Landrace Weed: OG strains that started it all

There are so many weed names out there that it’s gotten weird. And it’s not just the names either; Aside from strains like Cheetah Piss or Crouching Tiger Hidden Alien, the sheer volume of strains that have been cultivated since marijuana went mainstream is so unreal that you have no choice but to laugh.

As we venture into a world of ever more specialty cross-species strains, it might be good practice to look back in time to the plants that started what is now a colossal global industry.

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The birth of cannabis could have started more than 2000 years ago. Corresponding ScienceThere is “clear physical evidence that mourners burned cannabis for its intoxicating fumes some 2,500 years ago on a remote mountain plateau in central Asia.”

While science can use carbon dating to track the birth of people who get high, the plants that have been getting people high for hundreds and even thousands of years are still around today. Whether along the Silk Road trade routes in Asia or through natural plant evolution, several original strains of THC-packed cannabis have appeared around the world, from South America to India and Africa. These long-standing original strains of cannabis are the landrace strains.

A landrace strain is another way of saying “original strain” or “OG” to sound cool. Most of these groundbreaking strains date back well before the 1960’s when Americans slowly began creating new strains by crossing these landrace strains to create a new type of weed that was the best of two or more of them had landrace strains.

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Corresponding With but“One of the very first was conceived by California’s famous underground, Sacred Seeds. Dubbed Skunk #1 for its pungent aroma, the indica-dominant creation was a cross between three potent landrace strains: Afghani, Acapulco Gold, and Colombian Gold.”

One would think that with all this crossing and extraction from one strain to build more and more super strains, these landrace strains would be lost and forgotten over time. But they are actually alive and well. You’ve probably even heard of some of the more popular landrace strains, as they are either well known or still available in cannabis dispensaries to this day.

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Landrace strains are named for the geographic area in which they were originally discovered and cultivated. Some popular landrace strains are Acapulco Gold, Maui Wowie, Hindu Kush, Afghani, Thai and many, many others. These strains still exist today, often thanks in part to purists who continue to grow them.

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Landrace varieties are grown and preserved year after year, often getting the best out of each crop, just like farmers do with plants like heirloom tomatoes, which explains the other common name for landrace varieties. “Another term for original landrace strains is heirloom strains, and you can see breeders and seed sellers using that term instead,” according to the online pharmacy Acre Pharms.

Regardless of what you call them, without these original strains the hundreds of cleverly (and not so cleverly) named new strains wouldn’t exist. So the next time you see Acapulco Gold or Hindu Kush on a pharmacy menu, consider it. It will take you back in time and help you understand what cannabis was like many years ago, before it was a business.