Sativa seeds come with more jargon around them than any other kind of cannabis seed, and most of it says one thing to a botanist, another to a seed company and a third to the grower trying to make a decision in front of the listing. A failed sativa grow usually traces back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” tag taken as a statement of character, 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 as reference, because it leans heavily towards the classic end of the category where the words matter most; the meanings themselves apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are given in no special order, since none of them is usable on its own without the others.
Stretch (the doubling)
The burst of upward growth which comes after the change to flowering. Indica-leaning plants add half again; sativas commonly double, and a few equatorial lines triple. The stretch continues two to five weeks and cannot be halted after it has started, only redirected by training.
In practical terms, the stretch multiplier is the number worth read before choosing when to flip. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a standard tent is at the lamp before week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres has room. People moving from indica stock nearly always switch too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The marketing category and not a measurable one. The phrase generally indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s lineage are classed as sativa by the breeder who wrote the listing, which sometimes means nothing more than that the flowers are longer or the aroma brighter than the same breeder’s other releases.
The effect people connect with the word, clear-headed instead of heavy, is driven more by terpene profile and by cannabinoid balance than it is by ancestry, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” releases produce a heavy sleepy result while plenty of indica-labelled lines deliver the reverse. For a grower the percentage is worth something for a rough guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is next to useless unless accompanied by the aroma description.
Equatorial
Describes lines from regions where daylength hardly varies across the year, and that the plant does not evolved a sharp reaction to shortening days. These plants often flower slowly under a conventional twelve-hour light cycle, since twelve hours is, for them, an unremarkable day rather than a signal.
The practical response, passed down among sativa growers over decades, is to cut the light more: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly in the final weeks. It costs a yield yield and gains a earlier clearer finish. A listing that uses “equatorial” is telling you about this with one word, and a grower that reads it as mere origin has missed the point inside it.
Terpinolene
A terpene present in large amounts in many old sativa lines and accounting for most of what people mean as a “sativa” smell: fresh, piney, citrus and faintly sweet all at once. It is fragile, driven off quickly through fast drying, and terpinolene degrades faster during storage than the heavier terpenes which lead indica-leaning stock.
To a seed buyer the name earns two things. When a listing lists terpinolene as the leading aromas, the strain probably has real Haze-era genetics regardless of what the label says. And where the grower are after that profile to survive to the jar, the cure is going to be cool and slow; a warm drying room flattens a terpinolene line into a flower that tastes of very little and no trace of what the pack promised.
Intersex tendency
The production of male flowers on a female plant, usually towards the end in flower and frequently in response to stress. Every cannabis line carries a degree of capacity to do; sativa lines show it more often, for a plain reason: fourteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a heat spike or a late watering that can set it going, and an old that has gone beyond its natural finish often throws a few late male flowers on its own as a last effort to make seed.
Not one of these means a sativa strain unstable as a matter of course; it means the grower’s consistency matter for longer. Light-tight room, steady temperatures and cutting when the plant is ready rather than a week later remove the greater part of the problem. A listing which states the breeder screens parents for hermaphrodite traits is worth worth hearing on a sativa than for anything other category.
Landrace versus heirloom
A population of plants shaped through generations to one place by the local growers and growers together, and not by modern breeding. Thai, Colombian, Congolese and Mexican stock are the sativa cases. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: within a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas range widely than in any tent-bred hybrid, and that variation is the whole value of growing one.
The mistake is treating a landrace like a modern hybrid. It carries traits that made sense in an open field, including a frame no tent can contain and a flowering rhythm tuned to a equatorial daylength the majority of growers never offer. “Heirloom” on a listing usually refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, typically with light selection towards indoor conditions; it is nearer to usable but nonetheless not a hybrid. A shop offering “landrace” without a collection point and a reproduction history is using the word loosely, and the seeds should be judged accordingly.
Haze
In its first sense a specific family of plants put together in 1970s California from Colombian, Colombian and Thai parents, and then preserved and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze runs tall, fills out sparsely, takes for twelve to to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and something sharp that no other other line exactly has.
In its looser sense “Haze” is whatever cross that carries some of that family, and today is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing that reads “Haze” and gives no lineage could be mostly percent the old family or a sixteenth of it, and the grow time follows the fraction, not the name. The useful question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.
Foxtailing
The habit of some flowers to grow new bud growth on top of old ones, producing towered, open buds instead of round ones. In most tent-bred lines it is a stress symptom, typically from light that is too close or temperatures too high, and the standard response is to fix the cause.
In many sativas, especially Southeast Asian and some Haze hybrids, it is genetic and is going to happen under a flawless room. A new sativa grower frequently spends weeks chasing a fault that was never a problem, dropping lights and temperatures and slowing a long plant even more. The breeder seldom says which kind to expect; the lineage generally does.
Latitude
The single number that determines whether a sativa will ripen outdoors, and one that no pack prints. Long-flowering plants require a autumn days to continue late enough for the plant to ripen; at high latitudes the frost arrives before that, and the grower cuts an half-finished plant in the end of October or else loses it rot in November. A further to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the later the window runs, and coastal or subtropical gardens are able to finish plants that northern gardens cannot.
The usable rule for a seed pack: an “outdoor” line harvest date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, normally a point in temperate Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every step further north of it moves the finish later into the frost. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel that wants a true sativa outdoors is shopping for an autoflower or a covered space, and not a longer summer.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
The figure of weeks between the start of flowering and harvest, and the single most frequently misread figure on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light drops to twelve hours, not from germination, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with an eight-week vegetative stage is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also give the shorter end of a spread, because the longer end sells fewer seed.
Long-flowering plants take everywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the longest strain in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at around 16 weeks after the flip. The catalogue can be sorted by that number, which is a sensible first pass for a grower with a fixed schedule. A grower who allows four weeks to the figure the pack states is rarely disappointed.