Pipe Or Cigar Tobacco

Um, I don't think that is exactly the story. Some of the varieties of tobacco used for cigarettes are good quality, and some of those same tobaccos, processed and cut differently, are used in pipe tobacco. Likewise with cigar tobacco, it can be good quality to outstanding. Some of the wrapper tobacco is grown primarily for that purpose, wrapping as the outer skin for cigars. The quality goes from useable to rare and exquisite, cigar makers would say, I think. Usually, higher priced tobacco is better quality, but some lower priced tobacco is very good, perhaps just not as dependably. You might be interested to know that one of the big cigar wrapper tobacco growing states is Connecticut, which you don't usually think of as the tobacco belt. Anyway, it's a little more nuanced than grading leaf by its intended or ultimate use.

I believe the position of the leaf on the plant has an impact on the use, flavor and burn rates.

Neither is better; they are the same species having come to different properties by generations of being grown in disparate soil, in different climate, with different methods of cultivation. Tobacco takes a great deal of tending to grow well. After harvest is when the real magic starts of cure, and keeping, and in this cigar tobacco is the more intense in the hanging, drying and being turned at different levels within the aging barn.
All of this is an art that has shrunk considerably in Cuba and is also being suppressed by FDA and the international backlash against smoking.
Cubans were very proud of the cigar craft until the Castros took ir from them. A farmer with a barn full of his tobacco slept there to tend it through storms.

Reading is how a lot of misinformation is passed about. Except for what's posted on the internet, that's all true or so I've read ... on the internet.

You're right, folanator. The closer to the ground the leaf, the darker & more flavorful it will generally be. Cigarette tobacco's not usually in general garbage, just finely cut just due to the nature of the beast. Cigar tobacco (or maybe in the cases I'm talking about I should say "tobacco"!) usually isn't either. It's just the way it's cut, & I mean that in both senses of the word. Long filler is best, medium can be OK, but short filler? GAWD.... That's the crap they put in Tampa Jewels, etc. It's the stuff that gets broken off by accident, has to have bugs or disease excised, etc., & thus ends up being basically shreds. Then (since it's used in the cheapest of the cheap) they cut it even further by using kraft paper or other extenders.
And knowing that I'm now on exTREMEly shaky ground because it's about cigar tobacco & not pipe, I will shut my big fat yap up & get back to the *correct* track! -sheepish grin-

Unless the OP was referring to commercial cigarettes which are produced with chemical additives.

Ja, is def trudat. :

OK, OK, OK, I am neither a tobacco guru, nor an expert, but I do grow tobacco, and I have grown up around tobacco farming.
The reason why cigarette tobacco used in pre-made factory cigarettes sucks is because they remove all of the oils, juices, and nectar from the tobacco in processing, leaving behind dry cellulose, and reformulate the stuff and re-case it with the mix to control tars, nicotine, and taste. I've actually been to the factory to see this.
But, as far as from the field, pipe tobacco comes from the exact same places in some instances. This has been the appeal of RYO bagged pipe tobacco since it has started. The bagged blends are more natural and even taste good in a pipe, thus making a superior cigarette to pre-made cigs.
Cigar tobacco is really not that much different from regular burleys. There is a plethora of different flavors among cigar plants, and despite popular consensus, it is less about where the seed was soiled than it is how the leaf is cured. If we color cured a Tennessee burley and fermented that leaf like a Nicaraguan leaf, you'd get something closer to a cigar flavor. You wouldn't get something "exactly" like a particular type of cigar, but it would be more cigary. And, if you grew some Havana seed and treated it like a regular ol burley, you'd get something that tasted closer to a semois or Tennessee burley.
The plant is a plant, is a plant. Yes variety is important for getting "exact" flavors, but for the most part, how it is prepped makes the most difference.
Al;so, to get variations in brightleaf varieties, that we call Virginias in the pipe world, you treat the leaf closer to how a cigar leaf is treated for socialization, cure, color cure, fermenting...
So, this notion of cigar leaf, pipe leaf, chewing tobacco, and cigarette tobacco is merely in the heads of the consumers. To the farmers, not so much. They just work towards meeting expectations. But, all in all, the differences in varietals is more like the differences in apples, and not apples to oranges.
Also, in regards to where the leaf is located on the plant. The top leaves are where more flavonoids are, not because of the top leaves getting more sun, because they are the newest leaves on the plant. Bottom leaves are the oldest and have had 90% more sun that the brand new top leaves. But, the top leaves are what grew as the flowers were developed, developing a strong aroma to attract pollinators. And, it is were more nicotine was developed as a result in surges of flavonoids.

Bottom leaves are thicker, older, and have more sugars, but not flavor. It actually has less of that distinctive "tobacco-y" flavors. I love snagging the dried sand lugs off of a developed Virginia and loading my pipe with it in the field. It's a sweet experience. But, teh top leaves of a Virginia... Right after flue curing... will kick you ass like a burley twist. Especially the leaves that grew on the same level as the flowers. Oh, and smoking the flowers... well, lets just say you shouldn't do that unless you want to follow your spirit guide into a belly buster across the vomit river, and you'e gonna pay the ferryman, regardless.
But, basically, what separates the use of one leaf from another is the imagination of the consumers. At one time, long long ago, there was just tobacco, and people did with that as they wanted. Slice a chunk off for your pipe, break it up more for a rollie, or bite a chunk off, or have Juan to roll it up into stogie for you.

Oh, and smoking the flowers... well, lets just say you shouldn't do that unless you want to follow your spirit guide into a belly buster across the vomit river, and you'e gonna pay the ferryman, regardless.

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:clap:

Thanks, Cosmic! That's a rich synopsis with excellent detail from someone who has experienced nicotine through the skin of his hands. I also like that it suggests I was on the right track in my post despite having far less life experience to back it up. I do enjoy driving at night and seeing those tobacco harvester machines with their lights blazing and workers aboard combing down the tobacco fields like passenger ferries headed across the sound.

Thank you kindly igna'.

Cosmic to the rescue!

Cosmic, as usual when reading your stuff, I learned something, a couple in fact. Thanks! I bow to your encyclopedic knowledge. (No sarc, dead serious.) And of course you're dead right about the sun stuff. 39 licks with a tobacco stick for me!

Oh, and smoking the flowers... well, lets just say you shouldn't do that unless you want to follow your spirit guide into a belly buster across the vomit river, and you'e gonna pay the ferryman, regardless.

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I remember reading that early conquistadors in the Americas reported native priests smoking themselves into a very strong intoxication for religious rituals. It's unclear if they had mixed other plants with tobacco to achieve this. Reading this I wonder if perhaps they could have smoked the flowers.