The colonisation of Central Asia by the Tsarist and Soviet Empires from the 1860s to 1930s saw a sudden collapse of cannabis cultivation around historic charas-producing centres such as Bukhara and Xinjiang, the latter under Governor Sheng Shicai, a Soviet-backed…
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To go with the new chat with Aussie Gunja Man here’s a great painting of stoned yogis from 1780s Rajasthan. Satirical paintings of ascetics (Hindu or Muslim) in states of extreme wastedness were a long-running theme in Indian art by…
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First, just to clear up that freebie seeds with all orders at The Real Seed Company and Kwik Seeds are currently Kumaoni (12 seeds) and Nepali Highland #3 (5 seeds). Kumaoni is a Himalayan multipurpose landrace cultivated for use as…
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This is a great introduction by Will Self to a ‘practice’ or ‘discipline’ with deep roots in cannabis culture: psychogeography. Those roots are so deep that they ultimately reach far back into the phenomenon of the band — both the hunter–gatherer band…
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For fans of old-school Sativa landraces, here’s a classic mor lam track from 1977: ‘Bong Ja Bong!’ – ‘Bong, Oh Bong!’ The singer, Dao Bandon, celebrates the pleasures of what westerners of the day called ‘Thai stick’ and folks from…
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The great origin story or foundation myth of cannabis and counterculture is that of Hassan-i-Sabbah and his Order of Assassins. A fusion of fact and Orientalist fiction, the Assassin Legends are rooted in the era of the Crusades. Popularised in…
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The plant hunter Frank Meyer is shown in China in this photo from 1910, while working for the US Department of Agriculture. In December of this year, after a gruelling trek through the winter desert and mountains of southern Xinjiang,…
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The 1970s – not the ’60s – is when cannabis really took off in the US. ‘Marijuana’ skyrocketed in popularity between 1969 and 1979, by which time American college students who’d never got stoned were a dwindling minority and around…
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One of the best lines to come out of early 1990s Amsterdam was ‘Citral’, a classic of the era’s coffee shop menus and seed catalogues. Shown above is an original early 90s F1 with DJ Short’s ‘Flo’, now available as…
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You can find a wide range of ‘autoflowering’ and ‘semiautoflowering’ landrace and feral cannabis varieties here at The Real Seed Company. ‘Autoflowering’ in cannabis means plants go into flower based only on their age. ‘Auto’ is the opposite of ‘photoperiod’…
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