Just a pondering here, how many non-hybridized stable cultivars are there in the popular cannabis world these days anyway? I hear a lot about the columbian gold and Panama red in the 70’s but these ‘legendary stains’ are gone now. Now, there are a bunch of what is referred to as ‘landrace’ strains around. Are these landraces just IBL hybrids, ‘pure’ strains (whatever that means) , or just environmentally stabilized hybrids? I really don’t have a clue myself… As far as I know there are 3 ‘species’ of Cannabis Indica, Sativa, and ruderalis. I think I am getting into the classification of plants (taxonomy?) and although I can understand say: (white widow x grape stomper)x sourdiesel F4, I do not understand anything past cannabis sativa when it comes to labelling species, sub species or race etc. Most of what seed buyers can get as an IBL are just stabilized hybrids IMO. Now it may be advantageous to keep pure strains for the benefit of the planets natural ecology, but poly hybrid plant breeding I don’t see a great environmental problem with it, just my humble laymans opinion, but we wouldn’t even recognize a non-hybridized cow. Further look at dogs, while some have inherent issues due to overbreeding, the domestic dog population is in no danger whatsoever of perishing due to a polluted genepool or rampant genetic health issues, and in fact their original parental units are just about gone from the earth NOT from cross breeding. I’m always interested in the keeping it pure reasoning versus man interfering for production debate. I imagine you apply ethics in this area, and my hat is off to you being able to apply this with your gardening. Cheers!
Variety, is a natural version of a species. For example: Malawi, is an African Cannabis sativa. with specific traits, if its brought into from the wild, and is refined via breeding it them becomes a cultivar. The variety has inheritable traits. There are lots of varieties that can be identified, Thai Dalat, Oxacan. Filipino, Nepalese…etc.
Wild varieties tend to have traits that are undesirable, like height or hermie tendencies that is why we breed cultivars for our purposes or specifications.
So any acclimatized poly poly hybrid could be considered a cultivar if it is inbred enough? I gotta do some research here. While I understand that any other breed, grown among stable landrace gentics will cause hybridization (and possible loss of the pureness of the original cultivar). Why is it a worry that the possibly inferior cultivar get bred out of existence? While I understand the value of the original plant, replacing said cultivar with one that will naturally become another better cultivar, over time, doesn’t seem to water down or bottleneck(genetically) the species to me. I can get heirloom seeds from long gone tomatoes and other vegetables easily, and when growing out these ancient varieties, one can usually see why they are no longer popular. I just don’t see the violent opposition to poly hybridizing being justified as the end of the species. Like preserve and grow your old mexican from the seveties, but nobody except collectors of genetics like smoking it, or care what it does for the general agricultural cannabis realm. While domestic veggies and fruits are mostly cloned trademarked hybrids, the original heirloom cultivars lack taste, colour and palatability. Simply by saying that these are unnatural dangerous products (to us and the natural flora and fauna) is silliness brought on by doomsday theorists IMO. Case in point is most landrace weed is cheap to buy, gets beginners buzzed and tastes like shit, Only when these landraces are cross bred, do they gain anything worthy of the market, and are marketted as breeding material as well, seems odd. Breeders being called out for irresponsible practices by genetic collectors is uncalled for. Theres some old timers here for sure, I wonder how they feel on this?
I dont think thats correct, if it retains the cultivar traits in the wild, it would be a cultivar. Wild variety and cultivars are different from observable traits.
It could be possible to lose a variety, Wild variety tends to have vigor and toughness that gives it an edge, their own self selection lends to vigor in plants that will give it the edge over a cultivar. Ive seen it myself, a group of us find high end seeds and cross them with landrace varieties. Crossing a high end polyhybrid with a landrace just brings out height, and vigor and yield.
Disagree
I happen to like local produce when visiting mexico. I have a source of oxacan, its was great!. It just doesn’t have that look of commercial nuggets or the frost but I loved it I would totally buy more. Very different high from cali indica or 50/50 hybrids.
A group of us are all working together to cross African landrace sativas with high end Mendicino seeds, the results are amazing.
Girl Scout Cookies supposedly gets its punch from Durban Poison.
I dont think landraces or wild varieties are going away anytime soon.
