Weed Genetics

[ ]Even though my grass heyday was long ago I still like to keep up with what's going on in the world of weed. I've been waiting since the 70s for it to be legalized, which it has been in some states and may be here too in another century or so. If it were legal I'd grow it just because it's a beautiful plant. I still remember visiting my buddy George from California in California back in '75, before there were Budweiser-sponsored helicoptors and such. Nowadays where it isn't legal to grow, plants are topped to keep them short and bushy, but these plants were left untopped. An untopped plant will grow a large central bud called a Kola, which can be bigger than your leg. I visited a farm when I was there. This will sound unbelievable, but I had photos up until recently, and the old guys would verify it, but the average height of most of the plants was 11' tall, and the tallest was 15'. I've seen a few pot plants in my day but never have I been next to a plant that was well over double my height. I had a photo of George grinning and holding a Kola that was bigger than a baseball bat. [ ]I can't remember what kind it was but it was one of the classics, which had acclimatized to the local climate over several generations and obviously was thriving. BTW that guy is still growing, legally, today, and has turned it into a business. He was already a millionaire a few times over in the 70s; he averaged $500K per year, so I can't imagine what he;s worth today. He gives George Mason jars full of select buds every time he visits. Anyway what's mainly kept my interest is all the amazing strains they've come up with by selective-breeding, and the fact that the myriad of strains came from the kinds we smoked back in the day. Sadly the pure forms of those original strains are grown in very limited areas or have faded away, but are forever in the gene pool of the weed of tomorrow. [ ]I might hop on and look at pics of buds every few months (pot porn) and it never ceases to amaze me what they're doing. They've literally got it down to a science (SCIENCE). I couldn't guess how many strains they've developed, and I'm amazed at how potent it is, compared to the levels of what we smoked back in the day. THC content isn't everything though. If I could I'd rather smoke a joint of Santa Marta Gold, or Red, or some Oaxacan over anything else on the planet, and they say that stuff was way less than half the THC content as top-shelf weed today. But in a way they're still smoking those, as their genetics have been passed along. In the case of some kinds, especially Colombian, it was a matter of locale, soil, weather, local climate etc. Even the finest bud back then had seeds, except for Sinsemilla, or "sinsey" that hit the scene in the 70s as a premium product. [ ]While we're on the subject, Colombian was a special thing. It had a sweet, earthy flavor, and the premium stuff would put you into outer soace. Besides soil and the other conditions, Colombian pot was grown near the Equator. It was used to longer days, warmer weather, a much longer growing season, and it wasn't triggered by shortening days in the Fall to bloom, like plants grown in upper and lower lattitudes. Those plants are triggered to flower when the days start getting shorter, but in Colombia it's different. You could pluck the prettiest seeds you ever saw from a bud of Colombian and plant it and it would grow like a normal plant for most of the season, but it was hard to get them to do nearly as much flowering as normal plants. It could be done occasionally but it was never the same thing. It might be decent to smoke but it would end up being green, while the native-grown stuff was either brick-red, brown (commercial-grade) or golden. Many times the frost would get plants grown here before they could do much flowering. [ ]There was a mag called High Times that I'm pretty sure is still going. It was a good mag, and speaking of pot porn, every issue had a centerfold with a photo of the juiciest buds available at the time. If they still do that now I can only imagine what they look like. I remember one well...it was Santa Marta (Colombian) Gold. They photographed these beautiful, poofy golden buds in actual Mayan 24K goblets. It said something like "Montezuma never had it so good." I may have added that in but I can picture the photo as if I were looking at it now. I have reefographic memory. It's a thing. Every issue had what they called "Trans-High Market Quotes." People would writ in (yes, snail-mail) with what kinds of weed (and some other drugs) were available locally, and the prices. They'd split it up by regions. I'd buy it here and there in the 80s, and the THMQ illustrated the dewcline of Colombian (RIP Colombian). [ ]It would list the substance, city, price and usually add a comment. It might say "Blotter acid, $4/tab, Cleveland, don't waste your time" or "Thai Sticks, $15 each, Atlanta, a rare treat" or "Mexican reg, $110-$120/lb, Chicago downtown, nothing special" or "Santa Marta Gold, Southeast, the