This flowering tobacco plant, a native of Brazil, is often grown as an annual, though it is really a frost-tender perennial and will survive for a few years in our Sydney climate. Known as Langsdorff's tobacco, it can grow around a metre tall.
It has large soft leaves and flower spires massed with a haze of tiny lime-green tubular bells
which can appear almost all year round, but particularly in the warmer months. The flowers feel
slightly sticky. It will grow in sun or part shade; it is indifferent to soil type, often coming up in
cracks in paving. In some gardens it will self-seed with abandon, though in others it never
reappears. This may be a result of heavy mulching suffocating the tiny seeds. Like all
lime-green plants, it looks brilliant with blue, purple or orange flowers, or against
a background of dark purplish leaves. I admired it in a friend's garden paired with the soft blue flowers of Plectranthus zuluensis. It can also look wonderful grown against a simple backdrop of green leaves. It is useful as a cut flower. It is rarely available in nurseries, but many
keen gardeners have it and will give you a seedling if you ask. Sometimes Nicotiana
will grow from cuttings, so that's worth a try too: keep the cutting in a humid, enclosed
environment until it (hopefully) strikes.
The genus belongs to the family Solanaceae, which contains a number of poisonous members, and Nicotiana plants should never be ingested (or smoked!). Contact with the foliage may irritate skin, so gloves should be worn when handling the plants.