

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Indian tobacco

Essentra FZE from about 2013 to 2019 was a subsidiary of a partnership begun in 2013 in Dubai with an Indian tobacco company identified only as “Company 1” in court filings.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 16, 2020

In the 1990s, she began working with lobeline, a compound derived from a group of plants, including Lobelia inflata, commonly known as Indian tobacco.

From Nature ● Jun. 23, 2015

Sir James: In regard to the constitution of the cigarets, I understand that the material to which my honorable friend refers may, in fact, be Indian tobacco.

From Time Magazine Archive

Only these bits of flint enmeshed in the clinging tendrils of Indian tobacco, or kinnikinic, were left to tell the tale of his heroism.

From A Mountain Boyhood by Comstock, Enos B. (Enos Benjamin)

So sprinkled was the pasture with rag-baby blossoms and the cottony herb of Indian tobacco that it spread out like a rare old Persian carpet of cream and rose and delicate green.

From Main Street by Lewis, Sinclair