Sucks I’ve been so busy lately, as I have many questions for you. When it comes to weed info you’re better than Google LOL! it took me a year and a half to learn what you explained in 10 paragraphs about all the varieties around the world and when they finish. are you growing any landrace this summer?
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I am growing a couple of landraces this year. One is a Rif strain that I got from a guy in Morocco. Some call it Beldia kif, others call it Ketama gold. Its a really early finisher in late August/early September. Another one I have growing is said to be from Sinai, Egypt. That is also called Red Sea Weed. It has two phenos, and likely is similar to Lebanese. I am also growing Kona Gold from the Big Island. I got from a friend in Kailua. That is more of an heirloom though. Much lore about KG on the Big Island. Some say its Santa Marta Colombian gold, but Colombian gold finishes way later in December to January, and KG is said to finish in late October (more like a Mexican). Some say KG is a pure sativa, others say its a sativa-indica hybrid, like Maui Waui is a hybrid of Maui Wowie (a Mexican derivative) and an unknown indica. We shall see how they all grow.
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You can get information about growing hemp in NY state at Cornell University online:
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Personal use? I’ll check that out regardless. Been wondering what regulations they have on hemp. There’s a few Beldia growers here this season. Interested to see them bud. Crazy some flower before the solstice. Good breeding tool for shortening sativa flowering times without adding indica. Is that Sinai from rsc or landrace team? Supposed to be much better than lebanese. Bedouin bud. Its like lebanese unaffected by hemp. Kona gold sounds great too. I think theres a pheno they call "the blood"because of the sap it bleeds when cut. Mexican lineage seems likely to me. I think guitarzan is growing that one or a cross of it. I’ve got some parvati, malana and durban going. Just started. Malana I’ve wanted to try for years. Durban too. RSC Parvati has been on my radar for awhile, but it is more cbd/thc blend. The villages i got seeds from have been selecting for potency gor many generations and I think may be more thc dominant. We’ll see. Supposed to be untainted. I dont see any hybrid type leaves in grown up plant pics. Fingers crossed i make some seed. Harvest of mature buds is doubtful. I’ll make pain cream at least.
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No personal growing info from NY, sorry. The Cornell stuff is all commercial. Same here, hemp is all geared toward commercial grows. High seed counts per acre and grown in fields like wheat. In Oregon you can grow hemp instead of mj for personal use though w/o any license required. 4 plants per address.
The Sinai I have is from a personal collection through Egypt, like I got the Morocco Rif stuff. I got them indirectly from North Africa through trades with friends in Europe. It sounds like they bloom like my South African Durban landraces, with weird flowering times.
Not sure that the Lebby is or was a cross with hemp. Turkish sativa is similar, as is Syrian. I think they are very old strains that pre-date anything else in the Mediterranean. Like 3-4,000 years back. Hard to say these days though. Its been black market for about a century there and all underground, still. Seeds do not come with a genealogical chart, unfortunately. I read that there are also two phenos with the Sinai, like the Lebanese and Turk sativa. A sativa and an indica.
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I don’t think Leb is a cross with hemp. Not an intentional cross anyway. And I agree its very old landrace. Accidentally pollenated by nearby wild hemp or pollen from distant fields over the years. Without selection the quality really goes down. Like Beldia. Extremely low Thc if unselected because its been infected with pollen from European hemp acrosd the strait. Has your stock been worked? (The Sinai seems to be the only one of that genepool thats been properly maintained with any consistency. )The majic does come back with proper selection.You mention wierd flowering times with those , beldia and Durban too? I’m growing that one now. ( durban)When does it flower outdoors ( beginning)? I read somewhere that plants from near 30 degrees latitude can or will autoflower when grown further north. This made no sense to me but i still wonder about it. Perhaps you speak of this trait? What are your experiences? Have you grown Parvati, too? RSC version?
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I disagree on several counts here. One is the scale and location of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. It is large, high up and isolated. How would pollen drift from hemp get up there? Also where would it come from there? It will not come all the way across the Mediterranean, as you seem to suggest. Pollen drift is effective for maybe 5-10 miles or so. The other crop in the Bekaa Valley is mainly wine grapes. Outside of that, its desert to the east, north and south and sea to the west. Pollen does not drift for hundreds of miles. Nor would it be effective or contribute much on the scale that weed is grown in the Bekaa Valley. Which is large. And consistent from one end to the other.