real deal $35/oz" or whatever it might be. I kept up with it from the mid-70s into the 80s. For several years it always said basically "plentiful," but as Disco dawned, followed by the 80s, and with them came lots of cocaine; first powder, then freebase and then crack. The farmers in Colombia, along with out very own gub'mint, quickly figured out that they could make WAY more money dealing blow than grass, so they plowed up their beautiful fields of reefer plants and planted evil Coca plants. It took time for that to be known, and over the short few years when Colombian pot was disappearing, the THMQ would be like "Colombian reg, Texas, $35-$40/0z. Gold or Red, $45-$55/oz, getting scarce." Finally they'd just list it out of respect and tradition I guess, and it'd say "Colombian, gone." [ ]What I think was the first hybrid weed hit around here in the mid-80s. Rumors of the odd batch would fly but it was a while before I actually got any. It was the first "gourmet weed," and it had a gourmet price to go along with it. It was called "Skunk #1." It was a big deal. It came in a vacuum-sealed can about the size of a can of peanuts. It had a generic white label with black letterin, with a drawing of a skunk spraying. The aroma was very powerful and said to be as strong as a skunk, and the name stuck. It had an ounce of Skunk#1 and a pack of papers. It cost $55. I got the can one night at the crazy restaurant. It was after dinner and there were only a smattering of people in the place. I knew it'd be stinky but I wasn't prepared for just how much. I held it underneath the counter, to try to contain the aroma and the great "PSSSSSHHHHhhh" sound it made when I popped the top, but the scent was so powerful and overwhelming that it was like an aromatic genie had been released from a bottle. Within thirty seconds two guys sitting way across the bar tilted their heads and sniffed, and looked right in my direction. [ ]It started in the 70s in California. Some hippies who cared about such things saved seeds from the various high-end strains of the day and planted them. The general consensus is that Colombian Gold, Acapulco Gold and Afghani (probably a gold variety we used to call "hash weed"), but some say that Thai and possibly some Hawaiian were also in the mix. Over several generations the growers crossed various plants until they arrived at a stable strain, one that would breed true with itself without reverting back to the original strains. Whatever it was it was kickass. I was glad to know that while some of the old strains had died-out in their original form, they lived on in the Skunk#1, and everything up to today and forever. Viva Colombian![ ]So Skunk#1 was the wellspring for all the hundreds of varieties today, and once the ball got rolling it took off. [ ]I remember getting online in the early computer days, after I hadn't been keeping up with pot for several years. I searched buds and up popped a photo-collage with thumbnails of all these crazy varieties of weed. I didn't think it was real at first. It looked like exotic candy or something, and it came in rainbow colors, including a thousand different shades og green. There were violet and purple leaves and flowers. I really thought that was fake for a minute or that the plants had been hit by frost, which can sometimes cause purpling, but it was real, and simply a trait that was first noticed in maybe a few odd plants, and then bred to get more purple. There were names like "Blueberry" and "Bubblegum." It sounded like you were walking into Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors, and it looked like it too. Bubblegum? I thought it was just a cute name but supposedly it smells and tastes like the regular pink bubblegum. To this day I wonder what it tastes like. [ ]That was just the tip of the iceberg. Other varieties were mixed in, but Skunk was the granddaddy. The Blueberry strain was developed by crossing Purple Thai with either Afghani or another Thai strain. It's supposed to be one of the best-tasting and most popular strains. It tastes like...you guessed it...blueberries. I bet it goes good with pancakes. Then Bubblegum And Blueberry got together and begat Bubbleberry (as seen above). That cracked me up...little baby Bubbleberry. I know they were proud parents. Many times a strain is named for its taste or color, but it can be named after a region or a person or a meme or whatever. I think Snoop Dogg gave "Green Crack" its name. If you want to have a laugh, Google hemp strains. [ ]One popular strain is called "Girl Scout Cookies." It sounds a little weird but supposedly it tastes just like its namesake. One variety is called "Sour Diesel," which supposedly smells like diesel fuel, "but in a good way," whatever that means. There's "Blackberry Cobbler." Sounds tasty. Yhere's "Gorilla Glue." It must be really sticky. There's "Strawberry Cough." They say "When you cough, you're off." There's Bell Ringer" and "Trainwreck." I bet they have a kick. Then there's "Dank Sinatra." That's a good one. To