geologic said:

<I have to put a qualifier on everything 'cause: I never know>,

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Sativied said:

I like to use them a lot too, and when I don't, they are typically implied. :)

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Sativied said:

Is it lacking potency or smell/taste? Any varieties/crosses in particular?

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Sativied said:

I can't say I noticed any major differences in curing time between sativa doms and indicas specifically. I guess there could be a difference per strain but seems unlikely directly related to longer flower time or sativa specifically. The more indica dom strains I've grown usually need a cure / long slow dry to get a rich taste (and not smell like hay) while a good haze hybrid can taste and smell ok already after a quick dry.

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Sativied said:

Excellent examples of what imo produces high bag appeal.

The Jack Herrer and Mango Haze have the same parent strains,
JH = Haze x (Northern Lights #5 x (Northern Lights #5 x Skunk)) Mango Haze = Haze, NL#5, Skunk.
Angle Heart = Mango Haze x (Afghani x Skunk).

Just like SSH... Supposedly contains different o haze parents, but is again Haze, NL#5, Skunk.

Picture of NL#5/Haze (popular for haze crosses, less flower time than o haze and much better yield, also good for pheno hunting)
View attachment 550953
compare to your angel heart pics you can almost see the NL#5/Haze in the Mango Haze in the angel heart. Take that a step further by adding the next obvious, afghani, and you get angel heart.

The AK47 is not based on those same old classics, supposedly anyway. That cola above looks excellent, I had one very much like that in the F1 in my P cross (cannalope haze x chunk) nearly 2 years ago, got 5 females of those again almost ready to flower and while that's not a whole lot I hope to find one of those again.
View attachment 550954

Never been a big AK-47 bud fan, and smoked too much white widow (another one not based on the same old classics), but I do like White Russian, a cross of the former two.

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NFT said:

was disappointed when i grew ak47 was really hyped up strain for a while, apart from talk of a cherry pheno its hard to find anyone that liked/likes ak47 lol from its genetics it seems like its a copy of skunk 1 or similar mix of sativas+afghan>?

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NFT said:

this is not limited to a particular type i see examples of this with skunks hazes and kushes
some of those og clones look very tasty i like the structure of fire og and gg4

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NFT said:

the angel heart was so unstable for phenotypes it expressed many types
from perfume to petrol to incense to orange tasting smelling plants all mostly with odd calyx development foxtails and large stacking calyx

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NFT said:

these type of foxtails that have no leaf just large swollen calyx stacking are good with me

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Sativied said:

According to Serious Seeds it's Columbia x Mexico x Thailand x Afghanistan. AK47 can be a great yielder which probably added to the hype, some of the biggest colas and yields I've seen we're AK47, yet not very popular to grow commercially (it's rarely on the menu nowadays). Shows quantity can't always make up for quality. Could very well be a skunk knockoff. I like to read and talk about the origins but the sources are highly unreliable by default.

"Although Simon [Serious Seeds] keeps the exact pedigree of AK-47 as a secret,..." Usually when it's secret, unknown, legendary, from mysterious origin, involved shamans or fell out of the sky, it's based on the some old classics. In the few years following after Ben bought Nevil's seed bank and got his hands on the classics Sam brought along and started sensi several other popped up and we all know where they got most of their initial breeding stock.

While nowadays you can find a high calyx to leaf ratio plant in many varieties, it is a typical skunk #1 trait. It's that very trait that supposedly changed the cannabis landscape in NL. I recently listened to a radio archive in which Wernard Bruining (founder first coffee and growshop, positronics, assembled the green team, www.olded.nl ) talked about the early days here and how they send tickets to Sam the Skunkman and Ed Rosenthal in 1985 to get them to come over for more expertise. Wernard mentioned they eventually went for Sam because of his bold claims about the Skunk, how well it yielded, not being leafy. He then goes on to mention Sam showed them his claims were true, specifically the calyx to leaf ratio was a game changer. Up till then it was hard to sell bud to shops (which sold hash that was better).

I also noticed the environment plays a large role in the calyx to leaf ratio. Nutes and light (color and quality) especially. Plants nuked with boosters and additives for example don't swell up as nicely sort of hiding the structure even if it has potential.

Those hazes are probably all diluted with skunk, NL, or afghani though, like pretty much everything except O Haze itself. There are over a dozen different elite OG cuts and I don't think all the og kush is actually kush (some supposedly lemon thai x afghani, some chem, some hindu kush, I suspect also some masterkush, some afghani and/or afghani x skunk). OG Kush is like skunk/white widow/amnesia here was/is.