In the case of Lebanese, and in the case of most landrace strains, they are rather low in potency. Read the book Marijuana Chemistry and the author gives the results of mj testing around the world just prior to 1977 when that book was first published as Marijuana Potency. 8-12% THC was tops. Only modern hybrid strains and some landraces from Afghanistan were and are more potent. The reason Lebanese is rather mild is that it was always (and is still) grown to make hashish and not to be sold as colas. So they never had any reason to produce more potent colas. When I first grew Lebanese I was blown away with the terpenes and the effect. It was JUST like Lebanese red hashish back in the 1970s. So I do not believe that there has been any loss of potency in Landrace strains there. Also there seems to be a lot of confuion about loss of potency when growing weed. In all the cases I have read about ‘genetic drift’ or loss of quality in growing weed and hemp, it has always been with seed from other locations grown in a new location, and the plants degrading in as little as 4 generations. That does not apply to native growing regions, or to what I would call landraces that are not grown in new locations. Those strains have stabilized and adapted fully to that region, and thus are consistent over time. I would bet that the landraces from the Bekaa Valley today are the same as they were 100 years ago. The high is the same in my experience from 1977 to today. That is 43 years now. If you study the way that they grow weed in Lebanon, they do not do any quality control. They do mass harvesting and drying, and mass thrashing and screening and sieving. The seeds are stored and planted in the following spring en masse. The hash powder is pressed and exported. The rest is tossed back into the fields. They do not hand select anything there. Its all large scale volume. The beauty of their system is the scale and simplicity. The Cannabis has adapted to that climate and it is stable there. You could drop in a bunch of flowering OG Kush males and in a year or two it would be drown out by the mass amounts of local native pollen. The same would happen with any hemp pollen drift from Europe or North Africa.
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Also Cannabis plants do not ‘autoflower’ unless they have the autoflower genetics from Ruderalis (hemp). All other Cannabis strains are photos that bloom from an auxin that breaks down with a certain number of hours of darkness. The hours vary by strain, but they do not autoflower. Some strains have weird blooming, but that is not from autoflowering unless they have been bred with Ruderalis at some point. Autoflowering is recessive, so it can pop up in hybrids, but not true non-Ruderalis landraces. In my case of weird bloom times, I believe that the plants are expecting a certain light patterns, and moving to my location (roughly 45th parallel) they bloom different here. Or they have unstable blooming, and some are more photo sensitive than others. But they are and were all photos. With the one exception of one Erdbeer strain from Switzerland, I have always been able to re-veg and clone any Cannabis plant that I have grown. Try cloning an auto and you will see what I mean. Autos are nearly impossible to clone. They are on a time clock from the point of germination.
The majority of landraces I have are from my own seed collecting over the years. A lot of them are from trading with people like me around the world. Some (a very few) are from old RSC stock (pre 2000) and some of the old seed collectives in Europe. So I am not growing seeds from new breeders and seed peddlers. With the exception of hybrids like Black Widow, heirlooms like Maui Waui and Kona Gold and some landraces like LEB27 that I have, my strains have not been ‘worked’. Other than by the native growers or original breeders that is. This year? My Kona Gold seeds came directly from the Big Island. My hemp seeds came from the breeder in the Midwest. My Moroccan Rif seeds came through Europe but directly from Ketama, Morocco. Nothing worked. My Durban landrace was from South Africa, and they are known to bloom weird. Morocco plants seem to be similar. At least the native ones, not the newer Pakistani genetics being grown in Morocco.
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I’m not suggesting they turn into a true Autoflower, only that they " Autoflower" when grown out of their original location. This is just something that I read awhile ago and I haven’t been able to find it again. I remember reading that Durban begins to flower shortly after the solstice when growing in Northern regions. It actually mentioned something about any variety coming from 30 degrees latitude. I know it’s not a true Autoflower, but that it just flowers automatically so to speak. There are other “autoflowering” landrace’s. When I started thinking about it they are quite common and widespread. Thailand has autoflowers.( thaifun horizon is one) Reunion island has them.(zamal) I have read of one from Tanzania.(tanzanian majic) The Moroccan does it from drought stress. and I have read of ruderal plants from the Afghanistan/ Pakistan regions autoflowering also, which are currently available from the real Seed Company . only in the Western Hemisphere have I failed to find anything that autoflowers, save hemp.
