Questions for Sam the Skunkman on Hindu Kush Indicas

[charlie garcia]

Nice info

Always found difficult to catalogue the Yunnan you talk Dubi as I also found hard to catalogue a Uzbekistan line we work here which goes up to 12-14 weeks in flowering and can stretch like a sativa in certain phenos. Agree may be in between 2 worlds like Sam says. Effect of Yunnan was to me more on the sativa side

Here some details of the Yunnan from Dubi.
best

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

I did not find that any of the Yunnan I have grown to be dope, and I have grown maybe 10,000 of them. Some are pretty high in CBD, CBC, THCV, all which block or modulate THC, while the THC is pretty low. Easy to select plants that were covered in resin and had little to no THC, below .2%.
Some smell like Afghan some like Thai, some smell like rope, they look more like Indica then Sativa, but if you grow a lot of them for a few years you will find plants that will remind you of both Afghan and Thai.
BTW Dubi's Yunnan looks much more Sativa then ones I have grown.
-SamS


These are a F4 Yunnan/Sativa hybrid, but they look more Indica.
In a greenhouse they can get over 20 feet.

 

[Pops]

Dubi, I notice that Ace Seeds does not offer the Yunnan in pure form. How does it grow indoors? Height/flowering period?

 

[charlie garcia]

crazy job Sam! nice garden there

for the taste and type of effect reminded me to Thai lines, lemonyor citric scent, low odor liek some thais but makes you high indeed. Guess Dubi will know about other results. Line is not ready yet Pops.

How was hermi ratios in those you worked Sam?

 

[dubi]

Lovely Sam :smile:

Thanks a lot for posting your Yunnan garden. Looks marvelous!

Yunnan line i've been working is certainly an indica dominant line. Seedlings produce robust fat dark leaves, typical indica tamed trait, robust stem and strong compact structure. Very hash plant looking.

Here's for example 'original' chinese mum6 topped, starting to flower outdoors, grown from clone:



China 6 leaf detail, quite robust:



China mother 6 top plant finished indoors from seed:








Some yunnan plants flower like typical pure indica: very rounded separated flowers with medium-low flower/leaf ratio, full of resin.Flowering time 8.5-9 weeks. Others have a more sativa flowering, forming voluminous colas with more visible pistils, less resin formation, flowering time 9-10 weeks.

I was very surprised when i finished and smoked for the first time yunnan plants. Some had dense floral and creamy aromas from indicas, with lot of good terpenes, others were a little bit more sativa influenced: woody, spicy and even incensey. I have grown thai and south asian landraces in the past and i found many similarities. Then is when i realize that they were probably the connection between Chinese-Himalayan indicas and South Asian sativas.

Here a chinese P2 son from seed, more sativa influenced







resin detail:

 

[Raco]

Great pics and info,thx!!

 

[charlie garcia]

Dubi clone I got from you was like an indica body with a sativa effect more or less, none of them being clearly noticed

 

[dubi]

Honestly i havent grown thousands of chinese and of course i found higher CBD chemo types in the chinese line. I havent got a lab, but my nerve system can feel the differences :wink:

I have very nice chinese mothers, saved in the mother room for the past 5 years.





I believe they are representative plants of high THC/low CBD chemo type. Mum 6, when correctly grown it's some of the most powerful indica plants i've tried, effect is dense long lasting psychedelic but sedating at the same time.

I have produced fresh pure stock recently and would love to send you some seeds to try Sam. If one day we can meet it'd be a pleasure to share some chinese cured flowers to test.

 

[Guest]

One would think there are definitely Chinese varietys of Cannabis that are potent, considering their long history of collecting different plants, herbs etc for numerous medicinal purposes.

Nice Plants Dubi!

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

dubi,
I would be surprised if you can tell THCV, from CBD, or CBC by smoking it. THC %'s maybe. It is not so easy believe me.
I would be curious to analyze your clone #6, I never found a Yunnan over 2-3% THC, which to me is not dope. I found lots of plants that were covered in Resin, I was breeding for no THC, no problem as the Yunnan just don't have high THC. Maybe if I picked the highest in THC made seeds and then used their progeny a few times the THC would of gotten higher? I suspect it would. But what a hassle to find a good male that is high in THC and low in CBD etc. Without male THC% analysis you guess or have to spend years growing progeny to test by smoking before you know you have a high THC male clone. Was clone #6 from imported seed or F1's or F'2s?

charlie garcia,
Was the #6 Yunnan strong? 1-10 how strong?

AnatomiclySound,
The potent Chinese are from the south west toward Yarkand, they have a tradition of Hashish cultivation. Yunnan has no Cannabis smoking tradition.

-SamS

 

[charlie garcia]

hola Sam

being checking all data I had... have to correct sorry, the plant I showed before come from seed, not from clone. Is not #6 although #6 is still alive So its just one of them, a seedling non particularry selected from second generation worked by Dubi.

Was potent yes, not sooo strong, maybe a 7 in my book. Had a sativa uplighting, spacy effect and a bit sedative effect later. Cant talk about labs data either but sure would be nice to check it indeed to compare with all info you have.

