Sativa seeds come with more jargon attached than any other category of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says one thing to a botanist, another to a seed company and something different again to the grower standing in front of the listing. The failed sativa grow nearly always goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label taken as a description of effect, a landrace chosen like it were a modern hybrid. The entries below are written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for reference, since it runs heavily towards the long-flowering end of the category and that is where the vocabulary matter most; the meanings themselves hold to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, since not one of them is usable on its own without the others.
Haze (the family, not the smell)
Originally a specific line of plants bred in 1970s California from Colombian, Thai and South Indian parents, and later preserved and worked in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, branches sparsely, takes for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of spice, citrus and something sharp that no other other line quite reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is whatever hybrid which contains some of that family, and today is most of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which says “Haze” without parents may be mostly percent the classic family or one small fraction of it, and the grow character follows the share, not the name. The useful question is not “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.
Landrace versus heirloom
A population of plants shaped through centuries to a particular region by local climate and climate together, rather than by deliberate selection. Thai, Thai, Congolese and Oaxacan stock are the classic sativa examples. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: inside a pack the flowering times, flowering times and smells spread far more than any tent-bred line, and that variation is the whole value of growing one.
The mistake is buying a landrace as a finished product. It carries habits that made sense in an equatorial field, including height no tent can hold and a flowering clock set to an equatorial daylength most growers cannot offer. “Heirloom” in a listing usually means a landrace that has been reproduced somewhere for some generations, often with a degree of selection for indoor conditions; it is nearer to manageable but nonetheless not uniform. A seller listing “landrace” that does not give a collection region and a reproduction count is using the word loosely, and the pack should be priced with that in mind.
Intersex tendency
The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, usually towards the end in flower and often under stress. Almost every cannabis line has a degree of tendency for it; sativa plants show it more, for one plain one: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a temperature spike or a missed watering that can trigger it going, and an plant that has already gone past its natural finish frequently produces a few desperate pollen sacs on its own as a last effort to make seed.
None of this makes a sativa strain unstable by nature; it means the room’s discipline matter for longer. A sealed tents, stable temperatures and harvesting when the plant is ready rather than a week later remove most of the risk. A listing which mentions a breeder tests parents for intersex traits is worth more for a long-flowering line than on any other category.
Stretch (the doubling)
The burst of upward growth which follows the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants add around half again; sativas commonly double, and some landrace types go further. The stretch lasts two to four weeks and will not be stopped once it has started, only bent sideways by training.
In practical terms, the stretch figure is the fact to reading before choosing when to flip. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres in a two-metre tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres has room. People coming over from indica strains nearly always flip too late the first time, and the consequence is written on the ceiling of the tent.
Foxtailing (and when it is not a fault)
The tendency of certain flowers to grow fresh calyx clusters on top of existing ones, giving towered, open buds rather than round ones. In most indica-leaning strains it is a stress response, typically from light that is 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 some Haze lines, it is genetic and is going to occur in a perfect room. A new sativa grower frequently wastes weeks hunting a fault that is not there, lowering lights and heat only slowing an already slow plant further. The breeder seldom warns which type you should expect; the lineage generally tells you.
Sativa-dominant (the label)
The catalogue term rather than a botanical one. The phrase usually indicates that more of a hybrid’s lineage are classed as sativa by the breeder who drafted the description, and sometimes means nothing more than that the buds are airier or the aroma brighter than the same breeder’s indica-labelled lines.
The effect people associate with a word, lively rather than sedating, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and by cannabinoid content than it is by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” releases deliver a heavy sleepy effect and a good number of indica-labelled stock do the reverse. To a grower the percentage is worth something for a rough hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to how it feels it is close to useless without the aroma notes.
Terpinolene
A terpene present in high proportion in many classic sativa lines and responsible for much of the thing growers mean as the “sativa” smell: green, piney, lemon and slightly sweet all at once. It is volatile, lost quickly through fast drying, and terpinolene fades more quickly in storage than the heavier terpenes which dominate indica-leaning lines.
For a seed buyer the name earns two jobs. When a listing names terpinolene among the lead terpene, the strain most likely carries real Haze-era ancestry regardless of what the percentage says. And when the you are after that profile to still be there by the jar, the drying is going to be slow and cool; a warm drying room flattens a terpinolene sativa to something that tastes of hay and nothing of what the pack described.
Latitude (outdoor sativas)
The one number that decides if a sativa will ripen outdoors, and one no pack states. Long-flowering lines require the autumn days to continue long enough to let the plant to finish; at northern latitudes the frost arrives before that, and the grower harvests an half-finished plant in late October or watches it rot in November. The further to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the season stretches, and Mediterranean or subtropical gardens are able to finish plants that temperate gardens cannot.
The practical reading of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line finishing date is given for the breeder’s own latitude, normally somewhere within southern Europe or the western United States, and each degree north of that pushes the date back towards the weather. A grower north of about the fiftieth parallel that wants a long-flowering sativa in the garden needs to be looking for a sativa autoflower or a greenhouse, not a better season.
Equatorial
Refers to plants out of regions where daylength hardly varies across the year, and where the plant never develop a strong reaction to changing days. These plants frequently flower reluctantly at a conventional twelve-hour schedule, because twelve hours is, to them, a mild ordinary day rather than a signal.
The practical fix, handed down between sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly in the final weeks. It costs some little yield and gains a earlier decisive end. A listing which says “equatorial” is warning you this in one word, and a grower who reads it as a note on geography has missed the point hidden in it.