This is a good talk on cannabis and British colonialism which was delivered at Gresham College by Professor James Mills based on his book Cannabis Britannica. The image is a posed ‘ethnographic’ photograph of a group of Marwari men preparing…
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‘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…
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The full episode of the podcast on cannabis landraces with Angus and Matt of Riot Seeds is now online – scroll down for the video. Edit: You can find the podcast at Spotify. *** The photo above is ‘Ganja plant…
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‘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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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‘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…
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‘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…
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