Sacred Seeds catalogue – Amsterdam, 1985

The November 1st, 1985 catalogue of Cultivators Choice, listing the Sacred Seeds varieties brought to Holland by David Watson in the 1980s.

Along with the ‘Northern Lights’ lines and a handful of other additions like ‘Chitral’, what you see here are the foundational cultivars out of which modern Dutch–American cannabis strains were created.

In the early 1990s, the menus of Amsterdam coffee shops and seed shops still looked like this, more or less. ‘Orange’ had become ‘California Orange’ or ‘Orange Bud’. ‘Skunk No. 1’ had diversified into ‘Skunk Red Hair’ and ‘Skunk Special’, and so on. But the names still corresponded to botanical reality.

Cultivators Choice – Fall 1985 catalogue of Sacred Seeds, Amsterdam

These days, that’s no longer the case. Names have proliferated. Real genetic lineages are unknown. Most breeders are working with material out of which it’s no longer possible to create a true F1 hybrid cultivar. Decades of uncontrolled outcrossing has seen the Dutch–American legacy of the 70s and 80s slowly disappear into a messy homogeneous slop.

Notice the description of ‘Skunk No. 1’ – “High is very strong and up. Taste is very sweet.” You’ll see the same characterisation of ‘Skunk No. 1’ in other 1985 catalogues: “an exceptionally sweet true breeding Indica hybrid” with “lime green growing tips.” That puts in context a lot of the puff about what old-school Skunk was really like.

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In the opinion of most experts with real experience of working at scale, there is only one hybrid to emerge from the underground breeding projects of the prohibition era that’s genuinely true-breeding: ‘Skunk No. 1’.

Catalog of SEEDS – High Times, February 1981

In this ‘Catalog of SEEDS’ from High Times of February 1981 ‘Skunk No. 1’ is already listed as a ‘Pure Variety’. Plus it’s the only listing that’s not available at a 25% discount on orders of $1000 and over. Consistent quality and an even, early finish made for high demand among farmers planting big fields.

According to David Watson (Skunkman), the main goal of his ‘Skunk No. 1’ breeding project was always to incorporate the best qualities of tropical Sativas into a stable variety that would finish outdoors north of the 30th parallel.

In that sense, the Afghan side of ‘Skunk No. 1’ was a means to an end. Early maturing landraces from Afghanistan provided a vehicle by which to bring north the intense tropical highs of the best Colombian and Mexican landraces.

These and ‘Thai’ from the ethnic Lao region of northern Isan and the ‘South Indian’ from Kerala are the cannabis Watson is on record as stating he valued most highly, both for the quality of the smoke and their powerful effect.

Unfortunately, they’re not only absent from most modern seed catalogues. As with all drug cannabis landraces, they’re also critically endangered or close to extinct in their source countries, either due to crop eradication (Kerala) or introduced modern hybrids and lax farming practices (Thailand).