That blue fin looks great. Here's a pic of that P-F1 plant I mentioned earlier. Didn't use it for F2 because it spawned a few bananas at the end, was an accidental reveg/monstercrop, but great plant otherwise.
View attachment 551590
Dries nicely too, can break off and smoke some dry foxtails before the rest is really dry.


Yeah that sounds like NL#5/Haze x skunk alright. Mr Nice, shantibaba, claim to have more original originals than sensi, remakes of more original original parents... Another story is that Arjan and Shanti, who started Greenhouse together, bought a whole lot of NL#5/Haze seeds from sensi. Shanti went with the mango line pheno when he left GHS and went to work for mr nice. Usually the most obvious scenario is the right one and considering greenhouse is across the street/canal/bridge of sensi shop and they all wanted to get the same success Ben Dronkers had with sensi... NL#5/Haze was last time I checked still the most expensive at sensi. Tons of interesting phenos that crossed with Skunk (yield, flower time, high calyx to leaf ratio) or Afghani (short, resinous) resulted in many popular varieties.

Yeah that's the good stuff. Some nice examples in the bud shots you just posted in your thread too. It also reduces chances of bud rot (or put differently, allows me to run with the crappy humid climate with less chance of rot). If you detect bud rot very early it's easy to see the amount of leaves inside the cola make matters worse (wet).

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NFT said:

Thats interesting so these great looking og clones with the very high calyx to leaf ratio
and the hazes too, are all expressing "skunk 1"

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NFT said:

i do remember reading nev was not that keen on skunk

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NFT said:

did the appearance of the CH help you decide to run it in the first place
how did you first encounter CH, ?

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Sativied said:

With exceptions probably, and more specifically high calyx to leaf ratio combined with big fat buds, but yeah that is typically the case. Over the past two decades or so people can have beefed up afghani/kush/NL crosses, but only to an extend after which you either need an exceptional mutation or introduce genes from another variety, i.e. crossbreed. Skunk was and often still is the donor source for those genes, but nowadays for example white widow and AK47 supposedly could provide alternatives, those and many others that are really just skunk crosses.

Like Critical that is crossed with everything... it's (afghani x skunk), reworked version of Big Bud, 'borrowed' by dinafem, together (without the original big bud that is) good for nearly a 100 new commercially available 'varieties'. For example dinafem Critical Cheese = afghani x skunk) x (cheese exodus (skunk) x afghani)...

That does not surprise me. Sam doesn't like Northern Light (posted at icmag), which based on an article the history of Northern Light was brought here by Nevil. Skunk and haze he got from Sam, with the condition that he wouldn't release crosses of them, which Nev did anyway. I do agree with nevil though, skunk by itself isn't that great. Not anymore anyway, too many better alternatives nowadays (like skunk x haze :) ).


The best I've grown (in nft) and in the top 3 of what I ever smoked was the Chocolate Fondue, also from DNA genetics.
CF = Chocolope x UK Cheese Exodus Cut
Chocolope = Thai Choco x Cannalope Haze

The only thing wrong with it was it's tallness. Cannalope Haze is relatively short and I suspected the length was from the Thai in it. So I wanted to create something similar myself, but without the thai (choco smell only after crumbling). Couldn't get my hands on the UK Cheese cut so I got "chunk" (from a grower who said he removed a male too late). I thought chunk was from CHeese (skunk) x Skunk, but it's not like the cheese at all, instead it has a very strong pine smell. Perhaps pineapple, which could make it Pineapple Chunk, or a cross. Did have very big calyxes (producing oversized seeds too) so used it anyway.

I didn't actually choose CH itself for it's structure but figured I try recreate the huge swollen calyxes of the CF by crossing it with a skunk.

Chocolate Fondue:
View attachment 551671 View attachment 551672 View attachment 551673
Freakish large calyxes and fat foxtails, very easy trimming.
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I also liked the lineage of Cannalope Haze, according to DNA it's Mexican Sativa x O Haze. Starting with o haze is kind of like the right thing to do imo, but CH has an 8 week flower time and the CF had plenty of 'haze in it' so I thought it would be a good alternative.

According to the folks at icmag and here too cannalope haze is C99 or a C99 cross. I have to say it appears to be a lot more likely than what DNA claims. C99 is based on jack herrer, same old...

I created CHxCH seeds with 2 females, compact pheno and hazy pheno (pics comparing them in this post: https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/breeding-for-whorls.63887/page-3#post-1279052 ), and 1 male (quad whorled) and had very indica or skunk like plants. I started suspecting I mixed up the seeds with ICE x CH, which is (afghani, NL, Skunk) x CH but I've ran enough now to know it cannot be directly O Haze x mex sativa cross.