Thanks I’m starting to get an understanding for this and I would have to agree personally with your disagreement. When I’m in Latin America, I pick up something here and there to smoke. I also like the compressed brown weed, which is very similar to the columbian in the 70’s. While it doesn’t have knockout power, I enjoy the more upbeat mind trip it induces. I find the best part of the weed is the seeds I bring back and grow (and the crosses). I agree there is value in these plants akin to the foundation of the genepool or the lego blocks holding up the tower of poly hybrids. I am sure that collecters and gardeners are hoarding some of this parental stock, now that more 'horticulturalists are present in the growing and breeding realm. It is refreshing to have people involved as yes I don’t want to see everyone growing clones of a single hybrid (much like fruit and veggies). More reason that legalization should embrace the ‘boutique’ or ‘cannasuer’ grower. Cheers!
I think I am going to focus my selection process on males from now on, glad I have stuck to regular seeds. I have a few landraces lots of hybrids, I know what most of the females have to bring to the game, and my previous pollen chucking shed some light on the potential of individual males. I really envy established breeders in that they have been able to run so many plants in order to get that solid male. No more 8-10 week veg for me for a while. Cheers
Landraces are a population with s lot of similar characters, as same as Germán Shepher (but are whites, blacks, brows, shorthair, longhair, etc GS).
For example, Oaxacan Gold is a cross between the first Spanish seeds (África n India genes) with Philippines, South China, South East Asia genes (exported to México by the Spanish Pacific Army, Manila-Acapulco). With the time Nature selected the best genotipes to the local natural media…n ya have a landrace. It’s more variable than an IBL, of course. When a landrace is worked till IBL level it is called Heirloom Landrace.
Thanks for revisiting this thread, That puts things much more clearly. While we fear the loss of old landraces,it is still possible to continue to develop the genetics (somewhat like domestic livestock or heirloom vegetable breeding ) to attain a diverse and stable genetic pool, with varied regional preferences. Hoping anyway.
“I hear a lot about the columbian gold and Panama red in the 70’s but these ‘legendary stains’ are gone now.”
Not true. For example, I have about 40 strains from bag weed from the 70s/80s that are the real deal, and many are true land races. Land races being strains that were grown and bread over a period of time in a particular area. I was able to save these strains simply by freezing the seeds. They have remained viable over the years and I grow a variety from my collection of seeds every few years. I have posted mt seed strain list over on 420mag under my same alias as here: Big Sur. Much argument from idiots over there that Cannabis seeds cannot be frozen. I have read the same crap in many magazines and books written of late. It is simply not true that Cannabis seeds cannot be frozen. They can be frozen virtually forever and many like myself have proven it again and again.
In my collection I have Colombian Golds, Panama Red, Colombian Greens (actually better than the golds, IMO), many Mexican landraces from SW and central Mexico, early skinny stick Thai, African, and some others. I am currently growing some South African Durban Poison and Lebanese Red land race strains. The Durbans are pure gen 1 and from a ZA source, the Lebanese strains are F1-F4 generation seeds grown in Europe, as it is hard to get original strain seeds from Lebanon these days (they export hashish, not flower tops). Of late I have added about another 10 types that are F-worked generations from land race strains that were only crossed with the same land race sourced seeds. That is what I do when I cross to produce seeds: to make more isolated “land race genetic” seeds from the original landrace seed grown plants. Sort of the opposite of Amsterdam crossing, I cross to retain the original strain as much as I can. I learned this more or less from a group that grew what was then called Big Sur Holy Weed back in the 60s and 70s. They grew small plots marijuana in and around Big Sur from seeds sourced from Zacatecas, called Zacatecas Purple. They progressively planted original and some F1/F2 seeds in their plots over the years. This was before the days of the early hybrid heirlooms that were grown from pairing sativas from Mexico and Colombia with indica plants starting around the mid 1970s. Those early crosses resulted in strains like Skunkweed. There were a lot of different early skunk strains circulating in Central California by the late 1970s. Consequently anyone saying that THEY exclusively developed the original Skunk is simply full of shit. And so I have come full circle to the topic of this thread.
As far as the three ‘species’ of Cannabis, there has always been a split among botanists about this taxonomy. I happen to agree with the group that lists them all as one species, and they classify them as sub-species. C. sativa, C. indica and C. ruderalis are poor names for these ‘species’ as well. sativa means ‘wild’ and in today’s context, should be applied to what is now called ruderalis. indica is a bad name as well, as it does not apply to the source location of the ‘species’ (then thought to be) India. It should be called afghani. And sativa… well, that should be something to name it as a cultivated (and not wild) species. But the argument over these names and species or sub species classification will rage eternal. I am a horticulturalist, and not a botanist. But IMO, they are one species that have evolved into 3 sub-species, and indica IMO is a human developed sub-species (as are most sativa hemp strains, as well as the Mexican strains developed from sativa hemp). My 2 cents worth anyway.
