Sativa seeds come with more vocabulary attached than any other category of cannabis seed, and most of it means one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and something different again to the person trying to make a decision in front of the pack. A disappointing sativa grow usually traces back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” tag read as a description of character, a landrace chosen as if it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for reference, since it runs strongly to the classic end of the category where the words matter most; the definitions though hold to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, because not one of them is usable on its own without the rest.
Flowering time
The figure of weeks between the onset of flowering and harvest, which is the one most misunderstood figure on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light drops to twelve hours, not from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started after an ordinary vegetative stage is a five-month plant. Seed companies also give the optimistic end of a range, because the other end sells fewer seed.
Sativa lines run anywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at around 16 weeks from the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by this number, which is the sensible first step if you have a grower on a fixed timetable. A grower who allows four weeks to the figure the pack says is seldom disappointed.
Terpinolene
A aromatic compound found in high proportion in a lot of classic sativa lines and responsible for much of what growers mean as the “sativa” smell: green, woody, lemon and slightly sweet at once. It is fragile, driven off quickly by hot drying, and it degrades more quickly in storage than the heavier terpenes that lead indica-leaning lines.
For a seed buyer the word does two jobs. When a listing lists terpinolene as the lead terpene, the line most likely has substantial old-sativa ancestry regardless of what the percentage says. And where the grower wants that smell to survive to the jar, the drying has to be slow and slow; a warm dry flattens a terpinolene line to something that tastes of very little and nothing of what the pack described.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The catalogue term rather than a measurable one. It usually indicates that more of a hybrid’s lineage were described as sativa by whoever wrote the description, and sometimes signals no more than that the buds are airier or the aroma brighter than the same breeder’s other releases.
The effect people connect with a word, clear-headed rather than heavy, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and the THC balance than it is by ancestry, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a flat sleepy result and plenty of indica-labelled lines deliver exactly the reverse. To a buyer the percentage is worth something for a rough hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is next to useless without the aroma description.
Stretch (the doubling)
The burst of upward growth which comes after the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain half their height again; sativas commonly double, and a few landrace lines triple. The stretch continues three to four weeks and will not be stopped after it has started, merely bent sideways by training.
In tent terms, a stretch multiplier is the fact to reading ahead of choosing when to flip. 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 coming over from indica stock nearly always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Haze (the family, not the smell)
Originally a particular line of plants put together in coastal California from Mexican, Colombian and Thai parents, and later preserved and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, fills out sparsely, takes for twelve sixteen weeks and smells of incense, pine and a note sharp that no other other line exactly reproduces.
In its looser sense “Haze” is whatever cross which carries some of that family, and by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which says “Haze” and gives no lineage may be mostly percent the old family or one small fraction of it, and the grow character follows the share, not the name. The working question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Foxtailing
The habit of certain flowers to grow fresh calyx clusters on top of old ones, producing towered, irregular buds instead of round ones. In the majority of tent-bred lines it is a heat symptom, usually caused by light that is too close or a room that is too high, and the advice is to correct the room.
In a good number of sativas, especially Thai and some Haze lines, it is built in and is going to happen in a flawless room. A first-time sativa grower often spends weeks chasing a problem that was never not a problem, dropping lights and heat only slowing a slow plant further. The breeder seldom warns which type to expect; the lineage generally does.
Equatorial
Describes lines from latitudes where daylength hardly changes through the year, and that the plant never develop a sharp reaction to changing days. These plants frequently start flowering reluctantly at a conventional twelve-hour light cycle, because twelve hours is, for them, an unremarkable day and not a signal.
The practical response, handed around between sativa growers over decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly during the last weeks. It costs a yield yield and buys a more clearer finish. A listing that uses “equatorial” is telling you about this with one word, and a grower that takes it as a note on geography has missed the instruction inside it.
Landrace
A population of plants shaped through generations to a particular region by the local climate and growers alike, and not by modern breeding. Thai, Colombian, Congolese and Mexican stock are the sativa cases. A landrace is a spread, rather than a single plant: within a pack the flowering times, finishing times and aromas spread far more than a tent-bred hybrid, and that variation is the point of growing one.
The trap is buying a landrace like a modern product. It brings traits that made sense in an equatorial field, such as height no tent can hold and a flowering clock tuned to an equatorial daylength most growers never provide. “Heirloom” on a listing usually refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin for some generations, typically with a degree of selection for tent conditions; it is nearer to usable but nonetheless not uniform. A seller offering “landrace” without a collection region and a reproduction history is using the word as a flavour, and the seeds should be judged with that in mind.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The production of male flowers on a female plant, typically late in flower and frequently in response to stress. Every cannabis population has some tendency for do; sativa lines show it more, and the reason is one simple reason: fourteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a temperature spike or a late watering that can trigger it off, and an plant that has waited beyond its natural finish frequently throws a few late pollen sacs on its own in a final effort to make seed.
Not one of this makes a sativa line unstable by nature; it makes the room’s consistency count for longer. Light-tight room, stable temperatures and cutting the moment the plant is ready rather than a weeks after remove the greater part of the problem. A listing that mentions a breeder screens parents for intersex traits is saying something worth hearing on a sativa than on anything other category.