Petite red Canadian tobacco

[Hazen]

Hi I’m growing a few varieties this year, Ontario bold, del gold, Canadian Virginia and I got some short variety from Quebec called petite red Canadian, wondering if anyone has tried it? Says it’s been around since 1830

 

[Hazen]

Small Red Canadian Tobacco - Terre Promise

This pink-flowered tobacco grows easily in any type of soil. Hardy, short, and an early producer, the plant ripens in only six weeks and offers leaves with a strong flavour. Considered sacred, this tobacco is an important medicinal plant for First Nations, and is used in numerous rituals...

www.terrepromise.ca

 

[deluxestogie]

There's a problem with that description of "Small Red Canadian" or "Petite Red Canadian". The "pink-flowered" tobacco is clearly not Nicotiana rustica, which was cultivated by indigenous people north of today's Panama, all the way to southern Canada, sometimes considered sacred, and often used as a medicinal plant. It is unquestionably Nicotiana tabacum, which was introduced into North America from the southern hemisphere by Europeans.

I'm curious to learn what you end up with.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Here's a better photo from
https://www.lasocietedesplantes.com/produits/tabac-petit-canadien/


Looks like an (almost) columnar cigar tobacco like CC98, to me

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

For smokers of tabac canadien, the realm of cultural relations would never be the same. Not only was the production of French-Canadian tobacco seen as backward, but the smokers of tabac canadien were seen as tasteless, undiscerning consumers whose choice reflected badly on their character. For example, John Todd, a McGill medical student who regularly sent carefully selected tobacco home to his father in Ontario, recounted in a letter to his
mother what he considered to be the “disgusting” smoking habits of rural French Canadians. Barnum and Bailey’s circus had come to Montreal, and every “Canuck paysan and paysanne too, who could scrape together the ‘necessary’ took in the circus”. He complained of one family “consisting of Papa, Maman, Bébé, two little girls and four boys, the eldest perhaps fifteen. Papa and the sons all smoked common, clay pipes, crammed full of vile smelling
‘tabac rouge’.”33 Disgust for this national ritual was also shared by
some French Canadians, as illustrated in a cartoon in L’Album Universel
(Figure 1)

I lost the reference

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

From Farm to Firm: Canadian Tobacco c. 1860-1950 - TSpace

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiytvHHtO73AhXdKDQIHejYD6U4ChAWegQIGRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftspace.library.utoronto.ca%2Fbitstream%2F1807%2F73041%2F3%2FMcQuarrie_Jonathan_R_201606_PhD_thesis.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1q8S_oRcSSs-6qBn4caT0I

If growers seeking to raise tobacco for manufacture were vexing for Charlan, farmers raising pipe tobacco for personal use were positively bewildering. Tabac canadien, which attracted the
attention of early reformers like Foucher and Labelle, was a fluid category that contained any number of varietal strains. Tabac canadien could refer to one of any number of strong pipet tobaccos, including Quesnel, ‘Le Canadien’, Petit Havane, Tabac Rouge (or Petit Rouge), and so on.60 While Charlan noted that some of these varieties could have value as pipe tobaccos,
particularly Petit Havane, most of these tobaccos were mixed and stem from a period “when the culture and trade of Canadian tobaccos were in the embryo stage….these cheap products are too
often composed entirely of raw tobaccos sometimes of very doubtful quality.”61 As a category for the tobacco expert, tabac canadien was far too fluid to be of value. It was best left to people like Henri Bourassa to smoke as a symbol of their commitment to their ideal rural French Canada—and emotional ties to a romantic rural past certainly had no place in rational tobacco typologies.62
Of course, Charlan would never have appreciated that his creation of categories was as idiomatic as Bourassa’s clay pipe.