I also have to concur that land race strains are not all shit, as claimed above. I have had this argument for many years, mainly with my oldest brother that is an Amsterdam cross fanatic and insists that indica crosses are the only ones worth smoking. I have tried to prove him wrong, and I left him couch locked in a chair back in the mid 1970s after smoking a half joint of black Indian ganja weed. My other brother and I went to a James Bond movie, came back, and the eldest bro was still in the chair! I got an oz of that black ganja from my then GF from Hawaii, because I had given her a joint of some Guerrero loose tops that I had gotten a half pound of, and she was so stoned after smoking it she could not do anything for 2 hours. So she called her stoner friends in Hawaii and got the strongest weed that she could, and that was the black ganja from India.
In particular, 4 of the most kick ass weeds I have smoked were land races. #1 was the Indian black ganja I mentioned above. I had people banging on my door 2 MONTHS after it was gone wanting to buy grams of that stuff. Sorry man, its all gone, long since! I have some seeds from that… and also some Kerala seeds from South India that will kick your ass and then some. #2 was the half pound of loose tops from Guerrero. That stuff sold itself in a hurry. Best Mexican I have ever had, and I have smoked many pounds of Mexican weed. #3 is Durban Poison. It has a clean mental high and no body stone to it at all. You take one hit, and you want another, and another, and another, and then you are so fried you do not know what you are doing. That is my favorite weed now. Hard to get around here, it sells out really fast. So I am growing my own here this year. Then #4 is Thai. The early skinny stick Thai. Now Durban Poison is said to be a transferred land race from Thailand, and I believe that it is. But I used to buy Thai sticks by the ounce and smoke it all myself. It was good. Now I prefer the sativas myself. Maybe from smoking early Mexican ‘shit weed’ back on the early 1970s. A lot of weed was average stuff back then. Some was spectacular, as I have pointed out. Some was dirt weed. I smoked some of that as well. When things were dry, usually around mid summer, we had to improvise, smoke older weed, or find some hashish from Lebanon, Morocco or Afghanistan. Now I would add a #5 as Lebanese Red hashish to the kick ass list of landrace weeds. though it is processed, and not bag weed per se. I am growing red Lebanese strains this year as well, to try to grow and process me some home grown Lebby hash.
Lots of Colombian green strains were around early on. Colombian strains were of several different types usually named by color in the 1970s: Red, Gold, Brown & less commonly Green. Of the golds sold in the US, some Colombian are genetically gold, like Santa Marta, and mature really really late and flower a long time. I grew several of these types in California, and they were golden cast in leaf color from pretty early on. But more common were the Colombian Gold or Brown weeds that resulted from fermentation and/or bricking of Colombia green (or gold) weed. This is a method that came from SE Asia, where fresh tops are piled in a stack and allowed to ferment for a few days before they are separated and dried. The chlorophyll ferments out and the weed turns gold or brown in color. The pile method was used early on in Colombia, but they adapted that method to just bricking up green tops and allowing them to ferment and dry during transport and shipping to the US. That was by far the most common gold or brown weed seen in the US. But you could also usually pay more and buy the un-bricked tops of these same strains from Colombia, and they were gold, red and green bag weed. They tended to be more potent and have a better high, IMO, than the standard gold or brown Colombian which was usually bricked. Bricked Colombian gold was usually narcotic and would make me want to crawl under the couch and pass out. But the good green… I asked a lot of questions to the guys that sold me green weed from Colombia. They were from Zacatecas and they swore up and down that it was not Mexican weed and came from Colombia. It was not that common, but it was around NorCal in the late 1970s. Basically it was just better quality unbricked green weed. There was also Colombian Red, which is synonymous to Panama Red (Panama used to be part of Colombia) which was really kick ass weed. That was more common in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was a popular song about Panama Red by the New Riders Of The Purple Sage band. The name comes from the red hairs of the cured weed. And there were smaller grows of Colombian Purple and what is called Colombian Black now. I think that the black is just a strain of what I call green? Also the purple will typically not turn color if it is kept warn through the fall and flowering period. My experience growing a lot of purple strains anyway.
