Philippine Kalinga

Good day all!

There's a lack of info about philippine cannabis culture and varities, I've always been very interested to know more about it.

Philippine sativas have a very probable SE asian origin. Kalinga province, located in the Cordillera Highlands, in central Luzon island, produces 70 % of the philippine's marijuana. The plants are grown by native farmers in isolated highland locations. Seems to be a dangerous place controlled by narco mafias.

Sagada zone produces almost the rest. I've heard there are old hippie communities located there and it's a safier zone to visit than Kalinga.

Both are the most important production zones. A part of the production is dedicated to hash production.

Philippine hasn't got a very long cannabis tradition like Thailand or South India but marijuana has been growing in the islands for at least 60 years ( probably centuries due the old connections with many different south asian cultures).

The great philippine tropical/subtropical climate with their fertile soils and the high altitude are perfect conditions to develop high THC/low CBD ganja.

Philippine map and Luzon Island. Kalinga is located aproximatly at 15ºN.

Chongkee, a philippine grower recollected lot of seeds from good Kalinga and Sagada commercial ganja.

He sent me past year 2 different Kalinga sativas, one from Sagada and a last one from unknown philippine origin.

I germinated 15-20 Kalinga seeds (less numerous batch of Kalinga) past may for the outdoor season. They germinated vigorously in 24-48 h.

They are very sativa dominant plants with a strong symetric Xmas tree structure. There are some variations in the leaf traits the first weeks, a sign that genetics are not totally inbred or stabilized.

They grew very vigorously the first mounth even in small pots. I didnt re pot them waiting for sex signs. Most of the plants showed female pre flowers which could be a sign of high hermie rates later.

Half were distributed between different outdoor growers in safe locations and the other half in a guerrilla garden.

Here are some pics of different Kalinga plants in the first 4-5 weeks of life.













some leaf pics

Kalingas enjoyed a lot our hot and wet mediterranean climate and grew vigorously producing beautiful tall bushy sativas.

Kalingas started to flower in August while other more tropical sativas like haze, thais etc start in October.

After a holiday break i checked one beautiful Kalinga flowered female. She was flowering for about 4-5 weeks starting to produce lot of pistils and forming thin long colas. But i saw how one stem here and there produced male flowers. I killed inmediatly the plant and phoned other growers to check their Kalinga plants. Sadly, many Kalingas started to flower nicely but after 1 mounth most of them produced male flowers.

We visited the guerrilla garden at late august too looking for hermie plants and all the plants were eaten by rabbits. They were 1.5 meter strong sativa plants but we have had a very hot and dry summer and rabbits couldnt find enough green food to survive. They found our guerrilla garden, break the base of the plants and ate all the fresh stems before we can check any hermie sign.

I was a little unmotivated with Kalingas. I had clones of all the Kalinga parents in the mother room. I avoided all the hermie plants and started again with the rest of the parents from clone (female parents 1 to 6).

Parents 10,11 and 12 sexed as males in August. They were grown big to see them flowering correctly. We wait for their maturation and they finished the flowering without any hermie sign. This gave me hopes to find pure females in the rest of the parents.

I put clones from female parents 1 to 6 outdoors in october to flower them and check their hermie tendency. I stressed them changing the photoperiod, with agressive topping and excessive dry cycles. After 1 mounth of flowering, parents 2, 5 and 6 showed hermie signs and were avoided.

But female 1,3 and 4 keep flowering pure. Although they have been flowering in cold months they have produced very interesting results. They have resisted very nice the low temps, wind and rain. They are getting a beautiful purple/red colour with the maturation and low temps. The aroma is like sweet wild grapes mixed with mountain spices.

Female 1 grew strong and symetrical with lot of branches. She produced big fat dense buds with nice flower/leaf ratio. Great dense purple aroma. Looks the best of the 3.
Flowering time is around 12-13 weeks.

Here's Kalinga female 1 finishing :







Here passing mid flowering and starting to get beautiful colours







Here are the finished flowers












and some flower details!

Dubi, that is some sexy Sativa.
I look foward to any children of Kalinga.

Always nice to see your works Dubi, keep up the great works guys!

Thanks for the visit Perhaps and Limeygreen!

Here's the Kalinga 3 finished from clone. It's a little faster flowering and more compact than Kalinga 1 but she has more leaf. Aroma is very similar to Kalinga 1.

