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. All plants in an heirloom such as Deep Chunk or Afghaan 90 are Type 1 chemotype: i.e., a high ratio of THC to CBD, with very high overall levels of THC.

For landraces that are both potent and truly authentic (i.e., not heirlooms or Skunk hybrids), you need to 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. That artifical selective pressure over many generations is why they’re potent. In regions such as Laos or Odisha, aficionados and farmers know to keep seeds from good batches of bud to cultivate next season. This is why tropical and subtropical landraces – aka, real Sativas – are the most potent types of cannabis landraces.

If you’re looking for Sativa heirlooms, we have a ‘Jamaican Lambsbread’, a three-way cross of Colombian and Mexican lines, and a ‘1992 Thai x Afghan’ that can be found at Kwik Seeds.

By contrast – to the best of our knowledge – none of the heirlooms offered here at The Real Seed Company have been outcrossed.