Sativa seeds arrive with more vocabulary attached than any other kind of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it means one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and a third to the person trying to make a decision in front of the listing. The disappointing sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time read as a fixed number, a «sativa-dominant» tag taken as a statement of character, a landrace chosen like it were a modern hybrid. The entries below were written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com open for the concrete examples, because it leans heavily to the long-flowering end of the category where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the definitions though hold to any sativa seed from any seller. They are given in no special order, because not one of them makes sense on its own without the others.
Haze
Originally a particular line of plants put together in 1970s California from Colombian, Thai and Thai landraces, and later kept and refined in the Netherlands. A true Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, takes for twelve to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, citrus and a note sharp that no other line exactly reproduces.
In its looser sense «Haze» is whatever cross which contains a share of that family, and by now is most of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing which reads «Haze» without lineage may be eighty percent the old family or a small fraction of it, and the flowering time tracks the share, not the name. The working question is not «is it a Haze» but «how much, and through which parent».
Intersex tendency
The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and frequently under stress. Every cannabis line carries some tendency to it; long-flowering lines express it more, for a simple one: sixteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a heat spike or a missed watering to set it off, and a plant that has already gone beyond its intended end frequently throws a few late male flowers on its own in a final effort to set seed.
Not one of these makes a sativa strain unstable as a matter of nature; it makes the room’s discipline count over longer. A sealed room, stable conditions and harvesting when the plant is done and not two week after take away the greater part of the problem. A listing which states a breeder screens parents for intersex traits is saying something more for a long-flowering line than on anything else.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
The number of weeks from the onset of flowering and maturity, and the one most misread figure on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a «fourteen-week» sativa started after a ordinary vegetative period is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also give the shorter end of a spread, because the other end moves less seed.
Sativa plants run anywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at about 16 weeks from the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by that number, which is the sensible first pass if you have a room with a fixed timetable. A grower who allows four weeks to the figure the pack says is seldom disappointed.
Foxtailing
The habit of some flowers to grow new calyx clusters on top of existing ones, giving spired, open buds instead of round ones. In the majority of tent-bred lines it is a stress response, typically from light too close or a room too high, and the standard response is to correct the room.
In a good number of sativas, above all Thai and certain Haze hybrids, it is built in and will occur under a flawless room. A first-time sativa grower frequently spends a month hunting a problem that was never a problem, lowering lights and temperatures only delaying a slow plant even more. The listing seldom warns which type you should expect; the lineage generally tells you.
Latitude
The one figure that decides if a sativa will finish outdoors, and a number no pack states. Long-flowering lines require a run of shortening days to go on long enough to let the plant ripen; at high latitudes the frost comes before that, and the grower cuts an unripe plant in late October or watches it rot in November. A closer south, in the northern hemisphere, the longer the window runs, and Mediterranean or low-latitude growers are able to ripen plants that northern growers cannot.
The practical rule for a seed pack: an «outdoor» line finishing date is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, usually somewhere in southern Europe or the western United States, and every step further north of that moves the finish later into the frost. A grower above roughly the fiftieth parallel who is after a true sativa outdoors needs to be looking for an autoflower or else a greenhouse, and not a better season.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
A catalogue term and not a measurable one. The phrase generally means that more of a hybrid’s parents are classed as sativa by the breeder who wrote the listing, which occasionally signals nothing more than a certain the flowers are longer or the aroma brighter than the same breeder’s other releases.
The experience people connect with the word, clear-headed rather than heavy, is governed more by terpene profile and by THC balance than it is by the sativa fraction, and plenty of «sativa-dominant» hybrids deliver a flat couch effect and plenty of indica-labelled lines do the opposite. To a grower the percentage is worth something as a loose guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a guide to effect it is close to worthless unless accompanied by the terpene notes.
Stretch
The surge of vertical growth that follows the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain around half their height again; sativas routinely double, and some equatorial types go further. The stretch lasts three to five weeks and will not be stopped after it begins, merely bent sideways by training.
In practical terms, the stretch figure is the number to 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. Growers moving over from indica strains almost always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is written on the ceiling of the tent.
Landrace versus heirloom
A population of plants adapted over centuries to one region by the local climate and growers together, rather than by deliberate breeding. Colombian, Colombian, 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 smells spread widely than in a tent-bred line, and that spread is the whole value of keeping one.
The mistake is treating a landrace like a modern product. It carries traits that made sense in an open field, such as a frame that no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm set to an daylength the majority of growers cannot provide. «Heirloom» in a listing generally refers to a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, often with light selection towards tent conditions; it is nearer to usable but nonetheless far from a hybrid. A seller listing «landrace» that does not give an collection region and a generation history is using the word loosely, and the pack should be priced with that in mind.
Terpinolene (the «sativa smell»)
A terpene present in high amounts in many classic sativa strains and responsible for much of what growers describe as the «sativa» smell: green, piney, citrus and faintly sweet all at once. It is fragile, lost quickly by fast drying, and it degrades faster in storage than the heavier terpenes that dominate indica-leaning lines.
For a seed buyer the name does two jobs. Where a listing names terpinolene as the leading aromas, the strain probably has real old-sativa genetics regardless of what the percentage claims. And when the grower wants that smell to still be there to the jar, the cure is going to be cool and cool; a warm drying room turns a terpinolene sativa to something that tastes of very little and leaves nothing of what the pack promised.