 

[Hazen]

Here's a better photo from
https://www.lasocietedesplantes.com/produits/tabac-petit-canadien/


Looks like an (almost) columnar cigar tobacco like CC98, to me
View attachment 41789

Those leaves look big enough to smoke I was kind of worried they would be real small. More of an ornamental, the one site I found talking about smoking it said it was bold ‍ Im hoping to make an old Montréal blend

 

[deluxestogie]

Be sure to properly bag the bud head of at east one of the Petite Red plants, to collect pure seed. I would love to grow it next season, to compare it to the many other varieties I have grown.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

There are a few interesting old Canadian varieties that are in GRIN-CA that are inaccessible to plebes like us.

https://pgrc-rpc.agr.gc.ca/gringlobal/search

CN 36188 Grand Rouge
CN 36189 Grand Bleu
CN 36190 Rose Quesnel
CN 36192 Grand General
CN 45366 Petit Havane

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I wonder where the French got their seed initially. My suspicion would be from the United States, Guiana, Haiti, or the Antilles. Therefore, if Petit Havane is actually legitimately related to Cuban tobacco, I would be surprised - yet, I'm no history expert. I've heard that, way back, English Canada had "better" tobacco which the Hudson's Bay company got from the Portuguese traders active in Brazil.

 

[deluxestogie]

In the past, all typically cigar-leaf shaped smoking tobacco was classified as Nicotiana tabacum var. Havanensis, which I suppose was to contrast it with Orinoco types and primitives. The blue variety needs better marketing.

Bob

 

[Hazen]

Be sure to properly bag the bud head of at east one of the Petite Red plants, to collect pure seed. I would love to grow it next season, to compare it to the many other varieties I have grown.

Bob

I will, I got mine from a place in Michigan. She said they grew it some around there, and there was a place in Canada selling it but not very many others offered it. I’m excited to see what comes out of it. Right now I’m fighting aphids and the flea beetles just showed up. I just picked up some insecticidal soap, but the poor things are still in trays and inside half the time. When I started to harden them off, everything showed up on them, fingers crossed they make it to flowering time

 

[Hazen]

There are a few interesting old Canadian varieties that are in GRIN-CA that are inaccessible to plebes like us.

https://pgrc-rpc.agr.gc.ca/gringlobal/search

CN 36188 Grand Rouge
CN 36189 Grand Bleu
CN 36190 Rose Quesnel
CN 36192 Grand General
CN 45366 Petit Havane

Somebody out there must have seeds for these , I wonder

 

[Emile]

I wonder where the French got their seed initially. My suspicion would be from the United States, Guiana, Haiti, or the Antilles. Therefore, if Petit Havane is actually legitimately related to Cuban tobacco, I would be surprised - yet, I'm no history expert. I've heard that, way back, English Canada had "better" tobacco which the Hudson's Bay company got from the Portuguese traders active in Brazil.

A bit of history about “tabac petit Canadien” et “Rose Quesnel”

Tobacco-Products Industry​

Although Canada's tobacco industry has developed largely during this century, tobacco growing goes back to early colonial days, when settlers around the St Lawrence River adopted the smoking customs of aboriginal peoples. French settlers began by copying the agricultural model set by the Indians. Some years later, a French colonial ordinance forbade retail sale of tobacco in New France, leaving the settlers without an incentive to improve crop quality or yields. Consequently, they grew only enough for their own use, curing it naturally in the open air. This simple method of preparation produced a unique tobacco, tabac canadien. The French colonists began trading tobacco in 1652, but the French government did not encourage tobacco growing in Canada until 1735, after which the crop was cultivated regularly. Two varieties were native, petit canadien and Rose Quesnel. In Upper Canada the tobacco-growing industry was founded around Kent and Essex counties by Loyalists who came from the southern US during the American Revolution and brought tobacco seeds with them.

Tobacco-Products Industry

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is an annual herbaceous plant of the nightshade family. In Canada, tobacco growing expanded commercially in the late 19th century....

www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca

 

[DreadApache]

Its April 1st and starting up my seeds today in Quebec, Canada. I was lucky to get seeds for Little Canadian aka Little Red tobacco. I'll post pictures at the end of the season.