What types of leaf used in cigars and cigarettes

Virtually all Canadian cigarettes are manufactured from the same variety of Virginia

tobacco, grown in the same five Ontario counties.

If I remember correctly it's the cheapest Virginia they can find. They leave the nasty stems in and just throw that bad boy through a blender then douse it with God knows how many chemicals, roll it up, and put a filter on it.
As Brian Levine put it on the radio show, "Pipe tobacco is the Kobe beef of the tobacco world. Cigarettes are the hot dogs of the tobacco world.".

Not true. Much of the cream of the crop in oriental tobaccos, for example, go toward cigarettes. Cigarette companies have many magnitudes of buying power than do pipe tobacco companies. Pipe tobacco is a fringe of a fringe and most companies have to make do with what's left over.
Hint: it wasn't the pipe that saved Perique.
Cigars are a different world and there is very little spill over. The cultivars are all different and are cultivated to a much higher level than pipe tobaccos in general.
With respect to the kobe beef analogy, I think pipe tobacco is inline with mince meat pie. I think this in part explains why there is so much ingenuity and diversity in pipe tobaccos. A little sprinkle of creativity...

I recall the Orlik tour video where the Orlik rep stated that American Spirits started to use Perique and that is why they kept the factory open. But I am not aware if that was proven true. Anybody know if the new owners of the Perique factory confirmed that?

I think pipe tobacco is inline with mince meat pie

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Absolutely no idea what ya mean there.

What about "high end" cigarette with all natural tobacco or there isn't such a thing?

Nat Sherman's among others.

Smokable tobacco products, whether cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco blends are available in a whole range of qualities. The cigar and pipe smokers you find in this forum tend to be more discerning when it comes to quality tobacco products. There are also many diffences in the tobacco grown for cigars and that grown for pipe tobacco blends, mainly due to the specific characteristics required for each product, although there are some crossovers.

Well, to answer your question, Cigar tobaccos are (by variety): Filler, Binder and wrapper. When growing cigar wrapper for instance you would choose something like Conneticut Shade or Florida Sumatra. They have thin veins and a very stretchy leaf. For cigarettes you have Flue Cured ( known as Virginia in the pipe world), Burley and Turkish (aka Oriental). American Spirit adds a small amount of Perique to some of their cigarettes. Keep in mind that cigarettes are only 60% tobacco leaf, the rest is paper and reconstituted tobacco which is made from the stems and other scraps.
Bigpond is correct. The cigarette companies have far more buying power than companies that blend pipe tobacco. I find it rather humerous that almost all pipe blends I see usually have on their label something to the affect of " Made from the finest tobacco.." They have to say that from a marketing standpoint because if they stated that they were only able to buy the left over stuff after the big cig companies bought the prime leaf, well that just doesn't sound too good on a label.

Buying power and quantity does not translate directly to quality. While I cannot speak for growing tobacco I can speak quite resolutely about tea which is harvested to the tune of 5 million tonnes a year. Much like cigarettes, major tea companies buy the largest quantities of tea but are perfectly fine with excess stem and poor structure as the product will be shredded and doused with additives. Despite purchasing this vast amount of leaf, they are unconcerned with small crop, quality product. There exists tea companies that do seek out and procure these quality teas at added expense while the major brands neither wish to pay the premium nor would they benefit from the quality. So while the buying power is different, so are their aim and final product. Cigarettes are designed with only one purpose, nicotine delivery and absorption. Everything else is a secondary concern. This goal is met by chemical additives and designed PH, not in the quality of leaf. Go buy a bag or RYO from one of the big boys and put it side by side with a tin of McCrannie's Red Ribbon and tell me which one is a higher quality product. Tea drinkers know that Lipton puts the whole damn tea plant into a wood chipper and plops it into a paper satchel. Cigarette companies are not much different. Now they could certainly afford the best leaf but they are after quantity and their buying likely reflects that goal, their final product certainly does. Being niche is usually the only way to achieve quality in a world of quantity sales. I think anyone here could tell the difference between some Germain leaf and some garbage RYO. There is only so much disguising you can do if you really have to work with bottom of the barrel constituents. When I am done brewing an oolong each piece has unfolded into a bud with two leaves still attached to a small stem, that's just not possible when you are Lipton. Perhaps tobacco is different but the qualities being looked for by McClelland are not necessarily the same qualities being looked for by Camel.

