Heirloom

Heirloom: This category is for established inbred lines that have undergone generations of intensive selective inbreeding in the West – often known as ‘IBLs’ or ‘heirlooms’. This site uses the term ‘heirloom’ to differentiate these modern cannabis cultigens from authentic landraces.

All of these heirlooms are ‘sinsemilla cultivars’ that were created in the West by applying modern methods of individual plant selection to cannabis landraces, resulting in higher THC levels than would be normal for most landraces.

That difference in potency is particularly notable when comparing western Indica heirlooms to actual ‘hash landraces’ from the Hindu Kush. Actual Hindu Kush landraces have historically only undergone bulk selection, a much looser and mostly unconscious form of selective pressure by farmers, so their populations typically segregate into Type 1, 2, and 3 chemotypes.

By contrast, a cannabis heirloom such as Deep Chunk, which was inbred in northern California for four decades, shows markedly lower CBD and much higher THC than the hashish landraces cultivated by cannabis farmers in Afghanistan.

For potent pristine landraces (i.e., not heirlooms), look at ganja landraces from tropical regions such as Southeast Asia, Tropical India, and Tropical Africa. Unlike hash landraces, ganja landraces do have a long history of undergoing conscious individual plant selection, because aficionados and farmers in regions with a long history with ganja (i.e., sinsemilla / semi-sensi) often know to keep seeds from good batches of bud to cultivate next season. Tropical landraces – aka, Sativas – are the most potent types of cannabis landraces.

Hybrids of heirlooms such as a ‘Jamaican Lambsbread’, a three-way cross of Colombian and Mexican lines, and a ‘1992 Thai x Afghan’ can be found at Kwik Seeds.

To the best of our knowledge, none of the heirloom sinsemilla cultivars offered here at The Real Seed Company have been outcrossed.