Sativa seeds come with more jargon around them than any other kind of cannabis seed, and most of it means a certain thing to a botanist, another to a breeder and something different again to the grower trying to make a decision in front of the listing. The failed sativa grow nearly always goes back to a word that was understood in the wrong one of those senses: a flowering time taken as a fixed number, a “sativa-dominant” label read as a description of character, a landrace chosen like it were a modern hybrid. The entries below are put together with the range at https://hazesativaseeds.com to hand for reference, since it leans heavily to the long-flowering end of the spectrum where the vocabulary carry the most weight most; the definitions themselves apply to any sativa seed from any seller. They are given in no particular order, because none of them makes usable on its own without the others.
Terpinolene
A terpene found in high proportion in many old sativa lines and accounting for most of what growers mean as the “sativa” aroma: green, woody, citrus and faintly floral at once. It is fragile, driven off quickly through fast drying, and terpinolene degrades more quickly during the cure than the earthier terpenes that dominate most tent lines.
To a seed buyer the word does two things. When a listing names terpinolene among the leading aromas, the line probably carries real Haze-era ancestry whatever the percentage claims. And when the grower are after that profile to still be there to the jar, the cure has to be cool and slow; a warm dry turns a terpinolene line to a flower that tastes of very little and leaves no trace of what the pack promised.
Flowering time (and what it is counted from)
The number of weeks between the onset of flowering and harvest, which is the one most misunderstood number on a sativa pack. For photoperiod seed it is measured from the day the light drops to twelve hours, rather than from germination, so a “fourteen-week” sativa grown with an eight-week vegetative period is a twenty-two-week plant. Seed companies also quote the shorter end of a range, since the longer end moves less seed.
Sativa plants take everywhere from ten weeks to more than twenty, and the slowest line in the Haze Sativa Seeds range is at about 16 weeks after the switch. The catalogue can be sorted by that number, which is a sensible first step if you have a room with a fixed timetable. A grower who allows four weeks on top of whatever the pack says is seldom disappointed.
Latitude
The one figure that decides if a sativa can finish outdoors, and one no pack prints. Long-flowering lines require the run of shortening days to continue long enough to let the plant finish; at high latitudes the frost comes first, and the grower cuts an half-finished plant in late October or else watches it to mould in November. The further to the equator, within a northern hemisphere, the longer the season runs, and coastal and low-latitude growers are able to finish lines that temperate growers cannot.
The practical reading of a seed listing: an “outdoor” sativa finishing month is stated for the breeder’s own latitude, normally a point within temperate Europe or the western United States, and every degree further north of it moves the finish later towards the weather. A grower north of roughly the fiftieth parallel who wants a true sativa outdoors is looking for a sativa autoflower or else a greenhouse, not a longer season.
Foxtailing (and when it is not a fault)
The tendency of some flowers to grow fresh calyx growth on top of old ones, giving towered, irregular buds rather than dense ones. In the majority of tent-bred strains it is a stress response, typically from light that is too close or temperatures too high, and the standard response is to fix the room.
In many sativas, especially Thai and some Haze lines, it is genetic and will occur under a perfect room. A first-time sativa grower often spends weeks hunting a problem that is not there, dropping lights and heat only slowing an already slow flower further. The listing rarely says which type you should expect; the lineage usually tells you.
Hermaphroditism in long-flowering lines
The appearance of male flowers on a female plant, typically towards the end in flower and often under stress. Almost every cannabis population carries a degree of capacity to do; sativa lines express it more often, for one simple reason: fourteen weeks of flower is sixteen weeks of opportunity for a timer leak, a temperature spike or a missed watering that can trigger it going, and an plant plant has waited past its intended finish often produces a few desperate pollen flowers on its own as a final effort to make seed.
None of this makes a sativa strain weak as a matter of course; it means the room’s discipline count over a longer stretch. Light-tight tents, steady conditions and harvesting when the plant is done rather than a weeks later take away most of the problem. A listing that states a breeder screens parents for intersex tendency is saying something more for a long-flowering line than on any other category.
Equatorial (the twelve-hour problem)
Refers to lines out of latitudes in which daylength barely varies through the year, which means where the plant does not evolved a sharp response to changing days. These plants often start flowering slowly at a conventional twelve-hour schedule, since twelve hours is, for them, a mild ordinary day and not a signal.
The practical response, handed down between sativa growers for decades, is to shorten the light further: eleven hours, occasionally ten, especially in the final weeks. It loses some little yield and gains an more clearer finish. A listing that uses “equatorial” is warning you about this with one word, and a grower that takes it as mere origin has missed the instruction hidden in it.
Stretch (the doubling)
The burst of vertical growth that comes after the switch to flowering. Most tent-bred plants gain around half their height again; sativas commonly double, and some landrace lines triple. The stretch lasts two to four weeks and will not be stopped after it has started, merely bent sideways by training.
In tent terms, a stretch multiplier is a number worth read ahead of deciding when to switch. A sativa flipped at sixty centimetres centimetres inside a standard tent is at the lamp by week four of flower; one flipped at thirty centimetres has room. Growers coming from indica strains nearly always flip far too late the first time, and the consequence is written on the ceiling of the tent.
Landrace
A population of plants adapted over centuries to one region by local growers and growers alike, rather than by deliberate selection. Colombian, Colombian, Congolese and Mexican lines are the sativa cases. A landrace is variable, rather than a one plant: inside a pack the heights, finishing times and aromas range widely than a tent-bred hybrid, and this spread is the whole value of growing one.
The mistake is buying a landrace like a finished product. It brings habits that made sense in an open field, such as a frame no tent can hold and a flowering rhythm tuned to an daylength the majority of growers cannot offer. “Heirloom” on a listing generally means a landrace that has been reproduced somewhere for a number of generations, often with light selection for tent life; it is nearer to usable but still far from a hybrid. A shop listing “landrace” that does not give a collection region and a generation history is applying the word as a flavour, and the seeds should be judged with that in mind.
Haze
Originally a particular line of plants bred in 1970s California from Mexican, Thai and Thai landraces, and later kept and refined in the Netherlands. A true Haze runs tall, branches sparsely, takes for twelve to sixteen weeks and smells of spice, pine and a note sharp that no other other line quite reproduces.
In its second sense “Haze” is any hybrid that contains a share of that family, which today is most of the sativa-leaning catalogue. A listing that reads “Haze” without lineage may be eighty percent the classic family or a sixteenth of it, and the flowering character tracks the share, not the name. The working question is never “is it a Haze” but “how much, and via which parent”.