Color is highly variable in Cannabis, and influenced by genetics and environment. My Lebby Red strains all had bright red stems already only a week after they sprouted. Light, altitude, temperature and genetics seem to play a part in color. Also the curing process also can drastically change the final product appearance. I had several types of Colombian and Mexican weed that was multicolored. Typically green leaves, gold seed covers, and red hairs, for a multicolored look.
Oh I know these goodies are well kept by collectors, and many others, but I was referring to ’ gone’, as in try to find any for sale on the street gone. Or no large scale local commercial grows gone. My observation about the quality of landrace SEEDS available today, when it comes to finished product, and growers ability to produce a good crop, is my observation. Not meaning actual landrace breeds are lacking in strength and high type, at all. Just wanted to make that clear, I would love to try some more available landrace seedstock, but a joint or 2 from the 70’s brown columbian that was everywhere, got me higher than an 1/8 of the 3 or 4 ‘pure sativa starins’ I have grown out. The best quality I got was from bagseed froma tropical sativa I got in Latin America about 10 yrs. ago. Beat out the mozambique, early 80’s SSH f1’s and some other mex sativa seed. But still, it wasn’t as deep a mind buzz style that I grew up on. Like most of us I have grown quite a few sativa ‘leaners’. Any recomendations of landrace seeds commonly available? Tons of knowledge there in your posts thanks for sharing. @BigSur Jealous of your favourable climate, lattitude, and of course, your genetic collection!!!
I eat up these conversations about old strains. Thank you @MiG and @BigSur. Much respect and appreciation.
Landraces heirlooms worked since 1972 avaliables: Cannabiogen, Underground Seeds Collective, Tropical Seeds, A.C.E…
@GrowerGoneWild have tested one I think is of the worst…
Well, I have never been to Colombia, so this is all second hand and what I have read, and what I was told when I bought a lot of Colombian weed back in the day. The farthest south I have been was Panama. Doing some research, what I call Colombian Green may well be what is called Limon or Lima Verde in Colombia. It is apparently a well known land race there. I believe that a lot of it was bricked and fermented to turn gold and brown when transported here to the states. It is commonly grown along the west coast and inland in Colombia. Some also list a Colombia Green strain grown in the Choco area. This may be the same land race as Limon Verde. The Colombian Green grown just south of the Panama border area is nearly black, and may be what they call Colombian Black now.
The Punta Roja (or Punto Rojo) and Santa Marta (classic Colombian gold) were better known. Punta Roja (how can anyone call female flowers Punto Rojo?) is said to be from the Cali Hills (inland from the Pacific, in southwest Colombia. That was psychedelic weed. Santa Marta is the real classic 'lombo gold grown up toward the northeast tip of Colombia. Santa Marta was said to be more like stimulating sativa like Durban Poison than anything else. What I call Colombian Red is the same basic strain as Panama Red which was from central north lowland Colombia around Llanos. That can be quite narcotic. It puts me to sleep. There was also Wacky Weed, which I have seeds from as well, and that stuff makes you plain happy, crazy and silly. I have warnings on the seeds: do not smoke a whole joint of this stuff!
Sadly what I also read is that Colombian growers aren’t growing much Santa Marta Gold, Punta Roja or Lima Verde. Instead, like the rest of the world, they have shifted toward hybrids developed by breeders and growers in California and Amsterdam. Mainly it would seem due to Colombian strains having a very long flowering time and more of a sativa high to them, whereas the growers and markets seems to prefer the newer faster and earlier maturing indica crosses. I prize my Colombian seed collection the most, as I have a lot of them. Sadly they flower really late and finish even later, often times into January. I grew several Colombian strains in California, and they just started to flower when the rains came in late October there. I did not know about light deprivation then to set flowering earlier. Maybe next year I will grow Colombians… and force flower them earlier.
Ah, I finally figured out how to quote someone’s post on this site… I had never heard of Limon Verde either. We called it Colombian Green and it is mentioned in several of my older weed books from the 70s and 80s as Colombian Green. Limon Verde does not make any sense either. Green Lemons? In all of my travels in Central America, I rarely saw lemons. Limes… I saw mountains of LIMES there. Lima Verde would make more sense. Dunno, maybe it smells like lemons when it is green and fresh? Anyway, I saw a Strain Hunters video about a trip through Colombia, and they referred to what we used to call Colombian Green as Limon Verde.