I am speaking of pollen contamination in the Beldia Land race from across the Mediterranean, not Lebanese From what I have read, the Lebanese landrace was infected with hemp pollen from two sources. Firstly, from local hemp, which has been grown in Lebanon for centuries. The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is historically where it has been grown in abundance. Pollen is very capable of flying up to the tops of even those high mountains. In Spain they show marijuana pollen levels on the news every year, from Morocco, across the Strait of Gibraltar from the mountains .Spanish Guerrilla Growers have reported pollen contamination from Morocco hundreds of miles from the source. This has been documented by Arjan of greenhouse seeds Fame. It’s not hard to imagine pollen from down in Bekaa valley being sucked up to the tops of the mountains a mere several miles away when it has been shown to travel hundreds of miles. Chefchaoan, Morocco is 100 miles from Spain, for instance. Farmers would have to continually select for potent traits to keep the hemp from becoming dominant. It seems to me this is been Illustrated quite well with the Sinai landrace, which doesn’t have the problems from hemp contamination, thus the higher potency, even though it is a close relative of Lebanese. It also shows in worked Lebanese lines, such as the leb 27, wherein hemp traits have been largely or thoroughly removed.
this is true if the hemp pollen contaminated the weed maybe one or two years. But when hemp continually contaminates every single year for hundreds of years it really takes a toll. Look at what has happened in Mexico ,Jamaica ,Colombia, Morocco and some regions of the Himalayas with introduced pollen. Just a few hippies throwing seeds has contaminated the Malana, Parvati and Kullu landraces. Continued introduction of modern Western hybrids has all but ruined the other countries. Try finding a Jamaican landrace nowadays. Now if this foreign pollen was all of a sudden stopped from being introduced, I do believe plants would revert back to their landrace state, because that is what does best in that area. But how many years that would take would only be a guess on my part. the weed you had back in 1977 was probably just like it is today. Infected with hemp. But still great!
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The other source of contamination for Lebanese landrace’s is Greece. Greece was always the area where hybrids between different Middle Eastern strains were made and tested when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Greece was also a major hemp producing region. It’s another source of hemp contamination infecting the Lebanese landrace.
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I’ve grown out some Willy G’s Lebanese from Humboldt Seed Company, it is a selected landrace (F4) from the Bekaa Valley. HSC’s terp profile shows high terp %, but nothing stands out as strange to me in the profile, but the nose on it is very unique. HSC says black pepper and dill, but I also get a lot of pine and some other aromas that I can’t quite put my nose on, maybe some lime. The CBD is probably in the teens, with THC less than 1% I assume.
Here in Norcal, the cross-pollination issue has been very serious, not the old “rocketbombing” small garden herm or missed male issues but large fields as CBD hemp has taken over acres upon acres. Lots of policy discussion on feminized seeds, clones, pulling males, pollen drift distances (most studies say a few miles, but I hear you on the Morocco to Spain drift). Open pollination CBD seed breeding last year had this area of Norcal on high cross pollination alert.
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My point being that you are using the term autoflower for non autoflower plants. They are blooming from photo responses, not automatic flowering for genetic reasons. Hence, you are just adding to the confusion here. Use terms like ‘odd photo blooming’ instead to avoid confusion???
As for how much hemp has affected mj, that is highly debatable. You are using general assumptions here as facts, but they are not substantiated. In the case of the US, hemp has not been grown in any quantity since the end of WWII. In the case of Greece, weed has not been grown there since the 1930s. Also pollen does not drift that far. Water and gravity will do in pollen with any humidity or moisture in the air, and gravity will drag it down to earth. I live within 10 miles of a HUGE hemp farm here, and I do not get any seeds on my outdoor grows that I do not pollinate myself. Now, in the case of modern hemp growing affecting genetics, it depends on what you are growing hemp for. In my case here, and in Oregon in particular, most all hemp farming is for CBD, and thus all plantings are feminized seeds, or female clones. So no pollen drift. Hence, no seeds on my outdoor plants that are not pollinated by me.