I think it will take some generations to reduce hermie traits but looks like the genetics has good potential.

I pollinated females 1 and 3 with males 10,11,12. Male 12 was specially interesting. He flowered faster and more abundant than his brothers. I did 2 hits with the male 12 and one with 10 and 11.

I havent seeded too much the plants because i wanna test the potency and quality, but all the parents used in the reproduction are free hermie

Kalinga 3 female






Kalinga female 4 has been 4 mounths outdoors with flowering photoperiod but didnt react too much She's now flowering after the winter solstice and the increase of light hours. Quite crazy but some sativas like to do this. It' will probably avoided as unpractical.

Looks really good, sorry to hear about the hermi traits but looks like you will do good still.
Nice work good luck with it!

thank you for keeping this strain going dubi. ive been in the Philippines for 4 years now this time. and never seen this one yet again its so rare! if it really is differant from my purple haze? which is almost identical in color? mine was brought over by a German traveler 5 years ago so he told me and the planter?
there always was a kind of land race purple strain though. locally known as Violetta in the days of bud before the many check points that surround the kalinga mountains.[4 sometimes?] they were able to bring lots of this down to the citys.
but thanks to US backed drug laws and increased check points the weed dried up, leaving consumers with a choice of crappy swag weed grown closer to manila and city areas were the climate and bad strains as well as lack of knowledge made it even worse.
and sadly many went of dope and into shabu [Crystal meth.] bringing all the crime and corruption with it as people were forced to pay ever more for there fix.
[so we can see the US foreign policy worked?? ]
the result of this in the mountains was to force growers not to make better grass but to grow it soley for hashish production . and this favored the big green Thais and Hawaiian strains rather than sadly the beautiful Asian sativas.
in the process many genetics have been lost including i thought this one? till i saw it here that's why i was so happy.
well done its really lovely to see this strain. red
i would also like to point out that many people in the tribal areas of kilinga are not in narco gangs or anything. but are just making a living theres no work there,nothing. no tourism even,nothing! so there sole living are the plants thats why you see the big fields there. and why they will defend them with there last breath.
the only gangs here are from the people here in politics and the police who demand such big cuts when anything goes out. thats why they have 4 check points!leaving the growers with very little.
add to this some of the buyers who have abused the trust of these people getting pollen as a lay-on and then running of with the hash and money these guys have it bad.

Hi dubi, nice philippenes plant. I am glad you are working with some strains around that region. I travel to philipnenes often and have tried some strains from manila which was a pure sative with tons of seeds. I think the hermi trait is abundant in philippenes genetics. Compared to thai genetics, the philipenes strain I tried was kinda grassy, definetly not as good as thai genetics. The high was definetly up for sure. Another philippenes strain I tried that actually kicked ass and has little seeds in it was the bagio gold. It is located high in the mountains where it is real cold. The taste was really sharp, with cherrries flavors, and was definetly pure sativa too. I am going there again in a couple of weeks, hopefully I can pick up and try some better genetics over there.

Its good to know that Filipino strains are making their way into todays genetics.
Some nice purpleing going on dubi.
Was supposed to go back to the homeland this year but I'm going next year instead.

Tropical Treats said:

Hi dubi, nice philippenes plant. I am glad you are working with some strains around that region. I travel to philipnenes often and have tried some strains from manila which was a pure sative with tons of seeds. I think the hermi trait is abundant in philippenes genetics. Compared to thai genetics, the philipenes strain I tried was kinda grassy, definetly not as good as thai genetics. The high was definetly up for sure. Another philippenes strain I tried that actually kicked ass and has little seeds in it was the bagio gold. It is located high in the mountains where it is real cold. The taste was really sharp, with cherrries flavors, and was definetly pure sativa too. I am going there again in a couple of weeks, hopefully I can pick up and try some better genetics over there.

