Just popping in to say I agree with sanvanalona.
I think this is really just a misunderstanding, though.
The problem is that naming conventions in cannabis industry/culture are FUCKING TERRIBLE. so it's neither of your fault.
Really, you guys are lucky--were you from Illinois (as I am) you'd have been dealing with people just making fucking names up to sell more bud for most of your adult life.
The "original" OG was/is clone only if I'm not mistaken.
What that means is that, if its not the original cut--it's not OG, it's just been called that. It could be that it's a derivative of this original cut, OR that it's a new cut entirely with a similar phenotype (not unheard of).
Here's a big problem with the naming convention:
1. When breeding/testing is complete on a batch of seeds the "strain" is given a name. FPOG for example.
2. If there should so happen to be a phenotype that presents from the FPOG stock that is different in morphology enough from other FPOG progeny to warrant preserving the cut--often this cut will be given its OWN name (i.e. a new strain--Sour Patch Pebbles, for instance, I think has come up on this board somewhere).
In reality, the mistake is in number 1--if we apply the same naming convention as the rest of science (and botany--for that matter).
A "strain" scientifically speaking usually refers to an individual or a group of genetically identical individuals. For instance, when a strain deficient in a specific protein is created to tease out the function of that protein--the "strain" refers to a specific individual with a discrete and singular genetic identity.
More appropriately, we should call FPOG seeds "FPOG stock" rather than the "FPOG strain"--because the strains themselves, if we follow the convention of science, will be the genetically distinct individuals that grow from these seeds.
The water gets muddier when we start to talk about phenotypes that can be expected from a certain "stock" (i.e. the fruity pebble phenotype from the FPOG stock). While this doesn't fit the "genetically distinct" marker--what it does follow is a morphologically and phenotypically distinct marker, that can be attributed to a "strain".
Kush smell lends itself well to this. Because Kush is in so many varieties, and because we can identify the smell so readily, it is easy to identify kush strains as such.
What's important to remember is that even if all Kush's do not come from the same progenitors--they DO share similar genetic makeup, at least in part. The proof is in your nose.
The same thing could be happening here. You have genetic similarities, but not "shared" genetics.
Just replace "blue eyes" with "kush smell" or "OG smell".
We don't say that everyone with blue eyes is of the same "strain", and we wouldn't say that even if we did discuss "strains" of humans. What we would say is that there is a phenotypical/morphological similarity. We can even identify a shared mutation, or a shared genetic sequence--but it is not necessary for these to originate from the same place.
Mutations can and do happen in the same place--it is DEFINITELY not a random process always. Research has shown that each genome has regions which are more prone to mutation--and I'm personally aware of at least 5 different markers for this type of predisposition which have been elucidated, there are very likely more.
End of the day, neither of you can be said to be 100% correct--because there is no 100% accepted method for naming these things, and even the general rule of thumb that 80% of people follow (as outlined above) is quite flawed in terms of its organizational acuity.
I don't think this comes from people's failure to identify this as an issue early on, but rather that its a consequence of seed mills attempts to capitalize on this industry. People want "the best strain" and the seed mills are all to happy to promise you that--the only problem is that they can't, scientifically speaking, deliver that to you.
If we were trying to breed a mutant for a study, we'd keep painstaking track of parent stock--and we'd give each phenotype an individual name which would be considered the "strain". That name would be unique for all time to that one individual genome, never to be given to another creature again.
This is really why it becomes important to keep track of parent stock, and genetic crossing--because what we're ultimately judging is not a "strain" but the strength of a given set of pregenitors' offspring (and then each resulting phenotype separately).
