Sativa seeds come with more vocabulary attached than any other kind of cannabis seed, and most of it says a certain thing to a botanist, another to a seed company and a third to the person trying to make a decision in front of the pack. A disappointing sativa grow nearly always goes back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” label taken as a statement of effect, a landrace chosen like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below are put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand as reference, because it leans strongly towards the long-flowering end of the spectrum where the vocabulary matter most; the meanings though apply to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, since none of them makes usable on its own without the others.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often in response to stress. Every cannabis population carries a degree of tendency to it; sativa lines show it more often, for a plain reason: fourteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of exposure for a timer leak, a heat spike or a late watering that can trigger it off, and a old plant has already waited past its intended end frequently produces a few desperate pollen flowers on its own in a last effort to make seed.
Not one of these makes a sativa line weak by nature; it means the room’s discipline matter over a longer stretch. Light-tight room, steady temperatures and cutting when the plant is ready and not a weeks after take away the greater part of the problem. A listing which mentions the breeder screens parents for intersex tendency is saying something worth hearing on a sativa than on any else.
Haze
Originally a particular family of plants put together in coastal California from Mexican, Thai and South Indian parents, and then kept and refined in the Netherlands. A true Haze grows tall, branches openly, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and something metallic that no other other line exactly reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is whatever hybrid that contains some of that family, and today is most of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which reads “Haze” and gives no parents may be mostly percent original classic family or one small fraction of it, and the flowering time follows the share, not the name. The working question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Sativa-dominant
A marketing term rather than a botanical one. The phrase usually means that more of a hybrid’s parents were described as sativa by whoever wrote the listing, and sometimes signals no more than a certain the flowers are airier or the aroma sharper than the that breeder’s indica-labelled lines.
The effect people connect with the word, lively rather than sedating, is driven far 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 plenty of indica-labelled stock deliver exactly the opposite. For a grower the label is worth something for a rough hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a guide to how it feels it is close to worthless without the aroma description.
Landrace versus heirloom
A population of plants adapted over generations to a particular region by the local growers and growers alike, rather than by modern selection. Thai, Colombian, Congolese and Oaxacan lines are the sativa examples. A landrace is variable, not a one plant: inside a pack the flowering times, finishing times and aromas spread far more than in a tent-bred hybrid, and this variation is the point of keeping one.
The mistake is treating a landrace like a finished product. It brings traits that made sense in an open field, including a frame that no tent can hold and a flowering clock set to an daylength most growers cannot offer. “Heirloom” on a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been grown out somewhere for a number of generations, often with light selection for tent conditions; it is closer to usable but still not a hybrid. A shop offering “landrace” that does not give an origin point and a reproduction count is using the word loosely, and the pack should be priced with that in mind.
Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)
Describes lines from latitudes in which daylength barely varies across the year, which means where the plant does not develop a strong reaction to changing days. These plants frequently start flowering slowly at a conventional twelve-hour schedule, because twelve hours is, for them, an ordinary day and not a signal.
The practical response, handed around among sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, occasionally ten, especially during the last weeks. It costs some little yield and gains a earlier clearer finish. A listing which uses “equatorial” is telling you about this in one word, and a grower who takes it as a note on geography misses the point inside it.
Foxtailing
The habit of certain flowers to grow fresh calyx growth on top of old ones, giving towered, 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 too high, and the advice is to correct the room.
In many sativas, above all Southeast Asian and some Haze lines, it is built in and is going to occur in a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower frequently wastes weeks chasing a problem that was never a problem, lowering lights and temperatures only slowing a slow flower even more. The listing rarely says which kind you should expect; the lineage generally does.
Terpinolene
A aromatic compound found in large amounts in many classic sativa strains and accounting for much of the thing growers describe as the “sativa” aroma: green, piney, citrus and slightly floral all at once. It is volatile, lost quickly by hot drying, and terpinolene fades more quickly in storage than the heavier terpenes that lead indica-leaning stock.
For a seed buyer the name earns two things. Where a listing lists terpinolene as the lead terpene, the line probably carries real old-sativa ancestry whatever the label claims. And when the you wants that profile to still be there by the jar, the drying has to be cool and cool; a fast dry flattens a terpinolene sativa into a flower that tastes of very little and leaves nothing of what the pack promised.
Stretch
The burst of upward growth which follows the switch to flowering. Indica-leaning plants gain around half their height again; sativas commonly double, and a few equatorial lines triple. The stretch lasts three to four weeks and cannot be stopped after it begins, merely redirected by training.
In practical terms, the stretch figure is a number worth reading ahead of choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres in a two-metre tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres has room. People moving from indica stock almost always switch far too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The one figure that decides if a sativa will finish outdoors, and a number that no pack prints. Long-flowering lines need a run of shortening days to go on long enough to let the plant to finish; in high latitudes the frost arrives before that, and the grower harvests an half-finished plant in late October or else watches it rot in November. A further south, within the northern hemisphere, the later the window stretches, and coastal or low-latitude growers can finish lines that northern gardens cannot.
The practical rule of a seed listing: an “outdoor” sativa finishing date is stated for the breeder’s home latitude, usually a point within temperate Europe or the west coast of the United States, and each degree north of it pushes the finish back towards the frost. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel who is after a true sativa in the garden needs to be shopping for a sativa autoflower or else a greenhouse, not a better summer.
Flowering time
The figure of weeks from the onset of flowering and harvest, and the single most frequently misunderstood number on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, not from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with a ordinary vegetative stage is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also give the shorter end of a range, because the other end sells fewer seed.
Sativa lines take anywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the longest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at about 16 weeks from the flip. The catalogue can be filtered by that figure, which is the sensible first step for a room on a tight timetable. A grower who adds four weeks on top of whatever the pack says is rarely disappointed.