Roman Chamomile, Chamaemelum nobilis or Anthemis nobilis, is one of my favorite plants in the world. A lawn with small flowers that you can walk on and produce such an amazing scent, is too wonderful. Sadly the stuff will not survive the summer in my area, it barely survives spring. It does great in winter, but then is dies. I plant it every year, but it is a short term thing.
German Chamomile, Matricaria chamomilla, is more productive and should be able to take our heat in summer, but the seed that is sold here in the USA is the result of careful breeding over hundreds of years, to allow it to live in more Northern climes. So I plant this too every year, but in fairly heavy shade. Spain has similar weather, and Mexico is even further South, so unless they grow it at higher altitudes, manzinilla should thrive here.
I am pretty sure that tobacco smoke is not a mosquito deterrent. I have been at parties where the smoke was pretty thick and the mosquitoes were not deterred. As far as the presence of tobacco plants deterring mosquitoes, I would not be surprised, since tobacco is covered with tiny hairs and resins so things like mosquitoes are going to stick like fly paper. ;)
I would be happy to trade tobacco seed for roman chamomile, I have a bad case of zone denial disorder, and I have an amazing quantity of seed really. My estimate is that I just sent Amanda something well over 20,000 seeds. But since tobacco seeds are 10,000 to 20,000 per gram, and I have over a pound, I can spare a few seeds.
Bob
