Tobold Hornblower
Old Toby, a gardener of Longbottom in the Southfarthing, was the first hobbit to cultivate pipe-weed, around TA 2670.
Tobold Hornblower, called Old Toby, was a hobbit of the Shire and a well regarded gardener of Longbottom in the Southfarthing. Around TA 2670 he became the first to grow pipe-weed in the Shire, and his cultivation carried the herb across the country and past its borders. The strain called Old Toby took his name, and Longbottom Leaf probably takes its own from his village. Meriadoc Brandybuck's Herblore of the Shire holds that Tobold first learned of the plant at Bree, the furthest from home he ever travelled, where it grew on the south slopes of the hill. The year of his death was not recorded, though he likely died somewhere in the twenty-seventh century of the Third Age.
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