Sativa seeds come with more vocabulary around them than any other kind of cannabis seed, and most of it says one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and a third to the person trying to make a decision in front of the pack. The disappointing sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time taken as a promise, a « sativa-dominant » label read as a description of effect, a landrace bought as if it were a modern hybrid. The entries below are put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for reference, because it runs strongly towards the long-flowering end of the spectrum and that is where the words carry the most weight most; the meanings themselves apply to any sativa seed from any shop. They are given in no particular order, since none of them is sense without the others.

Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines

The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, usually towards the end in flower and frequently under stress. Almost every cannabis line has some capacity for do; long-flowering plants express it more often, for one simple one: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of exposure for a timer leak, a heat spike or a late watering to trigger it off, and a plant plant has already waited past its natural end often produces a few late male flowers on its own as a final attempt to make seed.

Not one of this makes a sativa line weak as a matter of nature; it makes the grower’s consistency matter for a longer stretch. Light-tight tents, steady conditions and harvesting the moment the plant is done and not two weeks later take away the greater part of the problem. A listing that mentions the breeder tests parents for intersex traits is saying something worth hearing for a long-flowering line than for any else.

Flowering time

The figure of weeks from the onset of flowering and harvest, which is the one most misunderstood figure on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, not from sowing, so a « fourteen-week » sativa started with an eight-week vegetative period is a five-month plant. Seed companies additionally give the shorter end of a range, because the other end moves fewer seed.

Long-flowering lines run anywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at around 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by this figure, which is the sensible first step for a room on a fixed timetable. A grower who allows four weeks on top of whatever the pack says is seldom caught out.

Haze (the family, not the smell)

In its first sense a particular line of plants put together in coastal California from Colombian, Colombian and Thai landraces, and later kept and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, fills out sparsely, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of incense, pine and a note sharp that no other other line quite reproduces.

In its looser sense « Haze » is whatever cross which contains a share of that family, which by now is most of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which reads « Haze » and gives no parents may be mostly percent original classic family or one small fraction of it, and the grow time tracks the fraction, not the name. The working question is not « is it a Haze » but « how much, and through which parent ».

Stretch (the doubling)

The surge of upward growth that follows the switch to flowering. Indica-leaning plants add around half again; sativas routinely double, and a few landrace lines triple. The stretch continues two to four weeks and cannot be halted after it begins, only bent sideways by training.

In tent terms, the stretch multiplier is a number to read before deciding when to switch. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a standard tent is touching the lamp before week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres has room. Growers coming over from indica stock almost always flip too late the first time, and the lesson is written on the ceiling of the tent.

Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)

Describes lines out of regions where daylength barely changes across the year, which means that the plant does not develop a strong response to changing days. These lines often start flowering slowly at a conventional twelve-hour schedule, because twelve hours is, for them, an unremarkable day rather than a signal.

The working fix, handed down between sativa growers for decades, is to cut the light more: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly during the last weeks. It costs some little yield and gains an more decisive end. A listing which uses « equatorial » is warning you about this in one word, and a grower that reads it as mere geography misses the point inside it.

Terpinolene (the « sativa smell »)

A aromatic compound present in high proportion in many old sativa lines and accounting for much of the thing growers mean as the « sativa » aroma: fresh, piney, citrus and slightly sweet all at once. It is volatile, lost easily through fast drying, and it degrades more quickly in the cure than the earthier terpenes that lead indica-leaning lines.

For a seed buyer the name earns two jobs. When a listing names terpinolene as the lead terpene, the strain most likely carries substantial old-sativa ancestry regardless of what the label claims. And where the grower are after that smell to still be there by the jar, the cure has to be slow and cool; a fast dry turns a terpinolene line into something that tastes of hay and leaves no trace of what the pack promised.

Latitude (outdoor sativas)

The single figure that determines if a sativa can ripen outdoors, and a number no pack prints. Equatorial plants require the run of shortening days to continue long enough for the plant to finish; in high latitudes the frost comes before that, and the grower cuts a unripe plant in late October or else watches it rot in November. The further to the equator, in the northern hemisphere, the longer the window runs, and Mediterranean or subtropical growers can finish lines that northern growers never will.

The practical reading for a seed listing: an « outdoor » line harvest date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, usually somewhere in temperate Europe or the western United States, and each degree further north of it moves the date back into the weather. A grower above about the fiftieth parallel who is after a true sativa in the garden is shopping for an autoflower or else a covered space, and not a better season.

Landrace

A population of plants shaped over generations to one place by local growers and climate alike, rather than by modern breeding. Colombian, Colombian, Malawian and Oaxacan stock are the classic sativa cases. A landrace is a spread, not a one plant: inside a pack the heights, flowering times and aromas spread widely than in a tent-bred hybrid, and that variation is the whole value of growing one.

The mistake is buying a landrace like a finished hybrid. It carries traits that make sense in an open field, such as a frame that no tent can contain and a flowering rhythm set to a equatorial daylength the majority of growers cannot provide. « Heirloom » in a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been reproduced away from its origin over some generations, often with a degree of selection towards tent conditions; it is nearer to usable but still far from a hybrid. A seller offering « landrace » that does not give an collection point and a reproduction count is applying the word loosely, and the pack should be judged accordingly.

Foxtailing

The habit of certain flowers to grow new bud growth on top of old ones, giving spired, irregular buds rather than dense ones. In most indica-leaning strains it is a stress symptom, typically caused by light that is too close or a room too high, and the standard response is to correct the room.

In a good number of sativas, especially Southeast Asian and certain Haze lines, it is built in and is going to happen in a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower often spends a month hunting a fault that was never there, lowering lights and temperatures only slowing an already long plant even more. The breeder rarely warns which type to expect; the parentage generally tells you.

Sativa-dominant (the label)

The catalogue term and not a measurable one. It generally means that more of a hybrid’s parents were classed as sativa by the breeder who wrote the listing, which sometimes means no more than that the flowers are airier or the aroma sharper than the that breeder’s indica-labelled releases.

The experience people associate with a word, lively instead of heavy, is governed far more by terpene profile and by cannabinoid balance than by ancestry, and a good number of « sativa-dominant » hybrids deliver a flat sleepy effect and a good number of the opposite lines do exactly the reverse. For a grower the label is useful for a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is close to useless without the terpene notes.