Sativa seeds come with more vocabulary attached than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it means a certain thing to a botanist, another to a seed company and something different again to the grower standing in front of the listing. A disappointing sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong sense: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” tag read as a statement of effect, a landrace chosen like it were a modern hybrid. The entries below were put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for reference, since it runs 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 not one of them makes usable without the others.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted over centuries to a particular region by local growers and growers together, rather than by deliberate breeding. Thai, Thai, Congolese and Mexican stock are the classic sativa examples. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: within a pack the flowering times, finishing times and aromas spread far more than any tent-bred line, and this spread is the whole value of keeping one.
The trap is buying a landrace like a finished product. It carries traits that make sense in an equatorial field, including height no tent can contain and a flowering rhythm set to a daylength the majority of growers never offer. “Heirloom” in a listing usually refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, often with a degree of selection towards indoor life; it is closer to manageable but still not uniform. A shop offering “landrace” that does not give a origin region and a reproduction history is using the word as a flavour, and the pack should be judged with that in mind.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A aromatic compound present in large proportion in a lot of old sativa lines and responsible for much of the thing growers describe as a “sativa” aroma: fresh, piney, citrus and slightly sweet all at once. It is volatile, driven off quickly by hot drying, and terpinolene fades more quickly in the cure than the earthier terpenes which lead most tent stock.
For a seed buyer the word earns two jobs. When a listing names terpinolene as the leading aromas, the line most likely carries substantial Haze-era genetics whatever the percentage claims. And where the you wants that profile to still be there to the jar, the cure has to be slow and cool; a warm dry flattens a terpinolene line into a flower that tastes of very little and leaves no trace of what the pack described.
Foxtailing
The habit of certain flowers to push out new calyx growth on top of old ones, giving spired, open buds instead of round ones. In the majority of indica-leaning lines it is a heat symptom, typically from light that is too close or temperatures that is too high, and the advice is to correct the cause.
In many sativas, especially Southeast Asian and some Haze hybrids, it is built in and is going to happen under a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower often spends weeks hunting a problem that was never not there, lowering lights and heat and slowing a slow plant even more. The listing rarely warns which type you should expect; the parentage generally tells you.
Haze
In its first sense a particular family of plants put together in 1970s California from Mexican, Thai and Thai parents, and later preserved and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, takes for twelve to to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and something metallic that no other line exactly has.
In its looser sense “Haze” is whatever cross that contains some of that family, and by now is most of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which says “Haze” and gives no lineage could be eighty percent original old family or one small fraction of it, and the grow character tracks the share, not the name. The useful question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The catalogue category and not a measurable one. The phrase usually indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s parents are described as sativa according to whoever drafted the listing, and sometimes signals nothing more than a certain the flowers are longer or the smell brighter than the same breeder’s other releases.
The experience people associate with a word, lively rather than sedating, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and the THC balance than it is by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a heavy sleepy effect while a good number of indica-labelled lines do exactly the opposite. To a buyer the label is useful for a rough guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to how it feels it is next to useless unless accompanied by the aroma description.
Latitude
The one number that determines whether a sativa will ripen outdoors, and one no pack states. Equatorial plants require a autumn days to continue late enough for the plant to finish; in high latitudes the frost comes first, and the grower harvests an unripe plant in late October or else watches it to mould in November. A further to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the window runs, and Mediterranean or low-latitude growers can ripen lines that temperate growers cannot.
The practical rule of a seed pack: an “outdoor” sativa harvest month is given for the breeder’s own latitude, usually somewhere within southern Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every degree north of that pushes the date back towards the frost. A grower above about the fiftieth parallel that is after a long-flowering sativa in the garden is looking for a sativa autoflower or a greenhouse, and not a better summer.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The production of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, usually towards the end in flower and frequently in response to stress. Every cannabis line has a degree of tendency for do; long-flowering plants show it more often, for one simple reason: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a temperature spike or a late watering that can set it off, and an old plant has gone past its natural finish often throws a few desperate pollen flowers on its own in a last attempt to make seed.
None of these means a sativa line unstable as a matter of nature; it makes the room’s discipline count for longer. Light-tight tents, steady temperatures and cutting the moment the plant is ready and not two week after remove most of the problem. A listing that mentions the breeder screens parents for intersex tendency is saying something more for a sativa than for anything other category.
Flowering time
The number of weeks from the start of flowering and harvest, and the one most misread number on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light drops to twelve hours, rather than from germination, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with an ordinary vegetative stage is a five-month plant. Breeders also give the shorter end of a range, because the other end moves less seed.
Sativa plants take anywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at about 16 weeks from the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by this figure, which is the sensible first pass for a grower with a fixed schedule. A grower who allows four weeks to whatever the pack says is seldom caught out.
Stretch
The surge of vertical growth which comes after the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants add half again; sativas routinely double, and a few equatorial types go further. The stretch continues three to five weeks and will not be halted after it begins, only bent sideways by training.
In tent terms, a stretch multiplier is a fact worth read before deciding when to switch. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres in a standard tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres has room. People moving from indica stock almost always flip too late the first time, and the consequence is written on the ceiling of the tent.