Ah ha! that sort of makes sense. In sloppy English we have no distinction between male and female in language except for a few pronouns like her and him. I thought that Punta Roja and unto Punto Rojo were the same weed, and apparently they are not. Amusing. Spanish has some odd twists to feminine and masculine terms. In terms of translation then, Punta Roja would be lowland Colombian and Panama Red, and Punto Rojo would be Punto Rojo from the mountains between the west coast where Limon Verde is grown, and the lowlands where Punta Roja is grown. Eh? Santa Marta Gold historically from my research was originally grown in northeast Colombia, but became far more prevalent and wide spread throughout the mountain regions later on.
From my NorCal historical perspective, after the Paraquat was sprayed in Mexico by Nixon in the 1970s, lower grade Mexico imports dried up in California and Colombian weed became dominant. If you were selective, there was lots of good 'lombo to be had. It was not all seedy lowland brick narcotic weed, but that was the reputation for Colombian at that time and place. Also at that time there was a brief overlap between some great strains to be had from Colombia, semi-seedless top quality weed from the Mexico that had moved to the central plateau after the paraquat fiasco, (typically I got it from Morelos, but that is now commonly called Oaxacan ‘highland’ as a generic term for SW Mexico weed) and local early heirlooms and land race sinsemilia from the mountains and canyons of Big Sur, Carmel Valley and the Santa Cruz mountains. My brother and I were buying seedless sinsemillia for $60 an oz. That was compared to $40 an oz for Morelos and Colombian. It was great until High Times published prices for weed regionally in the US. Thanks to the cabrones at HT, herds of pendejos started showing up with suitcases full of money in NorCal and they bought up all the weed and took it back east with them. That paradigm still exists today. I stopped buying weed when the price went above $120 an oz in about 1984 and I started growing more myself from my seed collection. I also supplied some growers in Big Sur, Monterey and Carmel Valley with good seeds, and they grew some incredible wee from them. No one then had a seed collection like I did, and no one seems to have one now either.
Prices peaked about $400 an oz in SF, the highest that I saw weed sell for. Pounds were over $4,000 (and still are, according to some friends that export their grows to NYC). Here in the PNW and now though? That is changing. I bought an eighth of top grade Durban Poison a few weeks ago here at a dispensary for $13 with tax. That is $104 an oz. at gram weight. Last week I bought an eighth of Super Silver Haze for the same price. Weed is getting cheap again. Its different weed though, far more indica dominant than it used to be. I prefer sativas myself. But indicas are more compact plants and flower early, so they were crossed with sativas in NorCal to get shorter plants and an earlier harvest before the rains typically start in October. They also gave weed a different high though. Mainly couch lock… though Colombian lowland red is certainly couch lock weed.
I would think that Verde Limon from Mochoacan makes far more sense. Some really great weed came from Michoacan, Oaxaca, and Guerrero. As for GHS? These days no one seems to be an ‘authority’. Its all a lot of egos, tall tales and disputes. Which is a main theme in this thread I guess. Arjan (GHS) and Shantibaba (Mr Nice) are still arguing over who came up with White Widow. I stay out of the Amsterdam debates. I generally do not grow Amsterdam strains either. But Arjan & Co. have slathered the name of Limon Verde all over Green Colombian on the web and in various videos. I will revert to calling it Colombian Green, as we called it in the 70s.
Reading more Spanish weed sites, there seems to be a different understanding of names and sources of seeds and strains. My view of this stuff is from the gringo hippie bag weed buyer’s perspective in California and Oregon. Also from the perspective of being a global ‘strain hunter’ from nearly when I started smoking weed. I started smoking pot in 1972. I started collecting seeds in 1976. I first went to Mexico in 1968 I think it was. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that weed would be so adulterated genetically in later years, and that my seed collection would become what are now called land races. There was no real concept of that then. We did not even really know how to grow good weed in 1972. We threw seeds into the ground and let the males flower, and collected seeds, because the bag weed we bought had seeds. I saved seeds thinking that I would grow more marijuana in future if/when I had a place to grow it, which I later did. I never dreamed that marijuana would become legal in Oregon and California. It was more or less decriminalized at the federal level during the Carter years, and that was the golden era of weed in NorCal. Lots of local weed, Colombian weed, and Mexican weed, as well as Asian hashish, and rarities like Indian and Jamaican Ganja. Thai had changed by then, and the earlier skinny sticks with a good high had become far cigar shaped sticks and that stuff just put me to sleep. Paraquat led to an interesting outcome in the end. I wonder if Nixon ever imagined what has happened now? He tried to kill us off with Paraquat.