Sativa seeds come with more jargon around them than any other category of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and something different again to the grower trying to make a decision in front of the pack. The failed sativa grow nearly always goes back to a word that was read in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” tag read as a statement 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 for reference, because it leans strongly to the classic end of the category where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the definitions though hold to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, because none of them makes sense on its own without the others.
Terpinolene (the “sativa smell”)
A terpene present in high amounts in many classic sativa strains and responsible for much of what growers mean as a “sativa” smell: fresh, woody, citrus and slightly sweet at once. It is fragile, driven off easily through fast drying, and it degrades more quickly in storage than the earthier terpenes which lead indica-leaning lines.
To a seed buyer the name does two things. Where a listing lists terpinolene among the lead terpene, the line most likely carries real old-sativa ancestry whatever the label says. And where the grower wants that profile to survive to the jar, the drying has to be cool and cool; a warm dry flattens a terpinolene line into a flower that smells of hay and nothing of what the pack described.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The catalogue category and not a measurable one. The phrase generally indicates that the larger share of a hybrid’s parents are classed as sativa according to the breeder who drafted the description, and occasionally means no more than that the flowers are longer or the aroma brighter than the same breeder’s indica-labelled releases.
The effect people associate with a word, clear-headed rather than heavy, is governed more by terpene profile and the cannabinoid balance than by ancestry, and a good number of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a heavy sleepy result while a good number of the opposite lines do exactly the reverse. To a buyer the label is useful for a rough hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is close to worthless without the aroma notes.
Foxtailing (and when it is not a fault)
The habit of certain flowers to grow fresh bud growth on top of existing ones, producing spired, open buds rather than dense ones. In the majority of tent-bred lines it is a heat symptom, typically from light that is too close or temperatures that is too high, and the advice is to correct the room.
In a good number of sativas, especially Southeast Asian and some Haze hybrids, it is built in and is going to occur under a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower frequently spends a month chasing a problem that was never not there, dropping lights and heat and delaying a slow flower even more. The breeder rarely warns which type to expect; the lineage generally tells you.
Equatorial
Describes lines from latitudes where daylength hardly changes across the year, and where the plant does not evolved a strong response to changing days. These lines frequently flower reluctantly under a conventional twelve-hour light cycle, since twelve hours is, to them, an unremarkable day and not a signal.
The practical response, handed around among sativa growers over decades, is to shorten the light more: eleven hours, sometimes ten, particularly during the final weeks. It loses a yield yield and gains an more decisive end. A listing which says “equatorial” is warning you this with one word, and a grower who takes it as a note on geography has missed the instruction inside it.
Flowering time
The figure of weeks from the start of flowering and maturity, and the one most misread figure on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light drops to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with an ordinary vegetative stage is a five-month plant. Breeders additionally give the shorter end of a spread, since the other end moves fewer seed.
Long-flowering plants take everywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the longest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at around 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by this number, which is a reasonable first pass if you have a room on a tight schedule. A grower who adds four weeks to the figure the pack states is seldom caught out.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically late in flower and often under stress. Almost every cannabis line carries a degree of tendency to it; sativa plants express it more, for one plain reason: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a light leak, a heat spike or a late watering to set it off, and an old that has already gone beyond its natural end often produces a few late pollen flowers on its own in a last attempt to make seed.
None of these makes a sativa line weak by course; it makes the room’s consistency count for a longer stretch. Light-tight room, steady conditions and cutting when the plant is done rather than two week later take away most of the risk. A listing which states the breeder tests parents for intersex traits is saying something worth hearing for a long-flowering line than for anything else.
Haze
In its first sense a specific line of plants bred in 1970s California from Mexican, Colombian and South Indian landraces, and then preserved and worked in the Netherlands. A true Haze runs tall, branches sparsely, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of incense, pine and a note sharp that no line quite reproduces.
In its looser sense “Haze” is any cross that contains a share of that family, and by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing which reads “Haze” without lineage may be mostly percent original old family or a small fraction of it, and the flowering character tracks the fraction, not the name. The useful question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.
Stretch (the doubling)
The surge of upward growth that follows the switch to flowering. Indica-leaning plants add half again; sativas routinely double, and a few equatorial lines go further. The stretch continues two to five weeks and cannot be stopped after it begins, only bent sideways by training.
In tent terms, the stretch multiplier is a number to read ahead of choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a two-metre tent is at the lamp before week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. People moving from indica stock nearly always flip far too late the first time, and the consequence is written on the ceiling of the tent.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The single number that determines whether a sativa can ripen outdoors, and a number no pack states. Equatorial plants require the run of shortening days to go on long enough for the plant to finish; at high latitudes the frost comes before that, and the grower cuts a half-finished plant in the end of October or else loses it rot in November. The closer to the equator, in the northern hemisphere, the later the season runs, and coastal and low-latitude gardens can finish plants that northern growers cannot.
The practical rule of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line harvest month is stated for the breeder’s home latitude, usually somewhere within temperate Europe or the western United States, and each degree further north of it pushes the date back into the weather. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel who is after a true sativa in the garden is shopping for an autoflower or a greenhouse, not a longer summer.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted through centuries to one region by local growers and climate alike, and not by deliberate breeding. Colombian, Thai, Malawian and Mexican stock are the classic sativa cases. A landrace is variable, not a one plant: inside a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas spread far more than any tent-bred line, and that variation is the point of keeping one.
The trap is buying a landrace like a finished product. It carries habits that made sense in an open field, including height no tent can hold and a flowering clock tuned to an daylength the majority of growers never offer. “Heirloom” on a listing usually refers to a landrace that has been reproduced away from its origin for some generations, often with a degree of selection towards indoor life; it is nearer to usable but nonetheless not uniform. A shop listing “landrace” without an collection point and a reproduction count is applying the word loosely, and the pack should be judged with that in mind.