illustrate how quickly they're coming out with new strains, I'm hearing most of these just now. There's "Ice Cream Cake." Just the thing for your next Birthday party. There's "Platinum Bubba." Ha, that must be for people like me- rednecks with a shiny, bullshit veneer. There's "Purple Haze." Too bad Jimi isn't around to smoke some of that. There's "Cinderella 99." If the shoe fits... [ ]I'm looking at a page that lists all the available strains and it's just gone berserk. I've seen hundreds of strains with killer names and I'm still scrolling. There must be 150 strains named after food alone, such as "Gelato," "Strawberry Cheesecake." "Pineapple Upside Down Cake" and "Cherry Pie." "Sweet cherry pie." I had to say it. I was glad to see the old familiar faces, and most of the orifinal strains I mentioned above, plus a few I'd forgotten about, are still going, although again they wouldn't be the same as if they were grown in their native countries.
Maui Wowie" is a long-time classic, and once very exclusive and pricey. There's Lamb's Bread" which hails from Jamaica. I remember getting that from a real Jamaican guy back in the day. It was excellent and it had a firm, almost doughy texture from all the resin glands (trichomes). There was another kind of Jamaican that was around more for a time. [ ]I think there's one or two exceptions maybe but pot is either Sativa or Indica. Sativa gives more of a cerebral, energetic "head" high, while Indica gives more of a narcotic, relaxing, laid-back "body" high. Both will kick you back in the long run, but Sativa will energize you for an hour or two. It's good for problem-solvong and creativity and such. Indica is more sedating from the get-go, and can be effective with pain, anxiety and sleeplesness. They have strains for specific things, like headache, appetite-stimulation, muscle cramps and lots of other things. They even make a strain or two that doesn't even get you high? Why would they do that? Because it contains high levels of CBD, an ingredient that isn't psychoactive at all but has some amazing benefits. Pot is illegal here but they can legally sell that. I was in the tobacco shop a while back and saw some. [ ]I thought it was just another one of those "fake weed" products but as I looked more closely it looked just like real bud. I asked the guy and he said it was CBD weed. He showed it to me and it looked just like some good bud. If this were the old days I'd have bought some and rolled up a fatty and watch my friends turn blue in the face trying to get high. Maybe the truckload of weed I smoked back in the day made me mellow, but that's as cruel as I'd ever be to another person. But seriously I bet with the Placebo Effect I could talk one or two people into thinking they were high as a kite. Nah...that really would be cruel. I'd definitely have some real weed for when the joke was up. Real/fake weed. Huh. If it walks like a duck...oh, what the fuck. [ ]Back in the day we didn't have all the science (SCIENCE) associated with it, but there was some experimentation going on. There was this mad-scientist guy who grew plants in his yard. He'd water some of them with water mixed with different substances, and he got some interesting results. I don't remember most of what he did but I remember a couplr of plants he'd watered with ground-up baby aspirin, for some reason. The plants had an orangish tint and tasted just like artificial orange flavor. He claiomed it'd cure a headache but I never got to test it out on that. We just knew what worked and what didn't, and what the buzz was like. The most common weed was Mexican, and within that there were many variaties ranging from no-name "Mex" to name-brands like Acapulco gold, Michoacan and Oaxacan. There was a famous line from a reefer song by Cheech and Chong that went "No stems, no seeds that you don't need, Acapulco Gold is...PFFFFFTT...AHHHHHHHHhhh...BAD-ASS WEED." Classic. BTW if you've never seen their movie "Up in Smoke" you owe it to yourself, even if you aren't a pothead. If you are a pothead you absolutely have to check out a video on YouTube about a guy who was inexperienced with edibles. He went into a dispensary and bought a reefer muffin. [ ]I'll just say that he was hungry and he wolfed it down before the guy behind the counter could tell him that it was enough for two strong doses and under no circumstances should he eat the whole thing at once. Oops. The guy's a commedian, and a good one, but he didn't make it up. It really happened. The way he tells it should have anyone in hysterics. I'll occasionally see something online that makes me lol, but that had me dying. I can't put a link up with whatever's going on with this blog platform, but you can look it up under "Josh Wolf Medical Muffin Emergency." It's funny as fuck and well-worth 3:15 of your time, if you need a good laugh. I just watched it again and it's got my eyes watering from laughing. If you've made it this far here's a little Easter Egg. You'll have to copy/paste.Medical Muffin Emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZtm6DlON8. [ ]Anyway some weed would put you on the Moon and some wouldn't get a fly high. Mexican was mostly if not 100% Sativa, so it didn't make you too groggy. It usually had lots of seeds. Most people tossed them but I always ate them, usually plain but sometimes roasted with salt and a dash of honey. I knew they were good for you even back then. I had a friend with a parrot, and he'd let it clean his weed. It was amazing to watch...he'd deftly extract every seed and somehow leave the buds intact. There were all sorts of doohickeys designed to make deseeding easier, but none worked as well as that guy's parrot. He's probably still alive. Maybe the dude too. Polly want a reefer seed? "AWWWWK, yes. Give us a kiss." [ ]The Colombian buzz was harder to explain but it was amazing. It gave you a big body-buzz, like being at Six Flaga. The commercial grade (Commersch or Colombo) could also range from very mild to very strong, and could taste like anything from ancient basement dirt to a sugarless brownie, but the golds and reds were a thing apart. They were like a fine wine, and the aroma and flavor was part of the deal. Colombian was king for the most part, while it was around. It was amazing for listening to music. Both Mexican and Colombian were seasonal, and back then relatively few people outside of California grew it, so supply depended on the time of year. Nowadays they grow it year-round but back then the supply would start to dry up around the end of September, and it would be a couple more months before it was harvested, dried and shipped. Droughts were bad. [ ]Really good Jamaican was a treat. It was Sativa so it had an "up" buzz anyway, but for some reason it'd make me laugh all day long at nothing. It'd also mess with my depth-perception, and no other weed did that, not even stuff that was much stronger. I'd be driving, stoned as a rat on Jamaican and I'd approach a stop sign and stop ten feet short of it even though it looked like I was right up on it. People riding with me would crack up, and since Jamaican made me laugh anyway we'd just be tooling down the road laughing. It was hilarious but I'm certainly glad that weed didn't usually do that to me. Maui Wowie was always available, but at a price almost double good Colombian. It was amazing though. We saved it for special occasions. Then there was the legendary and mysterious "Black Colombian." It only came around twice. When I heard about it I thought it must be weed that had been killed by frost or had really bad mold, but when I saw it it was definitely almost black in color. It was stupid-expensive but it would put you in another world. It was almost too much. I never heard anything about it or where it came from or why it was black, but I smoked it, and it was definitely Colombian. [ ]I've mentioned this before but speaking of Colombian I had a time-machine experience about twenty years ago. My friend Bruce bought a used copy of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and pressed in the middle of the book was a long-forgotten joint. Salut, fellow head! Bruce had quit smoking by then so he gave it to me. It'd been in there for years. He showed me the book. It'd been at the bottom of a huge stack of books so it'd been pressed tight. The pages had closed around it making a chamber that had kept it fairly airtight and remarkably fresh. I thought wouldn't it be great if it was Colombian, and to my great delight it was. I could smell it immediately. Just the smell alone took me back. I decided to open the joint and smoke it a pinch at a time in a pipe so as not to waste a molecule. It was the Red variety. The very first toke hit me like a truck, and immediately transported me back to the 70s, and did so several times. That was one of those times when the Universe truly smiles upon you. Thanks, Universe. MOI. [ ]Most people would be shocked to hear how relatively cheap grass was back then. Mexican "reg" was $15 per ounce, or "lid" as we sometimes called it, $40 a QP and $110/lb. Commercial colombian was around double that. It was usually $35 a lid but Santa Marta and such might be a little more. The Hawaiian was $60, and that was shocking back then, but it's all relative...the good stuff truly was "two-toke" weed. You could smoke three joints of regular Mex and not get as high as two tokes of Maui Wowie. Weed connoisseurs were all about the taste and aroma too. Smoking commercial bunkweed that tasted like gym socks and fine Hawaiian that tasted like some European dessert or something was night and day. Speaking of night and day, that basically sums up the dif between Sativa and Indica in a nutshell. Sativa was better for smoking in the daytime, when you didn't want to get too kicked-back, while Indica was better for nighttime, where it would relax you and make you sleepy in an hour or two. In the Bud Greene Band we called Sativa "day" weed and Indica "night" weed. [ ]I don't know what weed costs now, but I'd say it's gone up more than inflation. My friends