Another good analogy would be the beef industry. McDonald's has buying power and uses a million times more beef than your locally owned steak house ever could. But McDonald's is not going to grind up sirloin for burger, even if they have a "sirloin" burger special. No one buys the best to grind up, generally speaking. Your local steak house is capable of procuring the best beef in the world if it so chooses and can afford it. Of course this isn't to say all pipe tobacco is quality. In the world of wholesale sales, the biggest rarely buy up all the best.

I'm sure Russ will chime in at some point to correct whatever I get wrong, but...
Many of the same leaf types are used in both pipe and cigarette tobacco. Most cigarettes are primarily Virginia, Burely and Oriental, just as in pipe tobacco. As far as the quality, there are certainly a multitude of grades for each leaf type, and I'm sure you'd find both high and low grades in various pipe and cigarette brands.
A couple of key ingredients found in most machine made cigarettes are not found in any traditional pipe tobacco that I am aware of: Recon and Expanded. Recon is basically tobacco dust that has been turned into a sort of paper. Recon is still, technically, tobacco, and far, far cheaper than leaf tobacco. It is basically used as just a cheap filler.

Expanded is tobacco that has been freeze dried then super heated, which vastly increases the surface area of the tobacco. Expanded is actually more expensive than regular tobacco, but because of its fill value, it can still reduce the manufacturing costs of a cigarette. Many machine made cigarettes contain as much as 40%-60% recon and expanded tobaccos.
Cigar wrapper, filler and binder leaves are a different variety than what is used in most pipe tobacco blends. Much is what I've heard referred to as 'dark leaf' tobacco.

The only thing I'll add is that Maryland is used widely in cigarettes, but less frequently in pipe tobacco. Its best property is even burning qualities. Dark-fired Kentucky is used in almost everything - pipe blends, cigarettes, cigars, chew, snuff...

Cigar tobaccos come from the 'black' tobacco strains and are almost strictly used for cigars, although a number of blenders, myself included, have used cigar leaf in pipe blends. Interestingly, the Parodi and DiNobili cigars are made with Burleys from Tennessee and Kentucky that have been heavily fermented.
Russ

Russ, Explain "black tobacco strains" please. The USDA lists cigar strains as Filler, Binder and Wrapper. I've never heard of a black strain. Is this slang in the pipe world much like Flue Cured is to Virginia?

There are a bunch of different Black tobacco strains.
Here are a few I dug up online that are listed as the most common:
Bahia: this is grown in Brazil and is one of the oldest native-seed tobaccos.
Broadleaf: widely grown, especially in the U.S., this style resulted from the migration of natives from the Andes area into North America.
Habanesis Hybrids: these styles developed from seeds brought to Cuba from Mexico in 1534 and form the base of the "Cuban seed" tobacco family.
San Andres Negro: planted in Mexico and was cultivated by the Aztecs.
Sumatran: originally planted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra from seeds brought by Dutch explorers and traders of the 1500's.

... Parodi and DiNobili cigars are made with Burleys from Tennessee and Kentucky ...

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Both made by Avanti who also makes Kentucky Cheroots, which I prefer over the other two.

These are dry-cured sticks with a great flavor and nic hit ... oh yeah, cheap too!

Most of the 'black' tobaccos are closer to dark Burley than they are to Virginia or Orientals - higher nicotine content, more spice. In the end, though, mostly all commercially-used tobacco all fall under the species Nicotiana Tabacum. Climate and soil differences are what morph them into their individual strains.
Russ

There are a bunch of different Black tobacco strains.
Here are a few I dug up online that are listed as the most common:
Bahia: this is grown in Brazil and is one of the oldest native-seed tobaccos.
Broadleaf: widely grown, especially in the U.S., this style resulted from the migration of natives from the Andes area into North America.
Habanesis Hybrids: these styles developed from seeds brought to Cuba from Mexico in 1534 and form the base of the "Cuban seed" tobacco family.
San Andres Negro: planted in Mexico and was cultivated by the Aztecs.
Sumatran: originally planted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra from seeds brought by Dutch explorers and traders of the 1500's.

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I was doing some more reading and here's a great article on the subject:
http://www.coronacigar.com/Cigar-101/

I guess what I don't understand is "who" calls these black tobacco strains? There is no such category when ordering seeds or planting tobacco. Sumatra is not a black strain it is a filler and if actually grown in Sumatra, a wrapper. Broadleaf refers to a cigar leaf. San Andres Negro is referred to as a filler or sometimes as a Primitive.
So really.. who calls these "black strains"? I read the article linked above and near as I can figure someone made up the name black tobacco to refer to cigar leaf.
I just don't understand the reference.