So where does that leave us marijuana growers, then? Is the sativa indica difference a useful distinction? Well, to be fair, it is useful to know whether you are growing an indica (dominant) strain or a sativa (dominant) plant. That means nobody can be exactly sure about the strains, species, and genetics used to create any contemporary strain. To further complicate the matter, a general atmosphere of secrecy and paranoia has blurred the genetic origins of most hybrid strains on today’s market. The truth is, however, that these are all sativa and indica dominant strains. If you look at any respectable seeds bank today, you will see a whole bunch of weed strains labelled either sativa or indica. Growing Sativa And Indica Cannabis Strains Sure, some of these indica-sativa hybrids were sativa-dominant while other were dominated by indica genetics, but today, just about all strains have bit of both species in their DNA. All they had left were crossbreeds between the two. In their crossbreeding frenzy, breeders lost the ‘original recipe’ of the pure sativa and indica genetics they started out with. The big drawback, however, was that pretty soon, nobody managed to find any original ‘landrace’ cannabis plants anymore. Hundreds of fabulous strains were invented in a matter of decades. Obviously, this involved a lot of crossbreeding indica and sativa cannabis strains. They crossed all sorts of cannabis found all over the world, selecting for positive genetic traits like THC content, potency, flavour, or mould resistance. Growers and breeders went into a crossbreeding frenzy. Hybrid Strains And The Crossbreeding Frenzy All that changed in the 20 th century, though, as growing numbers of cannabis enthusiasts started looking for more potent types of weed. In some areas, you’d find pure indica species, while elsewhere, only sativa plants could thrive. Originally, cannabis was found only in nature. So what’s going on here? All scientific classifications and plant taxonomy aside, why claim that sativas or indicas don’t exist anymore? The problem is crop cultivation and crossbreeding. Does The Difference Between Sativa And Indica Even Exist? Here, however, we run into the next problem: many experts claim that neither sativa nor indica exist anymore at least not in any meaningful way. We are then left with sativa and indica species. We will skip the ruderalis species here, since these are generally only used to crossbreed autoflower strains. Cannabis taxonomy can be tricky…īoiled down to layman basics, weed (the broad cannabis genus) can be classified as either sativa, indica, or ruderalis species. Okay, with that in mind, let’s return to the subject: the difference between cannabis sativa and indica. (again), Cannabis indica Lam., and Cannabis ruderalis Janisch. Although Cannabis is a single genus, it is then classified as one species, Cannabis sativa L., which is then further divided into three subspecies. The confusion starts one level below genus Cannabis on the taxonomy ladder, which is the step of species. Strictly speaking, after this comes the distinction between different strains but these are simply variants occurring within a single (sub-)species.Ĭannabis Taxonomy: Genus, Species & Strains Taxonomy divides life on earth into a hierarchy of eight categories: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and finally Species and Subspecies, in declining order. We have now entered the realm of taxonomy, which is a scientific system used to classify all living things in existence. This genus is officially called Cannabis sativa L., which covers all weed variants in existence. If we start at the beginning – usually a wise idea – we can state that all weed types, strains, or variants fall under the same plant genus. So here we go: let’s explore the difference between cannabis sativa and indica strains. The best-known way to make that choice easier is dividing all weed types into sativa and indica strains. On the other hand, picking the right weed seeds to grow among so many different cannabis strains can be tricky. That’s a good thing if you like having a lot of options. These days, any cannabis enthusiast has an incredible number of weed strains to choose from.
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