by Sativa seeds arrive with more vocabulary around them than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says one thing to a botanist, something else to a seed company and a third to the person standing in front of the pack. The failed sativa grow usually traces back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time taken as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a description of character, a landrace bought as if it were a modern hybrid. The entries below were written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open for reference, since it leans heavily to the long-flowering end of the category where the vocabulary matter most; the meanings though apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are given in no particular order, since none of them makes usable without the rest.
Foxtailing
The habit of some flowers to grow new calyx growth on top of old ones, producing towered, irregular buds rather than round ones. In most tent-bred strains it is a stress symptom, typically from light that is too close or temperatures too high, and the advice is to correct the cause.
In a good number of sativas, above all Southeast Asian and certain Haze lines, it is built in and will happen under a perfect room. A new sativa grower frequently wastes a month chasing a problem that was never there, dropping lights and heat only delaying a slow plant further. The listing seldom warns which kind you should expect; the parentage generally does.
Sativa-dominant
The marketing category and not a botanical one. The phrase generally indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s lineage were classed as sativa according to the breeder who drafted the description, which sometimes means nothing more than a certain the buds are longer or the smell sharper than the same breeder’s other releases.
The experience people connect with a word, clear-headed rather than heavy, is driven far more by terpene profile and by cannabinoid content than it is by ancestry, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” releases deliver a flat couch effect and a good number of indica-labelled lines deliver exactly the reverse. To a buyer the label is worth something for a rough guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to how it feels it is next to useless unless accompanied by the aroma notes.
Intersex tendency
The production of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and frequently under stress. Every cannabis line has a degree of tendency for do; long-flowering plants show it more often, and the reason is one plain reason: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a light leak, a temperature spike or a late watering to trigger it going, and a old plant has gone beyond its intended end often produces a few desperate male sacs on its own as a last attempt to make seed.
Not one of these makes a sativa strain unstable by course; it means the grower’s consistency count over a longer stretch. Light-tight tents, stable conditions and cutting the moment the plant is ready and not a weeks later remove the greater part of the problem. A listing which mentions the breeder screens parents for hermaphrodite traits is saying something more for a long-flowering line than on anything else.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A terpene present in high proportion in a lot of classic sativa lines and responsible for most of the thing growers describe as a “sativa” aroma: fresh, piney, citrus and slightly sweet all at once. It is volatile, driven off easily by hot drying, and terpinolene degrades faster in storage than the earthier terpenes which lead most tent stock.
To a seed buyer the name does two jobs. Where a listing lists terpinolene as the lead aromas, the line most likely carries substantial old-sativa genetics whatever the label says. And where the you wants that profile to still be there to the jar, the cure has to be cool and cool; a warm drying room turns a terpinolene line into something that tastes of hay and nothing of what the pack described.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted over generations to one place by local growers and climate together, rather than by deliberate selection. Thai, Thai, Malawian and Oaxacan lines are the sativa examples. A landrace is a spread, rather than a single plant: within a pack the flowering times, finishing times and aromas range widely than in a tent-bred hybrid, and this spread is the point of growing one.
The mistake is buying a landrace like a finished product. It brings habits that make sense in an equatorial field, such as height that no tent can hold and a flowering clock set to an equatorial daylength most growers never provide. “Heirloom” in a listing generally means a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, typically with light selection for indoor conditions; it is closer to usable but still far from a hybrid. A shop offering “landrace” without a origin region and a generation history is using the word loosely, and the seeds should be judged accordingly.
Haze
Originally a specific line of plants bred in coastal California from Mexican, Thai and Thai parents, and then preserved and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, fills out sparsely, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, pine and something sharp that no line quite has.
In its second sense “Haze” is whatever cross that contains some of that family, which by now is most of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which says “Haze” without lineage may be mostly percent original old family or one sixteenth of it, and the flowering character tracks the fraction, not the name. The working question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Latitude
The one number that determines if a sativa will finish outdoors, and one no pack prints. Long-flowering lines need the run of shortening days to go on long enough for the plant ripen; in high latitudes the frost comes first, and the grower harvests a unripe plant in the end of October or else loses it rot in November. The further to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the window runs, and coastal and low-latitude gardens are able to ripen plants that temperate growers never will.
The usable reading of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line finishing date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, usually a point in temperate Europe or the western United States, and every degree further north of that pushes the finish back into the frost. A grower north of about the fiftieth parallel that is after a long-flowering sativa in the garden needs to be looking for a sativa autoflower or a greenhouse, and not a longer summer.
Flowering time
The number of weeks from the onset of flowering and maturity, and the single most frequently misunderstood figure on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light drops to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa grown with a ordinary vegetative stage is a five-month plant. Seed companies additionally quote the optimistic end of a spread, because the longer end sells less seed.
Sativa lines take anywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at about 16 weeks after the flip. The catalogue can be sorted by that figure, which is the sensible first step for a room with a tight timetable. A grower who allows four weeks on top of the figure the pack states is seldom disappointed.
Stretch
The burst of vertical growth that follows the change to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain half their height again; sativas routinely double, and some equatorial types triple. The stretch continues three to five weeks and will not be stopped after it begins, only bent sideways by training.
In tent terms, the stretch multiplier is the number worth read ahead of choosing when to switch. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a two-metre tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. People coming over from indica strains nearly always flip too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.
Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)
Describes plants out of regions in which daylength barely varies through the year, which means that the plant never develop a strong response to changing days. These plants frequently flower slowly under a standard twelve-hour light cycle, because twelve hours is, for them, a mild unremarkable day and not a signal.
The practical response, handed down among sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light more: eleven hours, sometimes ten, especially during the final weeks. It loses some little yield and buys an more clearer end. A listing which uses “equatorial” is warning you about this with one word, and a grower that reads it as mere origin misses the instruction inside it.