Sativa seeds come with more jargon attached than any other category of cannabis seed, and most of it says one thing to a botanist, something else to a breeder and a third to the grower standing in front of the pack. A failed sativa grow usually goes back to a word that was read in the wrong sense: a flowering time read as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a description of effect, a landrace chosen like it were a tent-bred hybrid. The entries below were written with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand as reference, because it runs strongly to the long-flowering end of the category where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the definitions though apply to any sativa seed from any shop. They are in no particular order, because none of them makes usable without the others.

Flowering time

The figure of weeks between the start of flowering and harvest, which is the one most frequently misread figure on a sativa pack. With photoperiod seed it is counted from the day the light is cut to twelve hours, rather than from sowing, so a “fourteen-week” sativa started with an eight-week vegetative period is a twenty-two-week plant. Breeders additionally give the shorter end of the spread, because the longer end moves less seed.

Sativa plants run anywhere from ten weeks to well over twenty, and the longest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range comes in at around 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by this figure, which is the sensible first pass if you have a grower on a fixed schedule. A grower who allows four weeks to whatever the pack states is seldom disappointed.

Foxtailing (and when it is not a fault)

The habit of certain flowers to grow fresh calyx growth on top of existing ones, producing towered, open buds instead of round ones. In the majority of tent-bred strains it is a stress response, typically caused by light too close or a room too high, and the standard response is to fix the cause.

In many sativas, above all Thai and some Haze hybrids, it is genetic and is going to occur under a flawless room. A first-time sativa grower often spends weeks chasing a fault that is a problem, dropping lights and heat only delaying a slow flower even more. The listing seldom says which type you should expect; the lineage generally does.

Latitude (outdoor sativas)

The single number that determines if a sativa can ripen outdoors, and a number that no pack prints. Long-flowering plants need a run of shortening days to continue long enough to let the plant to finish; at high latitudes the frost arrives first, and the grower harvests an unripe plant in late October or watches it to mould in November. A closer south, in a northern hemisphere, the later the window runs, and coastal and subtropical gardens can ripen lines that northern growers cannot.

The practical reading of a seed listing: an “outdoor” line finishing date is given for the breeder’s home latitude, usually a point within temperate Europe or the west coast of the United States, and every degree further north of it pushes the finish back towards the weather. A grower north of about the fiftieth parallel who is after a long-flowering sativa outdoors is looking for a sativa autoflower or else a greenhouse, and not a longer summer.

Haze (the family, not the smell)

In its first sense a particular line of plants bred in coastal California from Mexican, Thai and South Indian landraces, and then kept and refined in the Netherlands. The Haze grows tall, branches openly, flowers for twelve to to sixteen weeks and carries a scent of incense, pine and something metallic that no other other line quite has.

In its second sense “Haze” is whatever hybrid that carries some of that family, which by now is a great many of the sativa-leaning market. A listing which reads “Haze” and gives no lineage could be mostly percent original classic family or a sixteenth of it, and the grow character follows the fraction, not the name. The useful question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and through which parent”.

Equatorial

Describes lines from latitudes in which daylength barely changes through the year, which means where the plant does not evolved a sharp response to shortening days. These plants frequently start flowering reluctantly at a conventional twelve-hour schedule, because twelve hours is, to them, a mild ordinary day and not a signal.

The practical fix, handed around between sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, sometimes ten, especially during the last weeks. It costs a yield yield and gains an earlier decisive end. A listing which uses “equatorial” is telling you about this in one word, and a grower who reads it as a note on geography has missed the point hidden in it.

Terpinolene

A terpene found in large amounts in many classic sativa strains and responsible for much of what people describe as a “sativa” aroma: fresh, woody, lemon and slightly floral all at once. It is volatile, lost easily by fast drying, and it fades more quickly during storage than the heavier terpenes that dominate indica-leaning lines.

To a seed buyer the name earns two jobs. When a listing names terpinolene among the lead terpene, the strain probably has substantial old-sativa genetics regardless of what the percentage claims. And where the grower wants that smell to still be there to the jar, the cure is going to be slow and cool; a warm dry turns a terpinolene sativa to a flower that smells of hay and leaves nothing of what the pack promised.

Stretch (the doubling)

The burst of vertical growth which follows the switch to flowering. Indica-leaning plants add around half their height again; sativas routinely double, and a few landrace types triple. The stretch lasts two to four weeks and cannot be stopped once it begins, only bent sideways by training.

In practical terms, the stretch figure is the number to read ahead of choosing when to flip. A sativa switched at sixty centimetres centimetres in a standard tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres centimetres has room. Growers coming from indica stock almost always flip far too late the first time, and the lesson is visible on the ceiling of the tent.

Landrace

A population of plants shaped over centuries to a particular place by local growers and growers together, rather than by modern breeding. Colombian, Colombian, Malawian and Oaxacan lines are the classic sativa cases. A landrace is variable, not a single plant: within a pack the heights, flowering times and aromas range widely than in a tent-bred line, and this spread is the whole value of growing one.

The trap is treating a landrace like a finished hybrid. It brings traits that make sense in an open field, including a frame no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm set to an equatorial daylength the majority of growers never offer. “Heirloom” on a listing generally means a landrace that has been grown out away from its origin over some generations, typically with light selection for indoor life; it is nearer to manageable but nonetheless far from uniform. A seller listing “landrace” that does not give an collection point and a reproduction count is using the word loosely, and the seeds should be judged accordingly.

Sativa-dominant

A marketing term rather than a measurable one. It usually indicates that more of a hybrid’s lineage were classed as sativa according to whoever drafted the description, and sometimes means no more than a certain the buds are airier or the smell brighter than the same breeder’s other lines.

The experience people associate with the word, clear-headed rather than sedating, is governed far more by terpene chemistry and by THC content than by ancestry, and a good number of “sativa-dominant” releases deliver a flat couch effect and a good number of indica-labelled stock deliver the opposite. To a buyer the percentage is worth something for a loose hint to growth habit, flowering time and stretch; as a guide to effect it is close to worthless unless accompanied by the terpene description.

Intersex tendency

The appearance of pollen-bearing flowers on a female plant, usually late in flower and often under stress. Every cannabis line carries some tendency to do; sativa plants express it more often, and the reason is one plain reason: sixteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a heat spike or a late watering to set it off, and an plant plant has waited beyond its natural finish frequently throws a few late male flowers on its own in a final attempt to make seed.

None of this means a sativa line unstable as a matter of course; it means the grower’s discipline count over a longer stretch. Light-tight room, stable conditions and harvesting when the plant is ready rather than two week after take away the greater part of the problem. A listing which mentions a breeder screens parents for hermaphrodite traits is saying something worth hearing for a sativa than for anything other category.