Beautiful shot of those purple trichomes @Foreigner!!!
4 Likes
Thanks @Dirtron I was very surprised to see them under the scope. The weed was super purple too. Someone told me the colour leaches into the trichs which I think makes sense
4 Likes
Hey @PetalPowerseed I see your former account name is still listed at #6. Just a heads up. 
3 Likes
This is an interesting theory on the origin of Reeferman’s Tuna Kush from Mriko over at ICMag, who gathers landrace and heirlooms from Pakistan. He sees the Yarkhun Kafiristanica in it that he passed out to people, including Reef:
And then I see Kwik sells it as Chitrali, and references Mriko’s own collections of it, with the note that the Yarkhun Valley has been a caravan route since time immemorial, matching Reeferman’s description of Tuna Kush as coming from ancient hashish routes.
More detail from Mriko on the collection:
“Hmmnope nope, this is all same valley, Yarkhun (except Laspur of course). The seeds I have grown outdoor, and subsequent crosses, where all from Pattrangas village, West side of the valley, Hindu Kush range. The original, pure Yarkhun seeds that I have shared around come from Miragram 2 village (there’s another Miragram down stream near Chitral), East side of the valley, Hindu RAJ range.”
It looks like Mriko was trying to get a preservation project going based out of Paris named ARICA, and the landrace/heirloom collections for it occured in 2004:
And this is his log of the collection journey:
And comments from the growers he gathered from:
“Indeed, for the area I’ve visited (Chitral/Yarkhun), there used to be charas caravans coming from Yarkand, towards Kabul. And it’s a branch of the Silk Road as well, so there has been loads of trade in this region indeed. I remember that first time I was thre I enquired about the origins of the cultivated hash strains, I had two different versions : one saying they come from Badakhshan (local ruler was linked to the Chitral Royal family), the other from Kashgaria (Kashgar/Yarkand area).”
And this post has photos of the Yarkhun plants he harvested the seeds from:
Interesting stuff, maybe someone with more landrace experience than me can comment on any similarities you might see in the Tuna vs these?
14 Likes
oh good catch I will figure that out. Thanks for a heads up
3 Likes
Hey @District_Flora thanks for share your work with us. 
2 Likes
Nice video, I wish I had a purple pheno of Tuna! Maybe someone will get lucky with the kids. Yeah, sorry I suck at pollen extraction lol but I hope you can get whatever you need done with the beans you’ll get 
4 Likes
Those samples look beautiful!! How was the purple Mexican in taste? I have some as well that I wanted to grow out.
Will do for sure!
3 Likes
Of course, thanks for coming along on the ride!
1 Like
can’t say I’ve had that happen before but I have had this with seeds
Thank you for sharing this, seriously! Check this out @Upstate we were just chatting about this.
Definitely felt it was a paki or Afghani or something in that region, this definitely lends credence to that theory. Not really seeing this as an OG/Black Tuna cross at all
1 Like
Im reading about Tuna Kush , and this is a legendary strain.
Strong THC strain.
Exelent Seed Run @District_Flora
Amazing job
Thanks by this opportunity
5 Likes
I have seen purple flower rosin, granted, more plant oils than bubble, but still cool to see.
2 Likes
I like the Hash of the Purple Mexican Heirloom. The flavors come out in it. But so much the flower.
It was a pain in the rear in my garden to grow it. But we did have some flooding issues. Threw the book at that thing almost lost it. It never really amounted to much. To me ,I grew it outdoors, was not the right place for a northern girl to grow a south of the border plant outdoors…live and learn , right? Lol
Pretty plant, just not one of my favorites.
4 Likes
Very welcome!
1 Like
Looks like the seeds themselves had a bunch of purple trichs. 
Growing these plants always amazed me with what they throw at you (us)
2 Likes
That pic I’m 99% sure is that pink mold that sometimes grows in showers/bathrooms. I see it often in seeds left in containers, somehow yours just started real quick. I used to wonder wtf it was. Until I asked my mentor . He explained it and it made total sense.
7 Likes
It’s not even a mold! It’s a gram-negative facultative bacteria that’s just in the air and soil around us, the red pigment it produces is called prodigiosin:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/serratia-marcescens
“Serratia Species
Of the many species in the genusSerratia, Serratia marcescens is the one most commonly isolated from human infections, andSerratia liquefaciens is occasionally grown.Serratia strains are motile, rarely ferment lactose, and produce an extracellular DNase. The organism is widespread in the environment but not a commonly recognized component of the human fecal microbiota; thus most infections appear to be acquired exogenously. Many environmental and some clinical strains ofS. marcescens produce a red pigment (Fig. 218.7), prodigiosin. Bartolemeo Bizio, an Italian pharmacist, first described the organism in 1819 as the cause of red discoloration of polenta, thereby discrediting the claim that the growth was due to the miraculous appearance of blood.729 He named the bacterial genus to honor Serafino Serrati, an Italian physicist, and its species name(marcescens) for the Latin word for “to decay” because of the tendency of the pigment to change color as the colonies age.730 The production of prodigiosin and the misconception that the bacterium was harmless led to its frequent use as a biologic marker to study, among other things, the transmission of bacteria through speech and contact, ascending bladder colonization from urinary catheters, and the dissemination of aerosolized bacteria after experimental release into the environment in models of biologic warfare.731,732 It is now appreciated thatS. marcescens can cause a wide variety of infections, ranging from UTIs, bacteremia, pneumonia, and CNS infections, to other less common infections, including ocular infections. The most common site of infection is the urinary tract, but the organism is frequently isolated from the respiratory tract and wounds.”
7 Likes
Stuff like this is why I take @SCJedi advice to do a H202 wash and soak to sanitize my seeds, you never know what’s lurking on their surface or in the environment!
10 Likes
A+!! We have a microbiologist in the hizzzouse.
I see this bacteria come out in cultures with some regularity.
It’s not ALWAYS true but a good rule of thumb is that typically anything bright colored is bacterial and you white/gray/black fuzzies are fungal. Bright yellow slime mold is an exception.
I’m doing an embryo rescue project for copagenetics and I did an ISO rinse, an H2O2 rinse, and a bleach/tween rinse prior to soaking them in sterile distilled water.
Each seed is also in its own tube so no cross-contamination. One bad seed will mess up the whole lot.
If something has an abnormal value then I take abnormal precautions.
13 Likes