Sativa seeds come with more jargon attached than any other category of cannabis seed, and most of it means one thing to a botanist, something else to a seed company and a third to the grower standing in front of the listing. A disappointing sativa grow nearly always goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a statement 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 open as reference, because it leans strongly towards the classic end of the category and that is where the words carry the most weight most; the meanings themselves hold to any sativa seed from any seller. They are in no special order, since not one of them makes sense without the rest.
Haze
In its first sense a specific family of plants bred in 1970s California from Colombian, Colombian and South Indian parents, and later preserved and refined in the Netherlands. The Haze runs tall, fills out sparsely, takes for twelve to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and something sharp that no other other line quite reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is any hybrid which carries a share of that family, and by now is most of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing which reads “Haze” and gives no lineage could be eighty percent original old family or one small fraction of it, and the flowering character tracks the share, 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 vertical growth which comes after the change to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain around half their height again; sativas routinely double, and some equatorial lines triple. The stretch continues two to four weeks and cannot be stopped after it begins, only bent sideways by training.
In practical terms, a stretch multiplier is the fact to read before choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres inside a standard tent is at the lamp before week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. Growers coming over from indica strains nearly always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The production of male flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often under stress. Every cannabis line carries a degree of capacity to do; sativa lines express it more often, for one plain reason: sixteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of opportunity for a light leak, a temperature spike or a late watering that can trigger it going, and an plant plant has already gone beyond its intended finish frequently produces a few desperate male flowers on its own as a last attempt to make seed.
Not one of these means a sativa strain weak as a matter of nature; it makes the grower’s discipline count for a longer stretch. A sealed room, stable temperatures and harvesting the moment the plant is done rather than two week later take away most of the risk. A listing which mentions the breeder tests parents for intersex tendency is saying something more on a sativa than for any other category.
Foxtailing
The tendency of certain flowers to push out fresh calyx growth on top of existing ones, producing towered, open buds instead of dense ones. In most tent-bred 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 fix the room.
In a good number of sativas, above all Thai and certain Haze hybrids, it is built in and will occur in a flawless room. A new sativa grower often wastes weeks hunting a fault that is a problem, lowering lights and temperatures and slowing an already slow plant even more. The breeder seldom warns which kind to expect; the lineage usually does.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A terpene present in high amounts in a lot of classic sativa lines and responsible for most of what growers describe as a “sativa” aroma: green, piney, lemon and slightly floral at once. It is fragile, lost quickly through hot drying, and it degrades faster in the cure than the heavier terpenes that lead most tent stock.
For a seed buyer the name does two jobs. Where a listing names terpinolene as the lead aromas, the strain most likely has substantial Haze-era ancestry whatever the label says. And when the you are after that profile to still be there by the jar, the cure is going to be slow and cool; a fast drying room flattens a terpinolene sativa into something that tastes of very little and leaves no trace of what the pack promised.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The catalogue category rather than a botanical one. It generally indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s parents were classed as sativa by whoever wrote the listing, and occasionally means no more than that the flowers are longer or the aroma sharper than the that breeder’s other lines.
The effect people associate with the word, clear-headed rather than heavy, is governed more by terpene chemistry and by cannabinoid content than it is by ancestry, and a good number of “sativa-dominant” releases produce a flat couch result while a good number of indica-labelled stock do exactly the opposite. To a buyer the percentage is worth something for a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; for a guide to how it feels it is close to useless without the terpene notes.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The single number that determines whether a sativa will ripen outdoors, and a number that no pack prints. Long-flowering plants require a run of shortening days to go on late enough for the plant to ripen; at northern latitudes the frost comes before that, and the grower harvests an half-finished plant in late October or loses it rot in November. The further south, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the window runs, and Mediterranean and subtropical growers can finish lines that northern gardens never will.
The practical reading for a seed pack: an “outdoor” sativa finishing date 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 it pushes the finish back towards the frost. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel that wants a long-flowering sativa outdoors needs to be looking for a sativa autoflower or else a covered space, and not a better season.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted over generations to a particular place by local growers and climate alike, and not by modern breeding. Thai, Colombian, Congolese and Mexican lines are the sativa examples. A landrace is a spread, rather than a single plant: inside a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas spread far more than in any tent-bred line, and this variation is the whole value of keeping one.
The trap is buying a landrace as a finished product. It brings habits that make sense in an open field, such as height no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm set to a equatorial daylength most growers cannot provide. “Heirloom” in a listing generally means a landrace that has been reproduced away from its origin for a number of generations, often with light selection towards indoor conditions; it is closer to manageable but still not uniform. A shop listing “landrace” that does not give a origin region and a generation history is using the word loosely, and the pack should be priced accordingly.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
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 measured from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, rather than from germination, so a “fourteen-week” sativa grown after an ordinary vegetative period is a twenty-two-week plant. Breeders additionally give the optimistic end of the range, since the other end sells fewer seed.
Sativa plants take everywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the slowest strain in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at around 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by that number, which is a reasonable first step if you have a room with a tight timetable. A grower who adds four weeks to whatever the pack says is rarely caught out.