who live in legal states tell me it's more or less the same cost as from a dealer, or maybe a tad cheaper. Years ago I was aware of it selling for $100 a quarter/oz. I've heard it's gone up and down and so I have no idea, but $110 for a pound of weed was cheap, and if it was good then it was a bargain. You could also get an ounce of the finest Afghani or Lebanese hash for the same price. Try doing that these days, if it's even still around. I used to love hash in the day. I ate it on gigs, at over triple the amount that would make most people get so high that they thought they were never going to come down, and literally swore off drugs for life, if God would let them return to Earth. Eating a gram was way too much for many people. I'd eat three or four grams. The thing is I'd keep a pinch between cheek and gum like chew, and it'd slowly dissolve and get into my system over the course of several hours rather than all at once. Still it was a savagely-powerful buzz, and I remember some nights at 3am after a gig we'd be up partying until dawn, and I'd be so high I could barely speak, and all I could really do was laugh. Good times. [ ]I should mention the best weed I ever got. My first year in college a guy had some Michoacan. I remember everyone was tripping at first because it was $20 a z, or $5 more. Today that'd be a laugh but back then it was a bit of cash, for a sack of weed. They guy was really apologetic but told us to try it and if we didn't like it he'd buy it back, which is unheard of. Once we took the third toke nobody ever said another word about price. It wasn't the strongest by far, but what was amazing was it's consistency. From the first toke to the last, and a LOT in between, it got us just as high as the first time we smoked it, and that's never happened before or since. After a while you get a bit "jaded" to the same pot, which is why it's good to mix it up. Depending on the genetics and type and potency, the effects from one strain to another can vary widely. It still works fine but switching to a new flavor usually hits you in the face a lot more the first few times you smoke it, but that pot was the same from first lid to last. That still blows my mind. It tasted like chocolate. If I could smoke and somehow find some of that I'd be happy with it forever... [ ]I almost forgot to mention the legendary (and spooky) "Batshit Weed." We grew it out in the woods along animal trails. It was Colombian Gold seed. Again it wasn't the same as if it had been grown in Colombia, but in this case something unexplained happened, and somehow that pot was a whole 'nother Universe.. We'd heard that bat guano was the best fertilizer, which I still believe, so we went into a cave where bats roosted and scraped a bunch up and planted the plants in it. True to form it was September and it had barely started to flower, which makes it that much more unreal. All I can say is that it was too much for me. It was almost like tripping hard on acid. As many times as I smoked the finest pot in the world or ate enough hash to kill an elephant I still can't believe I'm saying this, but I couldn't smoke it. One night I was driving stoned, which ordinarily I adored, but that night I was gripping the wheel until I had white knuckles. I was hearing "voices," and they were "demons" talking amongst themselves about how they could take control of the steering wheel and make me crash. How about that shit? On weed. To this day I still don't get it. I have no idea how it got so mind-bendingly strong...the bat guano, the genetics, the weather...maybe it was Satan himself, but I have no idea. For the only time in my life I tossed perfectly good weed out onto the highway. Nope...I still don't understand that one. [ ]As untethered to the planet I sometimes got on pot, there was only one other time that I was almost too stoned to enjoy it. Luckily I didn't hear voices that time but it was intense, and again a huge surprise. I was going to a baseball game in Atlanta with my ex. Since I couldn't smoke in the stadium I figured I'd make a batch of green cookies. I didn't have nearly the amount of weed I usually used, but the saving grace was that I had leftovers from several different kinds of weed, and mixing different kinds always gets you tremendously stoned. I made my "magic Butter" and made a small batch of cookies. I wanted to gauge how strong they'd be the next day so I ate some of the plain butter, and I got blasted. I was tripping in fact. Luckily I was home but I was high as a kite. I tried to get to sleep but that was futile. My body was buzzing like crazy and it was like being on nitrous oxide...I was hearing sounds going "EEYOINGOINGOINGOING..." With the lights off it felt like the ceiling had dropped down and was pressing down on my chest. I knew it wasn't real of course but I coulld literally feel it. I felt like I was inside a huge bouncy ball going up and down, to the point that I was getting dizzy and I had to turn the light on to make it stop. That night I had to sleep with the