Sativa seeds arrive with more jargon around them than any other category of cannabis seed, and most of it means one thing to a botanist, something else to a seed company and something different again to the grower standing in front of the pack. The failed sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” tag taken as a statement of effect, a landrace bought like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open for reference, because it runs strongly towards the classic end of the spectrum where the words matter most; the definitions though hold to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no special order, since not one of them is sense on its own without the others.
Stretch
The surge of upward growth which follows the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants add around half again; sativas routinely double, and a few equatorial types go further. The stretch lasts two to five weeks and cannot be halted after it has started, merely bent sideways by training.
In practical terms, the stretch multiplier is the fact worth read before choosing when to flip. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres in a standard tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. Growers coming over from indica stock almost always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Sativa-dominant
The marketing term and not a botanical one. It generally means that the larger share of a hybrid’s parents are described as sativa according to the breeder who drafted the listing, which occasionally signals nothing more than a certain the buds are airier or the smell brighter than the same breeder’s other lines.
The experience people connect with the word, lively instead of sedating, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and the THC balance than by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a flat couch result while plenty of the opposite lines do the opposite. To a grower the label is useful for a loose guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a guide to effect it is next to useless unless accompanied by the aroma description.
Foxtailing
The tendency of certain flowers to grow new bud clusters on top of old ones, producing spired, irregular buds instead of round ones. In the majority of tent-bred lines it is a heat response, usually from light too close or temperatures that is too high, and the advice is to correct the cause.
In a good number of sativas, above all Thai and certain Haze hybrids, it is built in and is going to occur in a perfect room. A new sativa grower often spends a month hunting a problem that was never there, dropping lights and temperatures only delaying a slow plant even more. The breeder seldom says which kind to expect; the lineage generally tells you.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A aromatic compound present in large amounts in a lot of old sativa lines and responsible for most of what growers describe as a “sativa” smell: green, piney, lemon and slightly floral at once. It is volatile, lost quickly by hot drying, and it fades faster in storage than the heavier terpenes that dominate most tent lines.
For a seed buyer the name earns two jobs. Where a listing lists terpinolene as the lead aromas, the line probably carries real old-sativa ancestry whatever the percentage claims. And when the you wants that profile to survive to the jar, the cure is going to be slow and cool; a fast dry flattens a terpinolene line to something that tastes of very little and nothing of what the pack promised.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The single number that decides if a sativa will finish outdoors, and a number no pack prints. Equatorial plants require a run of shortening days to go on long enough for the plant to finish; at northern latitudes the frost comes first, and the grower cuts a half-finished plant in late October or else watches it rot in November. The further to the equator, in a northern hemisphere, the longer the window stretches, and Mediterranean and subtropical gardens can finish lines that northern growers never will.
The usable reading of a seed listing: an “outdoor” line finishing month is stated for the breeder’s home latitude, usually somewhere within southern Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every degree north of that pushes the date later into the weather. A grower above roughly the fiftieth parallel who wants a true sativa outdoors is looking for a sativa autoflower or else a covered space, and not a better season.
Intersex tendency
The production of male flowers on a female plant, usually towards the end in flower and often under stress. Almost every cannabis line carries a degree of capacity to it; long-flowering plants express it more often, and the reason is a simple reason: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a light leak, a temperature spike or a late watering that can trigger it off, and a plant plant has gone beyond its intended finish often throws a few desperate pollen flowers on its own in a last attempt to set seed.
Not one of this means a sativa strain weak by nature; it means the grower’s consistency matter over longer. Light-tight room, steady temperatures and cutting when the plant is done and not two weeks after take away most of the problem. A listing that states a breeder screens parents for intersex tendency is saying something more on a sativa than on anything else.
Landrace
A population of plants shaped over centuries to a particular place by local growers and growers together, and not by modern breeding. Colombian, Thai, Congolese and Oaxacan lines are the classic sativa cases. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: inside a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas range widely than in a tent-bred hybrid, and this spread is the whole value of keeping one.
The mistake is treating a landrace like a modern product. It brings habits that made sense in an open field, including height that no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm set to a equatorial daylength most growers never offer. “Heirloom” in a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been reproduced away from its origin for a number of generations, typically with light selection towards tent conditions; it is closer to manageable but nonetheless far from a hybrid. A shop listing “landrace” that does not give an collection point and a reproduction count is using the word as a flavour, and the pack should be priced accordingly.
Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)
Refers to lines from regions in which daylength barely changes through the year, and that the plant never develop a sharp response to shortening days. Such lines frequently flower reluctantly under a conventional twelve-hour schedule, because twelve hours is, for them, a mild ordinary day and not a signal.
The working fix, passed down among sativa growers over decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly during the final weeks. It costs a little yield and buys an more decisive finish. A listing which says “equatorial” is telling you about this with one word, and a grower that takes it as mere geography misses the point inside it.
Haze (the family, not the smell)
In its first sense a specific line of plants bred in 1970s California from Mexican, Colombian and Thai landraces, and later kept and worked in the Netherlands. A true Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of spice, citrus and a note sharp that no other line quite reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is any hybrid which contains a share of that family, which by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing that reads “Haze” without lineage could be mostly percent the old family or one small fraction of it, and the flowering time follows the fraction, not the name. The working question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Recent Comments