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, something else to a seed company and a third to the grower standing in front of the listing. The failed sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label taken as a statement of character, a landrace chosen like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below are written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open for the concrete examples, since it runs strongly towards the classic end of the spectrum and that is where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the meanings though apply to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, because none of them makes usable on its own without the rest.
Haze
In its first sense a particular family of plants bred in 1970s California from Colombian, Thai and Thai landraces, and later preserved and refined in the Netherlands. A true Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, flowers for twelve to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and a note sharp that no other line quite reproduces.
In its looser sense “Haze” is any hybrid which contains a share of that family, and by now is most of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing which says “Haze” and gives no parents could be eighty percent original old family or a small fraction of it, and the flowering character follows the share, not the name. The useful question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.
Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)
Describes lines from regions where daylength barely varies through the year, and that the plant never develop a strong response to changing days. These plants often flower slowly under a standard twelve-hour light cycle, because twelve hours is, for them, a mild unremarkable day and not a signal.
The working response, passed around between sativa growers over decades, is to cut the light more: eleven hours, sometimes ten, especially during the last weeks. It costs some little yield and gains an earlier decisive finish. A listing which uses “equatorial” is warning you this in one word, and a grower who takes it as mere origin misses the point hidden in it.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted through centuries to one region by local growers and climate together, rather than by modern selection. Colombian, Colombian, Congolese and Mexican lines are the classic sativa cases. A landrace is variable, not a single plant: within a pack the flowering times, finishing times and aromas spread widely than in any tent-bred line, and this spread is the point of keeping one.
The mistake is buying a landrace as a finished product. It carries habits that made sense in an open field, including a frame no tent can contain and a flowering clock tuned to an equatorial daylength the majority of growers cannot offer. “Heirloom” on a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, typically with a degree of selection for tent conditions; it is nearer to manageable but still far from uniform. A seller offering “landrace” without an origin region and a generation count is using the word as a flavour, and the seeds should be judged accordingly.
Latitude
The one figure that decides whether a sativa will ripen outdoors, and a number that no pack states. Equatorial lines require the run of shortening days to continue long enough for the plant to ripen; in high latitudes the frost arrives first, and the grower cuts a unripe plant in the end of October or else loses it rot in November. The further south, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the window stretches, and Mediterranean or subtropical growers can ripen plants that northern gardens never will.
The practical rule of a seed listing: an “outdoor” sativa finishing date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, normally somewhere in southern Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every degree north of that pushes the finish later into the frost. A grower north of about the fiftieth parallel who is after a long-flowering sativa outdoors needs to be shopping for a sativa autoflower or a greenhouse, and not a longer season.
Flowering time
The figure of weeks from the start of flowering and maturity, and the one most misread number on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light drops to twelve hours, not from germination, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started after an eight-week vegetative stage is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also quote the optimistic end of the spread, because the longer end sells fewer seed.
Sativa lines take anywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at about 16 weeks after the flip. The catalogue can be filtered by this figure, which is a reasonable first step for a room with a fixed schedule. A grower who adds four weeks to whatever the pack states is rarely disappointed.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The production of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and frequently under stress. Every cannabis line carries some capacity for it; long-flowering plants express it more, and the reason is a simple reason: fourteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a light leak, a heat spike or a late watering to set it going, and a plant plant has waited past its natural finish frequently produces a few desperate male sacs on its own as a last effort to make seed.
Not one of these means a sativa line weak by nature; it makes the room’s discipline matter over longer. Light-tight tents, steady conditions and cutting when the plant is done and not a week after remove most of the problem. A listing that states the breeder tests parents for hermaphrodite tendency is saying something worth hearing on a long-flowering line than on anything other category.
Foxtailing (and when it is not a fault)
The habit of some flowers to push out new calyx growth on top of existing ones, producing spired, open buds rather than round ones. In the majority of indica-leaning lines it is a heat response, usually from light too close or a room that is too high, and the advice is to correct the room.
In many sativas, above all Southeast Asian and some Haze lines, it is genetic and is going to happen in a flawless room. A new sativa grower frequently wastes weeks hunting a fault that is a problem, dropping lights and heat only delaying a slow flower further. The breeder rarely warns which kind you should expect; the lineage generally does.
Sativa-dominant
The catalogue category and not a measurable one. The phrase generally indicates that more of a hybrid’s lineage are described as sativa according to the breeder who wrote the listing, and occasionally signals nothing more than that the flowers are airier or the aroma sharper than the that breeder’s indica-labelled releases.
The effect people connect with a word, lively instead of sedating, is governed more by terpene chemistry and by cannabinoid content than it is by the sativa fraction, and a good number of “sativa-dominant” releases deliver a flat sleepy effect and a good number of indica-labelled lines deliver exactly the reverse. To a grower the label is useful for a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; for a guide to how it feels it is close to useless unless accompanied by the terpene description.
Stretch
The burst of upward growth that comes after the change to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain half again; sativas routinely double, and a few landrace lines triple. The stretch continues three to four weeks and will not be halted after it has started, merely redirected by training.
In practical terms, a stretch multiplier is the number to read ahead of choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres in a standard tent is touching the lamp by week four of flower; one switched at thirty centimetres has room. Growers coming over from indica strains nearly always flip too late the first time, and the consequence is written on the ceiling of the tent.