Mullein and Rabbit tobacco don't even look like kinfolks! The mullein has great big velvety leaves that are a rather strange color of green, and stay green through the winter. When it warms up they put up a tall stalk and bloom, then the entire plant dies. But the old brown stalk stands there all winter, and spreads it's seed far and wide.These stalks are several feet tall , and the bloom part on top slightly resembles a skinny corncob.
 
Rabbit tobacco is about a foot tall and is topped  with a wide flat cluster of flowers in the Fall that turn pale silvery gray or white and are easy to spot. The leaves are dark,longish and thin and dry up on the stalk. It has a very herb like smell when you crush the leaves. Daddy made a corncob pipe once and smoked rabbit tobacco in so he could blow the smoke in our ears when they hurt. Seems like the Latin name is Americas or something like that and it has two names.
 
My younger brother Jerry very helpfully offered to teach me to smoke grape vines, and it only took one easy lesson to learn how to smoke them and  decide me that one try was enough - Geez! It was worse than smoking rolled up paper like we'd been doing. Less chance of sucking flame down your throat though - Must admit that.
 
Whomever said smoking was hazardous to your health was sure right. When Reba Dell caught the newly mown hay in the big chicken yard on fire certain parts of her anatomy were very painful for a good while ! Maybe if Mama hadn't been all the way over in the cotton patch on the far side of the big pasture when she saw the black smoke rolling from somewhere around the house, where my Daddy was in bed with Leukemia and the 2 littlest kids were there somewhere in Reba's care. She was about 5 or 6, much too young to start smoking. After beating out the flames that had consumed our playhouse with it's wonderfully soft carpet of dry grass I believe there was something said to the effect that if ANY of us were caught smoking again. Well, my mind blanks out that part, so it must have been truly scary! You didn't mess with my Mama when she was that mad. 3 of the 9 kids smoked cigarettes, the rest of us didn't. Wonder if we remembered Mama's warning ?