Sativa seeds arrive with more vocabulary attached than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says a certain thing to a botanist, another to a breeder and something different again to the grower standing in front of the listing. The disappointing sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was read in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a description of character, a landrace bought as if it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for the concrete examples, since it leans strongly towards the long-flowering end of the spectrum and that is where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the definitions themselves apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are in no particular order, because not one of them makes sense without the rest.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The appearance of male flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often in response to stress. Every cannabis population has some tendency for do; sativa lines express it more, for a plain one: sixteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of exposure for a timer leak, a heat spike or a missed watering that can set it going, and a plant plant has already waited past its intended end frequently produces a few late male sacs on its own as a last attempt to set seed.
None of this means a sativa line weak as a matter of nature; it means the grower’s consistency matter for a longer stretch. Light-tight tents, steady conditions and cutting when the plant is done rather than a week later remove most of the risk. A listing which states a breeder tests parents for hermaphrodite tendency is worth worth hearing for a sativa than for anything other category.
Latitude
The single figure that determines if a sativa can finish outdoors, and a number no pack states. Equatorial lines require the autumn days to go on long enough for the plant ripen; at high latitudes the frost arrives first, and the grower cuts a half-finished plant in the end of October or loses it to mould in November. A closer south, in the northern hemisphere, the longer the window stretches, and Mediterranean and subtropical growers are able to ripen plants that northern gardens cannot.
The practical reading of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line finishing date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, normally somewhere within temperate Europe or the western United States, and each degree north of it moves the finish back into the weather. A grower above about the fiftieth parallel that wants a true sativa outdoors is looking for an autoflower or else a greenhouse, not a longer season.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A terpene present in high amounts in a lot of old sativa strains and accounting for most of what people describe as a “sativa” aroma: green, piney, citrus and faintly floral all at once. It is fragile, lost quickly by hot drying, and terpinolene degrades more quickly in storage than the heavier terpenes which dominate indica-leaning stock.
To a seed buyer the name earns two things. When a listing lists terpinolene as the leading terpene, the line most likely carries real old-sativa genetics regardless of what the label claims. And when the you are after that profile to still be there by the jar, the cure is going to be cool and slow; a warm dry turns a terpinolene sativa to something that smells of hay and nothing of what the pack described.
Foxtailing
The habit of some flowers to push out fresh calyx growth on top of existing ones, giving spired, open buds rather than round ones. In the majority of indica-leaning lines it is a heat symptom, usually from light too close or temperatures that is too high, and the standard response is to fix the cause.
In a good number of sativas, above all Thai and certain Haze hybrids, it is built in and will occur in a perfect room. A new sativa grower often wastes a month hunting a problem that was never there, dropping lights and heat only slowing an already long plant even more. The listing rarely warns which type you should expect; the lineage usually does.
Stretch
The burst of upward growth that follows the change to flowering. Most tent-bred plants add half again; sativas commonly double, and a few landrace types triple. The stretch continues three to five weeks and will not be stopped once it begins, merely redirected by training.
In practical terms, a stretch figure is a number worth read ahead of deciding when to switch. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres in a standard tent is at the lamp before week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres has room. People moving over from indica stock nearly always switch too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Sativa-dominant
A catalogue term rather than a measurable one. It usually indicates that more of a hybrid’s lineage were described as sativa according to whoever drafted the description, and sometimes means no more than that the flowers are longer or the smell brighter than the that breeder’s indica-labelled releases.
The experience people connect with a word, clear-headed rather than sedating, is driven more by terpene chemistry and by THC content than it is by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” releases produce a flat sleepy effect and plenty of the opposite stock deliver exactly the reverse. To a buyer the percentage is useful for a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is close to worthless without the terpene notes.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
The figure of weeks between the onset of flowering and harvest, and the one most frequently misunderstood number on a sativa pack. For 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 ordinary vegetative stage is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also give the optimistic end of the spread, since the longer end sells fewer seed.
Long-flowering lines run everywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the slowest strain in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at about 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be filtered by this number, which is the reasonable first step if you have a room on a tight timetable. A grower who allows four weeks to whatever the pack states is rarely disappointed.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted through centuries to a particular place by the local climate and growers together, rather than by deliberate selection. Thai, Thai, Congolese and Mexican lines are the sativa cases. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: within a pack the flowering times, finishing times and smells spread widely than in any tent-bred hybrid, and this spread is the point of growing one.
The mistake is buying a landrace like a finished product. It carries habits that made sense in an equatorial field, such as height no tent can contain and a flowering clock tuned to a equatorial daylength most growers cannot provide. “Heirloom” in a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been reproduced somewhere over some generations, typically with a degree of selection towards indoor conditions; it is nearer to usable but still not uniform. A seller offering “landrace” that does not give an origin region and a generation history is applying the word as a flavour, and the seeds should be priced accordingly.
Haze (the family, not the smell)
Originally a specific family of plants put together in 1970s California from Colombian, Thai and Thai landraces, and later preserved and refined in the Netherlands. The Haze runs tall, fills out openly, takes for twelve to to sixteen weeks and smells of incense, pine and something metallic that no line exactly reproduces.
In its looser sense “Haze” is any cross which contains a share of that family, and by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing that reads “Haze” and gives no lineage could be eighty percent the old family or one sixteenth of it, and the grow character follows the share, not the name. The working question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.