Sativa seeds come with more vocabulary attached than any other category of cannabis seed, and a good deal of it says one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and a third to the person trying to make a decision in front of the listing. The failed sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a promise, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a description of character, a landrace bought like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for the concrete examples, because it leans heavily to the classic end of the category and that is where the vocabulary matter most; the meanings themselves apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are in no special order, since not one of them makes usable on its own without the rest.

Sativa-dominant

A marketing category and not a botanical one. It usually means that more of a hybrid’s lineage were described as sativa by whoever drafted the listing, which sometimes signals no more than that the flowers are airier or the smell brighter than the same breeder’s other releases.

The experience people connect with the word, clear-headed instead of heavy, is driven far more by terpene profile and the cannabinoid balance than it is by the sativa fraction, and plenty of “sativa-dominant” hybrids produce a flat sleepy result while plenty of indica-labelled stock do the reverse. To a buyer the label is useful for a rough guide to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a predictor to effect it is next to useless without the aroma notes.

Equatorial

Refers to lines from latitudes where daylength barely varies across the year, and that the plant does not develop a strong reaction to shortening days. These lines often flower slowly at a conventional twelve-hour light cycle, since twelve hours is, for them, an ordinary day and not a signal.

The practical response, passed around among sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light more: eleven hours, occasionally ten, particularly in the final weeks. It costs a yield yield and gains an earlier clearer finish. A listing which uses “equatorial” is warning you about this with one word, and a grower who takes it as mere origin has missed the point hidden in it.

Landrace

A population of plants adapted over generations to one region by the local growers and growers alike, rather than by deliberate selection. Thai, Colombian, Malawian and Oaxacan lines are the sativa examples. A landrace is a spread, not a single plant: within a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas spread far more than in a tent-bred line, and that variation is the whole value of keeping one.

The trap is buying a landrace like a finished hybrid. It brings habits that made sense in an open field, such as a frame that no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm tuned to an equatorial daylength most growers cannot offer. “Heirloom” in a listing generally means a landrace that has been reproduced somewhere over a number of generations, typically with light selection towards indoor conditions; it is closer to usable but nonetheless not a hybrid. A seller listing “landrace” without a origin point and a generation history is using the word loosely, and the pack should be priced with that in mind.

Foxtailing

The habit of some flowers to grow new calyx growth on top of old ones, giving towered, open buds instead of dense ones. In the majority of tent-bred strains it is a stress response, usually from light too close or temperatures that is too high, and the standard response is to correct the cause.

In many sativas, above all Southeast Asian and certain Haze hybrids, it is built in and is going to occur under a flawless room. A first-time sativa grower often spends a month hunting a problem that is a problem, dropping lights and temperatures only delaying an already slow flower further. The breeder seldom warns which kind you should expect; the parentage usually tells you.

Haze

Originally a specific family of plants bred in 1970s California from Colombian, Colombian and Thai landraces, and later kept and refined in the Netherlands. A true Haze grows tall, branches openly, takes for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of spice, citrus and something metallic that no other line exactly reproduces.

In its second sense “Haze” is whatever hybrid that carries a share of that family, which by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing that says “Haze” and gives no parents may be mostly percent original classic family or one sixteenth of it, and the grow time tracks the fraction, not the name. The useful question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.

Intersex tendency

The appearance of male flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often under stress. Every cannabis line carries a degree of tendency to do; sativa lines show it more, for one plain one: sixteen weeks of flower is fourteen weeks of exposure for a timer leak, a heat spike or a late watering to set it going, and an old that has gone beyond its intended finish frequently throws a few late male flowers on its own in a final effort to make seed.

Not one of these means a sativa line unstable by course; it means the grower’s discipline matter for a longer stretch. Light-tight tents, stable temperatures and cutting when the plant is done rather than a weeks later remove the greater part of the problem. A listing that states a breeder tests parents for hermaphrodite traits is worth worth hearing on a sativa than for anything other category.

Latitude

The one number that decides if a sativa can ripen outdoors, and a number that no pack states. Long-flowering plants require a autumn days to continue late enough for the plant to ripen; at high latitudes the frost arrives before that, and the grower cuts a unripe plant in the end of October or else loses it rot in November. The closer to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the later the window stretches, and Mediterranean or low-latitude growers are able to ripen plants that temperate gardens cannot.

The practical rule of a seed pack: an “outdoor” line finishing date is given for the breeder’s own latitude, usually a point within southern Europe or the western United States, and each degree further north of it moves the finish later into the frost. A grower above about the fiftieth parallel who wants a true sativa outdoors needs to be shopping for an autoflower or else a greenhouse, and not a longer summer.

Flowering time

The number of weeks between the onset of flowering and harvest, and the one most misunderstood figure on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, not from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started after a ordinary vegetative period is a five-month plant. Breeders additionally quote the shorter end of a range, because the longer end sells less seed.

Long-flowering plants take everywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the longest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at about 16 weeks after the flip. The catalogue can be filtered by this number, which is a sensible first pass for a room with a fixed timetable. A grower who allows four weeks on top of the figure the pack states is seldom disappointed.

Terpinolene

A aromatic compound present in large proportion in many old sativa lines and responsible for most of what growers describe as the “sativa” smell: green, woody, citrus and slightly sweet all at once. It is volatile, lost quickly through fast drying, and it degrades more quickly in the cure than the earthier terpenes which dominate most tent stock.

To a seed buyer the word does two jobs. Where a listing lists terpinolene among the lead terpene, the strain probably has real old-sativa ancestry regardless of what the percentage says. And when the grower are after that profile to still be there to the jar, the drying has to be cool and cool; a warm drying room turns a terpinolene line into something that smells of very little and no trace of what the pack promised.

Stretch (the doubling)

The surge of vertical growth which follows the change to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain half their height again; sativas routinely double, and some landrace lines triple. The stretch lasts three to four weeks and will not be halted once it has started, merely redirected by training.

In tent terms, a stretch figure is a number to read before choosing when to switch. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres inside a standard tent is touching the lamp before week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres has room. People coming from indica strains almost always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is written on the ceiling of the tent.