The reason I got 40 of the CHxCH now is also to find out if I really bred out the haze in one generation. So far it has not been able to produce haze hybrids. I still hope to find some hazy phenos in these but I mostly still grow CH because it's easy to find whorlers in these seeds.

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NFT said:

is it that skunk leans towards Mexican sativa these days and haze and old skunk leans towards Thai and or Columbia ?

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NFT said:

do you know if the big calyx trait is a result of the skunk hybrid the combination of sativas with an afghan
or is it something some of the landrace sativas that make up skunk also do ?
i wish there were more pictures around of landraces to compare with the hybrids of today
but i guess not many folk are growing them indoor

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NFT said:

i seem to rarely encounter this today so many hybrids seem to lean towards pine today which i am not so keen on

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Sativied said:

Posted this in another thread already but it's a nice little piece of history with some classic comments. It is from a catalog of Cultivator’s Choice, what they (Sam and others) offered in 1985 (and ended up at sensi and others through amongst others flying dutchmen)
View attachment 551727

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Notice the last comment about the skunk #1, "low leaf to flower ratio". It's a shame Northern Light isn't on the list.


I think that is at least true for the haze->Thai. I have not seen enough of the mex sat and columbian up close to make a good comparisson. That said, the Amnesia White I've grown is (haze x afghani) x thai. Based on text at sensi it doesn't actually seem to be based on the amnesia cut but 'haze', i.e. no skunk (like in SSH). Calyx size is like a third or maybe even a quarter of the big CF calyxes. Dried and quailed the ones on the CF and chunk cross are bigger than the AW pre-drying. By itself a good calyx to leaf ratio, good yield, compact nuggets, yet skinny long (thai like) colas compared to others, seemingly partly because of the small calyxes. I will grab a pic later, had to harvest prematurely cause it rotted and hermied badly so didn't bother taking a lot of pics.

Anyway, from sensi site: "To ensure that none of the uplifting high is lost, Amnesia White has also been back-crossed with the Thai ancestors that give Haze most of its awesome power."

That seems to be about cannabinoids and terpenes mostly, not necessarily the structure.

Something else I read (post from Sam) is that one of the things that makes O haze special/good is that it doesn't not hermie often despite the Thai in it. Thai is known to hermie easily. I said earlier in this thread that I think they should have used o haze instead of thai in the amnesia white cause the last thing you want is use a hermie thai if you can get haze from haze instead. I guess they chose thai to create (haze x afghani) instead of just (haze x afghani) x the same haze.

I smoked import thai decades ago, cheapest stuff on the menu, brown, mostly branches and leaves. Cheap but needed a lot to get high. Not at all like haze back then but based on the above I do get the impression Thai plays a larger role in haze than I realized.

*light bulb* So that could then very well be the reason why Chocolate Fondue is so much more hazy than the Cannalope Haze. Especially if CH = C99... C99 x thai x skunk...


I think it is primarily a result of hybridization, and partly through ongoing selection after that. Most vegetables and farm animals are hybrids for similar reasons. The benefits of new hybrid varieties are so great they literally help prevent us all from starving from food shortage.

Traits that can be quantified (flower time, yield, size of every part of the plant) are usually based on many different genes. By crossing two different varieties you not only get traits from the two parent varieties but also new combinations of genes that can result in new traits that were not in either parents. Medium x small variety outbred can result in something like medium + small, a shift of the entire spectrum, instead of a mix or average. While if you continue to inbreed the same medium variety it tends to stay in a spectrum around medium.

Comparing to original landraces isn't getting any easier either, many land races being grown and sold are not really pure land races anymore. From Malawi to Columbia to Thailand farmers were also impressed by the calyx to leaf ratio and yields of the western bred varieties tourists and others brought along and traded. They sell white widow and other popular varieties at Malawi lake, and the Malawi Gold suddenly got a lot less leafy...

There are over a dozen 'breeders' offering Skunk #1, often based on small populations, down to as little as one (selfed) or 2 plants. If I ever smoked an older more original skunk I honestly don't remember the difference. I probably smoked more Northern Light and orange, and especially hash, than skunk. I know quite a few people from the days I worked in a coffeeshop that I never heard say something else than "a tenner orange".

I smoked so much of my P-F1, has pine smell during veg already, that eventually I really had to grow and smoke something else. A few weeks after the last pine bud though I start missing it. It's like drinking tea with fruit taste for years and than going back to regular blend :) Pinene is one of the most common terpenes in nature. Great insect repellent (mites didn't like the P plants at all) and because it's so recognizable it's easy to breed for. One of the downsides of going back to F1 is that I managed to get all the F3 to produce a milder/sweet-sour pine instead of a dark pungent one. I was hoping to sort of blend it with amnesia/ssh like haze but the AW is horrible.

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