‘Ganja plant ready for cutting, some of the dead leaves still adhering, Naogaon.’ – Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-1894 *** The two high-end traditional cannabis drug products are ganja (sinsemilla or ‘semi-sensi’) and charas (resin, either hand-rubbed…
Read more
The full episode of the podcast on cannabis landraces with Angus and Matt of Riot Seeds is now online – scroll down for the video. *** The photo above is ‘Ganja plant almost ready to cut, Naogaon. 16th February 1894.’…
Read more
‘Ukhrul (Naga)’ at 40°N – a customer’s photo from last year, this individual performing well at such a northern latitude. Collected by Angus in the highlands of Ukhrul district, Manipur, Northeast India, close to the border with Burma. This landrace…
Read more
There’s a far older name for seedless bud than ‘sinsemilla’, namely ‘ganja’. To be clear, ‘ganja’ is not a catch-all term for any type of cannabis drug – though aficionados in the west may sometimes misuse it that way. Ganja…
Read more
Short answer – no, they are not. A landrace is a type of domesticate. In other words, landraces are created by humans. In that sense, however region-specific most may be, landraces are exactly the opposite of ‘wild’ or ‘natural’. Landraces…
Read more
Here’s Professor James Mills, arguably the most authoritative historian of cannabis, with a quick tour of the first of his two books on the little-known role of the British Empire in the Asian cannabis trade: Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and…
Read more
The first of three parts of the Cannabis & Alchemy podcast episode I recorded with Conor of CANNAMANtv is now up on YouTube. This is the first time in which I feature as a friendly animated cannabis seed, but as…
Read more
‘Endangered Varieties of subsp. indica: A Few Thoughts‘ is new at the blog. I discuss McPartland and Small’s crucial new study, ‘A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives‘, and dive into some…
Read more
‘On Indicas & Afghanicas’ is new at The Real Seed Company blog. It looks at the history of Cannabis taxonomy, particularly as it relates to proposed species, subspecies, and varieties from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The photo is from the…
Read more