As for what happened before 1930 in Greece? Those strains are pretty much gone now. Some claim to have Greek Kalamata, but from my sources in Albania, Greece and Spain, that is some new strain being passed off as Kalamata. The bloom times are also wrong, compared to the 1930s strains. Also in the case of hemp growing, back pollination from mj is possible, but as the plants are constantly tested for 0,3% THC levels, that has not happened. Or the seed stock is continually replenished by older sourced stock. In my case growing here, my beans are from the 1970s and 1980s so that has not happened either. Hemo genetics into mj genetics, that is.
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Same experience here with lebanese. Loaded with cbd, low or no thc. I noticed pine myself. Some have a more sweet perfumy smell i cant describe. Delicious!
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My experience too. I love smoking it during the day, because it calms the anxiety, and leaves you very functional and relaxed.
I’m going to try using it in some sativa hybrids to make some milder strains. It could also be nice for that because it should really drop the flower times.
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It could be an interesting cross with some sativas. The Willy G’s Lebanese had long narrow leaflets similar to a sativa, might not get that much pheno variation in leaves after a cross.
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not sure how there could be any confusion there. I pointed out my own disbelief about the autoflower trait when the subject was broached., using the term loosely to open up this unusual phenomenon to conversation. I was not calling in an Autoflower. I was asking about it.
they are substantiated but I don’t know how to transfer articles that I read on to overgrow. Bekaa is 10 miles wide on average. Cannabis pollen can fertililize plants up to 10 miles away ( Michigan U)in humid michigan. Bekaa is very very dry when males are in bloom. The moisture and humidity you speak of does not exist there when males are in bloom. Great conditions for pollen and less than 10 miles to travel to cannabis fields. When a valley floor bakes during the day, there is a massive updraft following sunset carrying pollen with it. The proof is in the pudding as they say. And Lebanese is high CBD in most cases. Phylos shows lots of hemp ( i hate phylos). They grow or grew hemp in Bekka for centuries, and farmers dont breed it out (as you pointed out) of their hash plants. The similarity all Mediterranean landraces have is their proximity to hemp production and lower potency when unselected and used for hash( leb, turkey, cyprus, morocco) and higher potency when selected for ganja (Beldia, Sinai). Were it not for hemp you would expect 25% cbd dom plants, 50% 50/50 thc/cbd blend, and 25%thc dominant plants in a landrace from this region. Instead they are very high in cbd %, like hemp and very low in thc.
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To start, Phylos is pure BS. Why would you trust anything that they have posted? They are only interested in one thing. Screwing the world over to make a buck. They purposely and intentionally misled people into thinking that the Open Cannabis Project was an altruistic genetic bank for collecting and sharing information. In reality they set up the OCP to mastermind potential hybrid breeding projects to make big money using the data collected by the OCP. And they seem to be quite proud of that fact. Also what references do they use for their samples? How do you know any strains posted by them in Galaxy and anywhere else on Phylos are from where they are said to be from? What is the benchmark for strains? What breeders say they are? Its all a crock in my book. Useless information posted by people intent on defrauding the public with dubious source material. Even Rob Clarke has left their board in disgust.
If you read the book Marijuana Chemistry by Starks, he lists the potency of landraces from around the globe in 1977, with research sources and references. They are all for the most part very low in THC content. Whether grown for hash or ganja or fiber or seed or colas or whatever. They are also highly variable in CBD content as well, and most landraces show moderate amounts of CBD the world over. The samples taken were grown in their native habitat and or from landrace seeds grown first generation in the US (from bag weed seed). At any rate, there is no distinct correlation between landrace marijuana potency grow in various regions for various end products as you suggest. CBD is not a hemp only dominated cannabinoid in Cannabis. CBD is far more broad spectrum, or was. It has only more recently been bred out of these modern super hybrids that have evolved after the late 1970s.Quite by design, as CBD interferes with and blocks the THC high.
