Sativa seeds come with more jargon around them than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says a certain thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and a third to the person standing in front of the pack. A failed sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” tag read as a description of effect, a landrace chosen like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open as reference, because it runs strongly to the classic end of the category where the words matter most; the definitions themselves apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are in no special order, since none of them is sense without the others.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted over centuries to a particular region by local growers and climate alike, and not by modern selection. Colombian, Thai, Malawian and Oaxacan stock are the sativa cases. A landrace is a spread, rather than a single plant: within a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas spread widely than in any tent-bred hybrid, and that spread is the point of keeping one.
The trap is buying a landrace as a modern hybrid. It carries habits that make sense in an equatorial field, such as a frame that no tent can contain and a flowering rhythm tuned to a daylength most growers cannot provide. “Heirloom” on a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin for a number of generations, typically with light selection for tent conditions; it is closer to usable but nonetheless far from a hybrid. A shop offering “landrace” that does not give an origin point and a reproduction history is applying the word as a flavour, and the pack should be judged accordingly.
Foxtailing
The tendency of certain flowers to push out fresh bud clusters on top of existing ones, giving spired, irregular buds instead of dense ones. In most indica-leaning strains it is a stress symptom, typically from light too close or temperatures that is too high, and the standard response is to correct the cause.
In many sativas, especially Southeast Asian and certain Haze hybrids, it is genetic and will happen in a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower often wastes weeks chasing a fault that is a problem, dropping lights and heat and slowing an already long flower further. The listing seldom warns which kind you should expect; the lineage usually does.
Stretch
The burst of upward growth which comes after the change to flowering. Indica-leaning plants gain around half again; sativas commonly double, and some landrace lines triple. The stretch continues three to five weeks and cannot be halted once it has started, merely bent sideways by training.
In practical terms, the stretch figure is the number to reading ahead of choosing when to switch. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres inside a standard tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres has room. Growers coming from indica strains nearly always switch too late the first time, and the lesson is written on the ceiling of the tent.
Haze (the family, not the smell)
Originally a particular line of plants bred in 1970s California from Mexican, Thai and Thai landraces, and then preserved and refined in the Netherlands. The Haze runs tall, fills out sparsely, flowers for twelve sixteen weeks and smells of incense, pine and a note sharp that no other line quite reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is any hybrid which carries a share of that family, and by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which reads “Haze” and gives no lineage may be eighty percent original old family or a small fraction of it, and the flowering time tracks the fraction, not the name. The working question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The single number that determines if a sativa can finish outdoors, and one that no pack prints. Equatorial lines need the run of shortening days to continue late enough for the plant to ripen; at northern latitudes the frost arrives first, and the grower harvests a half-finished plant in late October or else watches it to mould in November. A further to the equator, in a northern hemisphere, the longer the season stretches, and coastal or subtropical gardens are able to finish lines that northern growers cannot.
The usable rule of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line harvest month is given for the breeder’s own latitude, usually a point within temperate Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every degree north of it pushes the date back towards the frost. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel who wants a true sativa outdoors is shopping for an autoflower or a covered space, not a longer summer.
Sativa-dominant
The marketing term and not a botanical one. The phrase usually means that the larger share of a hybrid’s lineage were described as sativa according to the breeder who wrote the listing, and occasionally signals no more than a certain the buds are airier or the smell sharper than the same breeder’s indica-labelled releases.
The experience people connect with the word, lively rather than heavy, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and the cannabinoid balance than by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” releases deliver a flat sleepy effect while plenty of indica-labelled stock do the opposite. For a grower the percentage is useful as a loose guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; for a guide to effect it is next to worthless without the aroma notes.
Equatorial
Refers to lines from latitudes in which daylength barely changes across the year, and that the plant does not evolved a strong reaction to changing days. These lines frequently start flowering reluctantly under a standard twelve-hour schedule, since twelve hours is, to them, an unremarkable day rather than a signal.
The working fix, handed down between sativa growers over decades, is to shorten the light more: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly during the final weeks. It loses some little yield and buys an more decisive end. A listing which says “equatorial” is telling you this with one word, and a grower that takes it as a note on origin has missed the point hidden in it.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A terpene found in high proportion in a lot of classic sativa strains and responsible for much of what growers describe as a “sativa” smell: green, woody, lemon and faintly floral at once. It is fragile, driven off quickly through fast drying, and terpinolene degrades faster during the cure than the earthier terpenes that dominate indica-leaning lines.
For a seed buyer the word does two jobs. When a listing lists terpinolene among the leading terpene, the line most likely has substantial old-sativa genetics whatever the label says. And when the you are after that smell to still be there by the jar, the cure is going to be slow and slow; a warm dry turns a terpinolene sativa to something that tastes of hay and nothing of what the pack promised.
Intersex tendency
The appearance of male flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often under stress. Every cannabis line carries a degree of tendency for do; sativa plants express it more often, and the reason is one plain one: fourteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of exposure for a light leak, a temperature spike or a missed watering that can set it off, and an plant plant has already waited past its intended end often throws a few late male flowers on its own in a last attempt to set seed.
None of this makes a sativa strain unstable by course; it makes the room’s discipline matter over longer. A sealed tents, steady conditions and cutting the moment the plant is ready and not two week after take away most of the problem. A listing which mentions the breeder tests parents for intersex traits is saying something more on a long-flowering line than for any else.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
The figure of weeks from the onset of flowering and harvest, and the one most frequently misunderstood figure on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light drops to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started after an eight-week vegetative stage is a twenty-two-week plant. Breeders additionally give the optimistic end of the spread, because the longer end moves fewer seed.
Long-flowering lines take anywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the longest strain in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at about 16 weeks from the switch. The catalogue can be filtered by that number, which is the sensible first step if you have a room with a fixed schedule. A grower who allows four weeks on top of whatever the pack states is seldom caught out.