#pipe weed

April Tolkien Challenge; Day 9

Pipeweed

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Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, Southern Star, Southlinch…. all different kinds of pipeweed. It was a plant used for smoking, particularly for the hobbits in the Shire. The small beings are known to have a huge love for the leaves, and use it multiple times a day.

Tobold Hornblower introduced the recipe to the world in the year 2670 of the Third Age, or the years 1070 by Shire Reckoning. The plant originally grew in Númenor, and was brought to Middle-Earth by the Dúnedain during the Second Age. For them, the plant was known as Sweet Galenas. In Gondor, the weed was known as Westman’s-weed, and grew there as a wild plant. Both people enjoyed the plant for its sweet fragrance and flowers.

Gandalf, who was often seen in or near the Shire, took up smoking as well, and even learned how to blow smoke rings and shapes. Saruman had criticized him for it and disdained the art. Yet, after years, he started doing it as well. In The Two Towers, Merry and Pippin found barrels of Southfarthing in the provisions of Isengard, making it known that Saruman had practiced smoking too.

At the end of the Third Age, when the War of the Ring had ended, Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck had even written a book about the history and art of smoking Pipe-Weed.

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Sources:
-One Wiki To Rule Them All
-Tolkien Gateway
-The Two Towers, JRR Tolkien