Sativa, Indica, Ruderalis - Is it all BS?

[Blu_tri]

My problem is no matter what I smoke or use in edibles so far has never reduced the pain I have in my shoulder which had a traumatic injury in 1996. OTC pain relievers never work either nor Vicodin. Weed increases my felt pain and studies have shown it can increase felt pain for some people. Cortisone shots would work for about two to three years but in March I received a shot into the joint and it worked for only a few days negating the pain but some returned after a week.

It does allow me to sleep some with the pain though. I've let plants go well into amber hoping for the pain relieving qualities but haven't found them yet. I am currently smoking a Fastbuds Mexican Airlines which is advertised as a sativa and it doesn't increase my pain. Everything else I have grown must be mostly indica, I get a nice relaxed buzz.

I have thought about growing an Afghani strain out but it would have to be an autoflowering type or a fast version since I am far North in a snow belt and the area has some of the coldest temperatures in the lower 48 with a short growing season.

I suggest aging(leaving) the Mexican airline a little longer your next grow. Watch the trichs. Take each plant at different trich levels. Doing so will give you a different smoke on every plant. I like my trippy smoke for the weekend, my aged smoke for bedtime and pain, and my just right smoke for Netflix chill(xxx) to each his/her own. As a grower, one should be concentrating, on ones personal medical benefits. Instead present cannabis culture dictates that one concentrate on yield. Just know, quality makes up for yield.

 

[Anthropolis]

My thoughts are, we should look at longer evolutionary timeframes and human interaction as factors, as follows. It's likely, some many thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago there was indeed 1 singular cannabis plant, most likely in the subtropics, whether Ind. or Afg. it might be hard to say.

From an evolutionary standpoint, plants that don't serve their local environment will be selected out (eaten, die early, mold to death, whatever).

What likely happened, long before smoking, is that both animals migrating (taking seeds in their poop like it is well known birds do) and/or early humans for rope or early 'magic' based medicine, carried the seeds around increasingly wider areas.

Those new plants in new areas would logically be selected out and selected in, over time having different canabinoid profiles than their ancestor.

Ruderallis was probably, I'd bet, carried by migratory birds and was once long ago just one of the original single Canna plants. Suddenly facing much longer days, only those who magically flowered by themselves, through simple genetic abnormality, would then live. A few millenia later, there's Ruderallis growing fine up there, now a separate subspecies. I mean, it was literally a hated roadside weed till just lately lol.

Indica and Sative probably had a more colorful recent forced-evolution thanks to human interaction. Gotta think, except for occasional random lucky souls on miracle rafts, we haven't had much cross ocean human travel until the thousand years. I theorize this is when Indica and Sativa diverged much more strongly, with what we now know as Sativa going closer to and evolving (forcibly often) at the equator.

(One kinda on or off topic to my points, is that it has been known that pollen can successfully cross oceans like the Pacific or Atlantic during large storms or a strong years' trade winds...but there'd have to be plants on location to pollinate of course.)
Just my thoughts on it. Time and human interaction is key.

 

[Shaun1980]

Indicas are for chilling and relaxing and sativas are to energise and stimulate the brain. If you wake and bake a sativa your day will start happy and lifted. With an Indica you will be locked to the couch..

 

[Shaun1980]

I agree wholeheartedly. I've always wondered why I'm chasing a high from brick weed buds back in the day. I figured most of that was tolerance but maybe not. I like edibles too and one thing I know absolutely is that a distillate high, which is 95% of dispensary edibles, is NOthing like an infusion you make yourself......no comparison. I like the convenience of distillate edibles but the high is nothing compared to something like butter. And, that has got to be a terpene related reponse in my opinion. Same thing with smoking pure distillate vs. a good blunt. I heard a cannabis medical researcher on a podcast yesterday who claimed that her research shows time and time again when testing double blind folks, hehe, that satisfaction and enjoyment of smoke was not correlated to potency but to terpene profiles, and mostly to the smell. You love the smell, you'll probably like that smoke. And mostly it was the hybrids that people picked in the mid-potency range as being most enjoyable. I just found that link:

I think the older stains had more CBD.

 

[Son of Hobbes]

Anxiety is caused by young cannabis (pure white trichomes). More trip is found in the young trichs. More trip also bring more anxiety. It’s not the thc, but rather breeders preference. The trip has long been forgotten in modern strains because new and low intolerant users aren’t able to handle it. Nothing says nice trip like a good afghani. Indica. Call it what you like, but hemp is for “kids”. I have real problems, real stress and real medical conditions that hemp don’t do shxt for. Thc is the wonder drug. Instead of watering it down, try smoking less. A hit or 2 every 3-4 days is all I need to stop my aches, pains and social anxieties. A couple more hits and it’s a party. Common sense dictates the need. Abuse is dictated by greed. View attachment 1184204

Higher THC is also known to cause anxiety in a lot of people. That's a double edge not often talked about, everyone wants "high THC man" but not realizing it's likely contributing to parts of the high they DON'T like lol...

 

[oldnewbdude]

Maybe a tangent but I saw some of you talking about intense trippies from "indica" strains. As I recall some of the strongest, been blasted out of reality experiences from flower was full milky trichs on Northern Lights and White Widow. Of course in those days, no telling if the genetics were actually what we were told they were but my connections were supposedly buying straight from the growers. Only time in my life I've seen someone actually flip out and was really concerned they might not be okay was a particularly strong batch of the NL. It was intense for me with a high tolerance, trippy, room ticks when you moved your head quickly kinda deal. Poor kid with low tolerance was shaking and crying begging for it to stop, insisting we'd laced her with something... I haven't had bud like that in 20 years.

