A Short Glossary for Sativa Seed Buyers

Sativa seeds arrive with more vocabulary attached than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it means a certain thing to a botanist, another to a breeder and a third to the grower standing in front of the listing. A failed sativa grow nearly always traces back to a word that was understood in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a statement of effect, a landrace bought like it were a modern hybrid. The entries below are put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open for reference, because it runs heavily towards the long-flowering end of the spectrum and that is where the words carry the most weight most; the meanings though apply to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, because not one of them makes sense without the rest.

Stretch (the doubling)

The burst of vertical growth that follows the switch to flowering. Indica-leaning plants gain half again; sativas commonly double, and some equatorial types triple. The stretch lasts three to four weeks and cannot be stopped once it has started, merely redirected by training.

In practical terms, a stretch multiplier is a fact worth read ahead of choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a two-metre tent is touching the lamp by week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. Growers moving from indica stock nearly always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is written on the ceiling of the tent.

Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)

Refers to plants from latitudes in which daylength hardly changes through the year, and that the plant does not evolved a strong reaction to changing days. These plants frequently start flowering reluctantly at a conventional twelve-hour light cycle, because twelve hours is, for them, a mild ordinary day and not a signal.

The practical fix, passed down among sativa growers over decades, is to shorten the light more: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly in the last weeks. It costs a yield 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 origin has missed the point hidden in it.

Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines

The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often under stress. Almost every cannabis line has some capacity to do; long-flowering plants show it more, for a simple one: fourteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of exposure for a light leak, a temperature spike or a missed watering that can trigger it going, and a plant that has gone beyond its natural finish frequently produces a few late male flowers on its own in a final attempt to set seed.

Not one of these means a sativa strain unstable by nature; it makes the room’s discipline count for longer. Light-tight tents, steady temperatures and harvesting when the plant is done rather than two weeks later take away most of the risk. A listing which states a breeder tests parents for intersex tendency is worth worth hearing for a long-flowering line than on anything else.

Sativa-dominant (the label)

The marketing term rather than a measurable one. It generally indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s lineage are described as sativa by whoever drafted the description, which sometimes signals nothing more than a certain the buds are airier or the smell brighter than the that breeder’s other releases.

The experience people associate with a word, clear-headed instead of sedating, is driven more by terpene chemistry and the cannabinoid balance than by the sativa fraction, and a good number of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a flat couch result and a good number of the opposite stock deliver exactly the opposite. For a grower the percentage is worth something as a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; for a guide to effect it is close to worthless unless accompanied by the terpene description.

Flowering time (and what it is counted from)

The number of weeks between the start of flowering and maturity, and the single most misread number on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with an ordinary vegetative period is a twenty-two-week plant. Breeders additionally quote the optimistic end of a spread, because the longer end sells less seed.

Sativa lines run everywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the slowest strain in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at around 16 weeks from the flip. The catalogue can be filtered by this number, which is a reasonable first pass for a grower on a tight schedule. A grower who allows four weeks to whatever the pack says is rarely caught out.

Foxtailing

The habit of some flowers to grow new bud clusters on top of existing ones, giving towered, open buds instead of round ones. In the majority of indica-leaning strains it is a heat symptom, usually from light that is too close or temperatures too high, and the advice is to correct the cause.

In many sativas, especially Southeast Asian and some Haze hybrids, it is built in and will occur under a perfect room. A new sativa grower frequently spends weeks chasing a problem that was never not there, dropping lights and heat only delaying an already long flower further. The listing rarely says which kind you should expect; the lineage generally tells you.

Latitude (outdoor sativas)

The single number that determines if a sativa will ripen outdoors, and a number no pack states. Equatorial plants need the run of shortening days to continue long enough for the plant ripen; at northern latitudes the frost arrives first, and the grower cuts a half-finished plant in late October or else watches it to mould in November. The closer south, in the northern hemisphere, the later the window runs, and Mediterranean and low-latitude gardens are able to finish plants that temperate gardens cannot.

The usable rule for a seed listing: an “outdoor” sativa finishing date is given for the breeder’s own latitude, normally somewhere in temperate Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every step further north of it moves the date back into the frost. A grower above about the fiftieth parallel who is after a long-flowering sativa outdoors is shopping for an autoflower or a covered space, not a better season.

Terpinolene

A terpene found in high proportion in a lot of classic sativa lines and responsible for most of what growers describe as a “sativa” smell: fresh, woody, lemon and slightly floral at once. It is fragile, lost quickly through hot drying, and it fades faster during the cure than the heavier terpenes which lead indica-leaning stock.

To a seed buyer the word does two jobs. When a listing lists terpinolene as the lead aromas, the strain probably carries substantial old-sativa ancestry whatever the label says. And when the grower wants that smell to survive by the jar, the drying is going to be slow and cool; a fast dry flattens a terpinolene sativa into a flower that tastes of very little and leaves no trace of what the pack promised.

Haze

In its first sense a particular family of plants put together in 1970s California from Colombian, Thai and Thai landraces, and then preserved and refined in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, takes for twelve sixteen weeks and carries a scent of spice, citrus and a note metallic that no line exactly has.

In its second sense “Haze” is whatever hybrid that carries a share of that family, and by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing which says “Haze” without lineage may be mostly percent the old family or a sixteenth of it, and the flowering character tracks the share, not the name. The working question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.