light on and I felt like a little kid. At least I could laugh at myself, and I knew damn good and well not to let my girlfriend eat too many cookies. Or me either. But I did anyway. [ ]The next day was hilarious. The drive was a bit over two hours and I decided to have a cookie for the road. I had a digital recorder to record the crowd noise to maybe use on a recording project. I needed to change the batteries but I needed a tiny screwdriver for the battery compartment and I couldn't find one. I realized I'd have to stop at a Home Depot or somewhere on the way to Atlants, and the cookie had kicked-in already, and I was off like a rocket. We pulled into the parking lot and had to park a good way from the store. I was so high I literally thought I might not be able to speak, no joke, and I thought that if I couldn't find it on my own I'd have to engage a human, and I didn't want to have a clerk say "May I help you?" and not be able to say a word. The whole way across the parking lot I kept saying out loud: "Small slotted screwdriver, small slotted screwdriver, small slotted screwdriver" over and over while my girlfriend cracked up, and rightly so. I was so stoned I almost had to relearn the English language, or at least get in a little practice. Luckily I found the small-slotted-screwdriver isle right away and I didn't have to talk to anyone. [ ]The game was incredible. The grass was greener, the sky was bluer, the hot dogs smelled hot-doggier...I was completely immersed in the experience. It was really intense but really enjoyable. There were a couple of slight problems. I had cottonmouth like a motherfucker and I wanted some water, but nobody came around with any. The stadium was fairly sloped but as high as I was it was greatly exaggerated. I felt like if I even stood up I'd tumble down the steps and onto the field, so for the first six innings or so I sat firmly-planted in my seat, and I was wishing it had a seatbelt. Finally before the seventh-inning stretch I managed to slowly make my way down the steps and to the refreshment stand, but I wish I'd been tied-off with rappelling gear. Also they had a couple of security guards with dogs, and they walked in front of us at one point. I found out later that my girlfriend was so high she thought they were drug-sniffing dogs, and would sniff-out the cookies in her purse, which we didn't need anyway. That's funny. [ ]Since this is a history lesson for weed, and some people are interested in that, I should mention the famous "Paraquat Scare." I don't remember exactly when it was but I guess late-70s/early 80s. With funding from the gub-mint and Budweiser (I wonder why...) they started a project to eradicate weed from the air, so they loaded tanks on helicopters and went around spraying a powerful and very toxic herbicide on weed fields. Since it was so toxic and didn't just kill the plants, they were sending a strong message that smoking pot laced with Paraquat could fuck you up, and it could. They made a bloody fortune selling "Paraquat test kits." Most people were scared shitless, which was the point, and everybody was testing their weed, if not quitting and turning to beer (get it?). What people didn't realize, and certainly what they didn't tell you, was the thing at the very heart of the issue- it killed the plants. If you got a normal-looking bag that was healthy and fresh and not brown, dead and crumbly, it were perfectly okay. I actually saw a batch that had been sprayed. It was yellow and it crumbled to dust. The guy was an asshole and an idiot for trying to sell it, but people were afraid of smoking healthy weed that hadn't been touched. Looking back I see that it was just another psyop and yet another excuse to profit off of people's needless fear, but that's how it goes. [ ]Well, it's been fun reminiscing (as the Little River Band, or the "Little Reefer" band as we called them used to say) and checking out all the new reefer strains with the incredible names. I could talk about those for another hour and tell a million great reefer stories but I won't right now. The reefer industry has come a long way from the days of Skunk #1. There's strains that old hippies wouldn't recognize as pot even, but I'm sure they'd get a kick out of the names. There are SO many pot stories...like the time I took my buddy Rusty flying in a glider plane and got him so stoned beforehand that he nearly shit himself, or the time I bought an authentic bottle of hash oil in the early days of eBay, where it was deemed legal because it was encased in Lucite and therefore unaccessible, and the bidding went sky-high but I had plenty of money, and people bid from all over the world until everyone dropped out of the race except for me and the Museum of Hash and Marijuana in Amsterdam. That was fun and they ended up sending me a nice congrats message. I could go on and on but I'd better bust out. I got the munchies. You know what they say...it's always 4:20 somewhere. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, and have a nice day.