As for hemp being grown in the Bekaa Valley? The word hemp is ambiguous, and in many cases is synonymous with Cannabis or even marijuana. It is only more recently in places like the US and Mexico that hemp is defined as Cannabis with less than 0,3% THC. Even more recently hemp is defined as Cannabis grown for CBD production, and 99% of what is grown as ‘hemp’ in the west US is for CBD oil extract. Similarly, all Cannabis grown in the Bekaa Valley has been for hash production since at least the 1920s, and more likely far longer than that. Some records show it was grown there in Roman times.Cannabis growing of any type and for any reason is illegal in Lebanon, and has been for many decades. Hence there is no ‘hemp’ farming in the Bekaa Valley. Many call it that, but it is and has been only growing for hash production there.
But believe what you want…
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Perhaps Lebanese landrace is the worlds first cbd strain. I could believe that. Texts dont explain what crop grew in Bekaa. Only that it was hemp…whether that would be hemp or drug plant I don’t know. But there is plenty of literature on growing for hashish in Lebanon. It is mentioned in a different series of articles and is mentioned as taking place in the heights above 3000 feet. I got my info from the real seed company literature and from ngapa (sp?)himself on icmag( he posts there alot) regarding wild plants/ feral plants and google regarding hemp production in Bekaa. Obviously I would believe the locals over google.
I don’t like or trust phylos…Except when it comes to the amount of hemp genes in a landrace. Do we know the samples they receive are truly from the region they claimed? In most cases I would say hell no . But I think you would have to agree that Lebanese is unmistakable… so in this instance I think it was Lebanese that they tested . As far as hemp genes go, they have no reason to lie about that. You cant patent hemp, unless its genetically altered, so I don’t see how they would benefit from lying about that like they would from saying everything contains skunk genetics for example. There does seem to be a correlation between the potency of a given landrace and the amount of hemp genetics that it contains on phylos. But like i said… i dont like them or trust them about anything else and they certainly wont be getting any samples from me! F@#k phylos. Perhaps their tests don’t differentiate between ditchweed (feral) and hemp.( likely) A very wild leaning sample of a landrace could certainly show a strong relationship to hemp genetically.
So I just chatted with the owner of the real seed company. He said hemp was farmed in bekaa Valley in the 1990s through a crop rotation program that they had there at the time. Also he believed it was farmed there during the Ottoman Empire days, which would have ended after World War I. If there are indeed hemp genetics in the Lebanese Line, This Is Where It would have come from. Also, the best hash comes from higher up in the mountains, like it does everywhere. But is this just due to the altitude and higher strength of the Sun and UV light, or could this also be due to the greater distance from the hemp crops of the 90’s and less contamination? Food for thought.
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Well, I do not know about Angus’s experience there, but in my experience smoking Lebanese hashish in the 1970s, the high, taste, etc. is exactly the same as the Lebanese strains that I grow here now. The blood never forgets a good high. I moved a LOT of blonde and red Lebanese hashish back in the day. My seeds are from several Lebanese sources, mostly the 1990s Bekaa Valley, but also from the mountain areas, and from other areas of the Mediterranean. I also have several Lebanese strains bred IBL from Denmark taken from Lebanon in the 1970s. Often times what is/was called hemp there is/was really Marijuana. And in Lebanon, Cannabis growing has been illegal since the 1930s. Why would anyone grow what we call hemp there? No money in that. Rotated or otherwise. No difference between hemp and marijuana, from a field observation perspective. It would all be plowed under in some years by various controlling factions in Lebanon. Hezbollah some years, US backed gov’t other years. Some years they were ignored. Lebanon has been in a state of civil war for many decades now.
In my experience with anything Lebanese, 90% of what is written and claimed is BS. I have had a lot of friends from Lebanon over the years. I have grown these strains for about a decade now. I can find no data that any Cannabis products were ever grown there or exported other than for black market hashish. Also knowing some of the most experienced hemp growers in the US Midwest, it is a myth that all hemp or even most hemp has high CBD levels. Most hemp has low CBD levels. Only recently have levels come up by selective breeding. Lebanese has rather high CBD levels and similar THC levels. Which is unique, except for Syrian, Egyptian and Turkish landraces which are very similar to Lebanese. I have grown several of these similar landraces. This strain is not specific to Lebanon. It seems to be much much older than 20th or even 19th century. Ancient Lebanese records shows that Cannabis was grown there as long as 2000 years ago.
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