Click to expand...

hi TT.
i just wanted to say im not saying the philippines has any thing like the varity that thailand has with its boarders next to so many countrys.
but i think the philipino weed gets a bum rap for starters whos really tried filipino weed seedless? to really comment on it? ive been coming here since 87" and i tried this strain last in the 80s had a lovely color and it was very good had a lovely tropical taste dispite being seeded and sun dried making it harsh to and destroying THC.it must of been good if i can still remeber it now! but it could of been much better to.
the truth is we dont really know? ive been growing some pilipino seedless here mostly my purple haze but some local strains to. and seedless, properly purned & cured to over 2 weeks plus. is a whole differant ball game. not all are hermies to. with the common hash making big green thai strain producing none i noticed anyway?
one of best strains here before was the abra grown red sativa AKA century bud, as these plants were so huge. mostly from regeneration over the years but i was told with my contacts anyway that its not around anymore.
ive tried the seeded bagiuo gold a catch all term and pretty average for me to.but you want to be carefull to with some of thoes bigger buds close to bagiuo cuz they spray them with all the same chems they use on the veges there sadly.
i bet this violetta strain when ready, will surprise many! good luck on your search though here, red

philippine genetics!

philippine genetics!

dubi, it made my day to see those kalingas being growin in spain. much praise too you. the philippines has a lot to offer when it comes to marijuana, but not enough time has been put into developing the genetics. i went up to sagada about a year back and the hash is great as always. marijuana isn't as easy to come by since they focus primarily on hash production. however, i was able to get my hands on some buds. here some pictures. enjoy!

baguio gold

baguio gold

as hazelover mentioned, baguio gold is a catch all term referring to better than average weed. however, the last time i scored "baguio gold" i though it was definitely worth remembering. great up high, but didn't make me paranoid. makes you just talk on and on. the bud was heavily seeded, but there was still an enormous amount of resin. made some hash from it and it was just too strong for my liking. here some pics.

nice!!! thank's for keeping this genetics alive!!!

Kudos to you Dubi! You Pinoy?

It would be very possible to have had cannabis growing in the Philippines before as the Visayas used to be an Indian kingdom (Sri Vijaya) and as you pointed out trade with other Asiatic peoples has been a regular thing since even before the Spaniards came.

It probably was not cultivated as much as abaca, which was our counter product to hemp (apparently abaca otherwise known as manila hemp makes better ropes). I would actually understand banning hemp to save the abaca industry, but not this US drug war bullshit.

Mabuhay ang Damong Pinoy!

Nice thread
hey dubi and the others:
Help me to fill my box

Good morning neilspotshop, hazelover,Tropical Treats,Blazed Out, raco, rondahits, smokey tayo and Italian Seeds! Thanks for join the thread!

Im not pinoy and im not very familiarized with philippine subvarieties. All the info and pics about it is greatly apreciated.

Hazelover, thank you very much to share your good info.
Do you know if the Violetta is located in a concrete highland zone or is it from unknown origin?

Smokey tayo, thank you very much to post your beautiful philippine canna pics. It must be a real pleasure grow in the sunny and fertile philippine terraces.

I've heard about bagio gold in the past but i always has been a little skeptic about gold landrace strains (colombia gold, mexican gold, indonesian gold, bagio gold, ..... too many!) I think it's a term to denote quality but not a specific colour, concrete genetics or kind of grow.

Do you think Bagio Gold is a different subvariety compared with other philippine sativas? What kind of traits makes her different?

raco, if you were not living so far ill re stock you inmediatly! Joking heheheh I hope we can meet soon!

Thanks all for posting! Have a nice day! dubi

Do you know if the Violetta is located in a concrete highland zone or is it from unknown origin?

hi dubi. well i know its been around at least since the 50s 60s era and expect it would be from asia? but know one really knows the whole story?
it was popular in manila till the late 80s had a really differant old school super sweet dank type smell and used to be hard from the oil. looked like your phono 2 pic dry.
but it wasnt grown as good as yours and i can see much more crystal on yours as its seedless! do give us a smoke report.well done! HL

Thanks for the info. hazelover. I was'nt actually implying that Philippenes weed is bad. I was just giving my experience thus far with them. I will certainly want to try some nicely grown bud from PI one day, but from what I know, it is hard to find. I will actually be going there next week, hopefully I find some without getting into trouble. Thanks for the info. on them spraying the buds with chem., but how is one to tell if the buds where sprayed? Anyhow, its certainly nice to see genetics from PI.

baguio gold

baguio gold

dubi, yeah i think you're right with the term "baguio gold." it really is just to denote better quality as i've heard the term used a bit so i'm not sure that it is actually a sub variety. it definitely is more potent than the usual stuff though.