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. In December of this year, after a gruelling trek through the brutal winter desert, Meyer collected samples of a Central Asian landrace in the mountains of…
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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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We get a lot of messages from folks seeking landraces from the Caribbean or Central and South America here at The Real Seed Company. Over at our other site, we do have a growing collection of really good heirlooms and…
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The second half of the episode on Tai landraces is out – following up on the chat based on this blog post: Ancient Yunnan and the Tai roots of Indian Cannabis Culture That’s ‘Tai’ as in Lao, Thai, and Shan…….
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Part 1 of a new podcast episode with Angus and Matt of Riot Seeds is out now on The Breeders Syndicate podcast. This ramble through cannabis culture starts in Yunnan with the ancient origins of Tai landraces and from there…
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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…
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If – like me – you missed this fascinating 2023 study on the development of prehistoric cannabis cultigens by Rita Dal Martello et al., you can download the pdf here: Cannabis differentiation and Haimenkou. The authors examine archaeological cannabis seeds…
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