 

[Doug58]

Poor kid with low tolerance was shaking and crying begging for it to stop, insisting we'd laced her with something... I haven't had bud like that in 20 years.

Had that type of high a few times many decades ago.

 

[EnglishPharmsGenetics]

The taxonomy of cannabis has been improperly classified for a long time apparently.


"Since the 1970s, cannabis has been divided into three sub-species (often confused as different species), C. indica, C. sativa, C. ruderalis, with ruderalis largely being considered ‘wild cannabis,’ not fit for medicinal or recreational uses. A common lay-persons distinction is between marijuana, which is bred for high cannabinoid content, and hemp, which is bred for industrial uses like fiber.

Any of the three subspecies can be bred as a hemp or marijuana plant. John McPartland, a researcher affiliated with GW Pharmaceuticals, presented a study at the 2014 meeting of the International Cannabis Research Society, proposing a new nomenclature for cannabis. The original report on O’Shaughnessy’s contains more information than I can reproduce here, and has a wonderful chart; it is definitely worth your time to read.

It seems Richard Evans Schultes, the man who created the original taxonomy for cannabis in the 1970s, misidentified a C. afghanica plant as a C. indica plant. That one mistake began 40 years of confusion which has only been dispelled by McPartland’s research this year.

McPartland was the first researcher to look at the genetic markers on the three subspecies of cannabis using the plant’s genome to conclusively identify where it originated. He also proved conclusively that they are all the same species, just different subspecies. As it turns out, C. sativa should have been identified as C. indica, because it originated in India (hence indica). C. indica should have been identified as C. afghanica, because it actually originated in Afghanistan. Finally, it seems that C. ruderalis is actually what people mean when they refer to C. sativa."


In Colorado, medical dispensaries are starting to focus on terpenes and cannabinoids versus "just THC." Cresco Labs (and there was a study done by a university in Spain as well, I have the link somewhere in my bookmarks) state the difference between sativa and indica is literally the presence/lack-of and concentration of the terpene Myrcene.

"Myrcene, the most common terpene in cannabis, is known to help patients sleep, battling conditions like anxiety and insomnia. If present in a specific strain in a volume greater than 0.5 percent, the strain is considered an indica. If the amount of myrcene is under one half of one percent, then the strain is deemed a sativa."

High myrcene? Couch lock.
Low myrcene? Less couch lock, more room for all the other crazy shit cannabinoids and other terpenes play part in.

Further, I've seen multiple lab techs in Colorado state that CONSUMING negates the notion of sativa/indica completely (basically consumption creates a universal-high feeling) because of the way it metabolizes in your liver. If that's true, there is no difference between a sativa edible versus an indica edible (other than marketing to sell the product.)

What do you think, AFN?

ruderalis is Not a sativa. (ask any breeder), it was a nasty tasting plant with little or no thc, originated in what is called Russia now.

 

[Blu_tri]

Maybe a tangent but I saw some of you talking about intense trippies from "indica" strains. As I recall some of the strongest, been blasted out of reality experiences from flower was full milky trichs on Northern Lights and White Widow. Of course in those days, no telling if the genetics were actually what we were told they were but my connections were supposedly buying straight from the growers. Only time in my life I've seen someone actually flip out and was really concerned they might not be okay was a particularly strong batch of the NL. It was intense for me with a high tolerance, trippy, room ticks when you moved your head quickly kinda deal. Poor kid with low tolerance was shaking and crying begging for it to stop, insisting we'd laced her with something... I haven't had bud like that in 20 years.

That how I smoke everyday. That’s why I smoke so little at a time. We all know smoking is bad for us. I don’t smoke cigarettes, therefore I’m not looking to have a 15 min smoke break. It only takes me few hits. One the am, usually Noonish. Then maybe another hit at dinner time 6-8 pm. I don’t always have the second hit. A buddy tells me that he can’t smoke my stuff.. I tell him, you can’t have the good without the bad...! Then I. Tell him to take 2 hits, then put it out. Smoke till you cough one time. Maybe 2 coughs for those tough days. It’s all on the users needs. Bro, 20yrs has been too long for a good smoke. Especially when you can grow. You can come smoke with me if you want to feel like that again. I enjoys watching those “back to back blunt smokers”. Or those with the so called “high tolerance” smokers loose it after a few hits.
Man we all smoke for different reasons. It’s doesn’t matter if you smoke to sleep, or to stop the pain. Or to Help wind down from a stressful day. I like to smoke before I meet the family, I’m the coolest mofo in the house. Let’s not turn enjoying cannabis in to a big fight about nothing.

 

[Trowertripper]

Interesting you should mention harvesting drying and curing. My understanding is that Colombian Santa Marta gold is gold because of something they do with stripping the main stem a couple of days before harvest which kind of starts the plant drying ahead of time. I have also heard that Acapulco gold (the real stuff that is) gets some of its unique characteristics because of how and where it is dried and cured. I always wondered if the Columbian red bud that you would see on occasion in South Florida was the same weed because they harvested it in a different manner or if it was the stuff from the other part of the country that grew pot?

it wasnt the same. i smoked both. Columbian gold was immensely popular and supposedly was smoked by the original cast of Saturday night live before they went on the air. Columbian red was an amazing spiritual type weed that i would smoke and fo for long walks in the forest having conversations with trees. cg was more cerebral, and at times i felt like i was thinking WAY too much. its mind speed