page_title: Pituri
section_title: Identifying the plant
hierarchical_section_title: Pituri / History / Identifying the plant
caption_attribution_description: depicting the plant Nicotiana suaveolens and given the title: New-holland Tobacco
context_page_description: Pituri is a mixture of leaves and wood ash traditionally chewed as a stimulant by Aboriginal Australians widely across the continent. Leaves are gathered from any of several species of native tobacco or from at least one distinct population of the species Duboisia hopwoodii. Various species of Acacia, Grevillea and Eucalyptus are burned to produce the ash. The term "pituri" may also refer to the plants from which the leaves are gathered or from which the ash is made. Some authors use the term to refer only to the plant Duboisia hopwoodii and its leaves and any chewing mixture containing its leaves.
context_section_description: Ferdinand von Mueller had identified Bancroft's 1877 batch of pituri as the crushed leaves and twigs of the shrub, Duboisia hopwoodii, and writers subsequently referred to Duboisia hopwoodii as the raw material of pituri. For instance, in his report on the 1891 Elder expedition into northwest South Australia and the Gibson, Great Sandy and Great Victoria deserts of Western Australia, Richard Helms noted, "Whilst these tribes have discovered the stimulating properties of Nicotiana suaveolens [a species of native tobacco], they do not seem to know the more powerful narcotic of 'pituri', Duboisia hopwoodii, which also occurs in many places throughout the same regions."
  Then, in 1933 Johnston and Cleland reported that the plant Europeans usually associate with pituri, Duboisia hopwoodii, is not chewed across most of central Australia – native tobacco is; and two years later Hicks and Le Messurier found in a 300-mile radius around the south-west, north-west and north of Alice Springs people "chewed, under the name of 'pituri' the leaves of at least two varieties of Nicotiana  ... they wished to indicate that [Duboisia hopwoodii] was 'pituri', but only used when real pituri, i.e. Nicotiana, was unobtainable."
  So, it was now clear that pituri is not one substance and the term relates to the chewing of the leaves of various plants including Duboisia hopwoodii and more than one species of native tobacco.
caption: Nicotiana suaveolens, sometimes used in central Australia as the active ingredient in pituri.
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