Sam those Yunnan came all from same sources or areas or were collected from different fields? I understand what you say about they can evolve to both sides which sounds interesting. Wouldnt cannabinoids profiles would change a lot or you think they could still contain more or less similar profiles but with diferent phenotypes afghani vs thai?

best

 

[joaquin386]

One day you should write a book Sam with your experiences. I wonder why you have not done it yet.

 

[Ras Pablo]

SamS, Kaiki, Dubi...Thank's for all these grate info.!!

Jah Guide

 

[dubi]

Hello Sam,

It'd be a pleasure that you analyze our chinese mothers and fathers :smile:

I suspect even the best chinese chemo types with higher THC/CBD ratio like mother 1 and 6 have probably a good amount of CBD, but effect is real good with slight sativa influence at the start, and potency is very high with proper selection in the line.

Im not an indica expert but I've grown a few landrace indicas... Chinese mum 6 is equally or stronger than other 'dope' indica varities from Afghanistan and Pakistan i've grown like Chitral Pakistan, Tom's Pine Tar Kush, Deep Chunk etc ....

Uzbekistan indica is without any doubt the strongest indica i've tried, but uzbeki grows more like extreme tamed afghanis, there are even long flowering uzbeki expressions but they are all indica phenos, no sativa influence. Charlie knows more about uzbeki line, he's the one who has been reproducing her for many generations.

Chinese plants i have in the mother room came from original yunnan seeds, im not genetist, but i think the correct term to label original landrace parental plants would be P1, second generation produced here (outside native origin) would be P2, next one P3 etc .... also for inbred lines. I think F1,F2s terms etc are used more for hybrid breeding and labeling.

Here's the chinese original male i've been using to develop my chinese crosses like vietnam black x china yunnan, i believe there are better males to be found in the line but this one has been tested in many different F1 sativa x chinese hybrids. I like to combine a strong aromatic high flower leaf sativa with chinese male. Chinese male reduces completly size, stretching and flowering time but doesnt dominate in tastes and effect. Sativa mother personality can shine with lot of vigour in the F1 hybrid. If you are interested Ill send you a cut of him too.





Always a pleasure talk with you all. Have a nice evening. dubi

 

[Guest]

And yes I have grown thousands of 30 foot Yunnan plants, which I believe that as well as being the parental materials of Indicas, they are also the parental materials of Thai Sativas, of course after hundreds of years of local selection in Thailand for ganja and in Afghanistan for hashish they don't look like the same materials, but I bet they were.

I agree Sam, I've heard other knowledgeable folks say the same thing before that Cannabis probably began in China and spread from there through trade. I suppose the Silk Road was the artery that Cannabis flowed west along and if you think about it, most of the traditional hash producing areas are on the old Silk Road - places such as the steppes where they made the legendary Yarkand charas, Afghanistan, even Greece where hashish production was legal until 1932. I am currently reading 'An Egyptian Service' by Thomas Russell Pasha who was the head of the Cairo Police in the 20s, 30s and 40s and he says that Hashish production only got started in The Lebanon and Syria after the Greek ban in 1932. There's a huge amount of info in this book about the hashish and opium trade in Egypt and I will be scanning and posting some pages from it as it's an old book published in 1949 and long out of print. Russell Pasha gives a totally uncoloured account of the hashish and opium trades and I think it's extremely useful to have the info he gives, here's am extract and as you can see, it's a totally uncoloured account, he just states the facts:

When in Egypt we talk about hashish, we mean the flat cake of compressed resinous powder, extracted from the flowering top (inflorescence) of the female hemp plant of the variety indica of the species Cannabis sativa. Hashish in the cake or powder form is of a dark greenish, khaki colour and has an oily, heavy smells, like hops. It varies considerably in quality according to the locality in which it is grown. Practically all the hashish that enters Egypt has been grown in the Lebanon and Syria, the best quality being sown in the higher plateau of the Lebanon range on soil that holds it's moisture from the rains and mists of those seven-thousand foot mountains, whereas the inferior grades are grown on irrigated lands in the plains of the Beq'a, between the Lebana and the Anti-Lebanon, and in similar areas in north Syria.
The seed (known to bird fanciers as hemp seed) is sown in the mountains in mid-March and comes to maturity in August : by then the mountain plants are two or three feet high, while the coarser valey plants may grow to twice that height. As the lower leaves decay and drop off, the flowering tops are found to be coated with a yellow, resinous substace which is sticky to the touch : this provides th first-grade drug. The crop is now carefully reaped and caried to the drying floor where the stalks are laid out and seperately exposed to the sun, but not to the wind, are turned over every day for the next ten days or so until thoroughly dry and then carefully laid on large linen sheets and carried to a special shed, care being taken to lose none of the precious powder en route. The threshing shed is built with hard, smooth walls and floor from which the flying dust of the resin can be eventually brushed and collected. No air is allowed to penetrate into the room while the threshing is being dome and the sweating, half-drugged workmen have to break off frequently for a breath of air outside. The dried plants having been laid in a heap on the floor, trained men set to work with flails to threah the stalks and flower-heads. The follows a succession of operations with sieves of varying fineness, the component parts of the plants being seperated and laid out in seperate heaps, the quality of the drug diminishing with each successive threshing. Nothing is wasted : the seeds are collected for future sowing, the stalks are ground to powder in a special mill and mized in as an adulterant; the threshing is then finished and the cultivator hands over to the exporter. Next follows a series of operations of blending, mixing, classifying and weighing. These done, the powder is then packed into small linen bags of varying capacity and submitted to a steaming process in a special cupboard until the powder becomes soft, when the bags are placed in presses and squeezed into flat slabs in which shape they will be sold as turbas, varying in weight from a half to two kiles.
The most popular way of indulging in hashish is by smoking it in the goza (water-pipe). This consists of a hollow coco-nut shell, generally bound in brass to make it airtight, into the shoulder of which a twenty-inch reed pipe is inserted at an angle of 45o as mouthpiece. Into the top of the shell is inserted a metal pipe reaching five inches downwards almost to the bottom of the shell and projecting six inches vertically above the shell, where it is fitted with a small cup of fire-clay.
To prepare the pipe for smoking, the shell is half-filled with water and in the clay cup is then placed a layer of paste called Hasan Keif, made of tobacco and honey ; on the top of this is placed a small piece of hashish and alongside it a piece of live charcoal. To start the pipe a servat sucks on the reed moputhpiece until the pipe is well alight, when he hands it to the smoker who draws the hashish smoke downwards through the metal pipe into the water, where it is cooled and bubbles up into the half-hollow shell to be drawn up the reed pipe to the smoker. It is important to keep the smoke cool and this is done by having relays of pipe ready and exchanging one for another as soon as the water has got warmed up from the charcoal-heated fumes. Hashish smoking is nearly always done in company : six or seven mean sit round a room and pass the pipe round the circle, each man taking a long pull at it and inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. As soon as the pipe is finished, a new one is supplied and so on until the company is rolling about with cackling laughter or dozing off in insensibility.
Hashish smoking has been a vice in Egypt from time immemorial, but was formerly confined almost entirely to the rougher elements of the slums of the big cities of cairo and Alexandria and was rare among the agricultural labourer class of the villages.

I'm wondering, when did hashish production first begin? I'm sure it was a long time after the smoking of herbal cannabis began. All I know is that the rubbing of charas in Nepal and Tibet is said to be very ancient and that the hashish producing knowledge in Morocco came from a Moroccan who went to the Lebanon and returned with the knowledge of Lebanese techniqes (as in the description by Rusell Pasha).

As far as I know, silk is the material used to cover the bowls used in the sifting process, and silk of course, comes from China, so I am wondering, if the dry sifting technique using a piece of silk stretched over a bowl also has it's origins in China and, like cannabis itself, spread from there?

I have a small number of seeds of three Chinese varieties from Yunnan, Dali and Sichuan, I'm looking forward to growing them one day.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

charlie garcia,
"Sam those Yunnan came all from same sources or areas or were collected from different fields?

Many many different areas in Yunnan.

"I understand what you say about they can evolve to both sides which sounds interesting. Wouldnt cannabinoids profiles would change a lot or you think they could still contain more or less similar profiles but with diferent phenotypes afghani vs thai?"

They did not evolve they were selected by man I believe. Thai for ganja, buds with mold resistance, while Indica only needs resin and potency. It took hundreds of years, I believe. And the Cannabinoid profile changed as ganja smokers/growers keep their best plants seeds, Hash smokers, Indica growers only keep the seeds of the plants with the most resin. So Ganja is mostly THC while Indica is THC/CBD, because of the years oif selection for hash, not ganja.

-SamS

 

[Guest]

They did not evolve they were selected by man I believe. Thai for ganja, buds with mold resistance, while Indica only needs resin and potency. It took hundreds of years, I believe. And the Cannabinoid profile changed as ganja smokers/growers keep their best plants seeds, Hash smokers, Indica growers only keep the seeds of the plants with the most resin. So Ganja is mostly THC while Indica is THC/CBD, because of the years oif selection for hash, not ganja.

That really makes sense, why populations that have been selected to produce buds to smoke have mostly THC and why the hashish populations are THC/CBD. I wonder if it would have taken hundreds of years though? I remember a long-time grower living in Hawaii that had experience of growing all kinds of seeds on the islands from the 60s onwards posted that it only took about 7 years for a variety originally grown from imported seed to become distinctly different. Also, I remember reading that Afghan indica seeds were imported into Colombia in the 1940s and are held to be the origin of the narcotic lowland Colombian varieties. I've got some lowland Colombian beans someone in Colombia sent me, he says they produce short 5-6 foot plants that grow like xmas trees, sounds like an acclimated indica to me rather than a relative of the highland Colombian sativas.

There was a Russian research project where they wanted to determine how long it might have taken for wolves to evolve into the first domestic dog breeds. They took a small population of Siberian Arctic foxes and inbred among these animals and their progeny for a number of years, recording the diferences in each generation. They were surprised to discover it took a lot less time than they expected before the foxes hade changed and could no longer be recognised as the same breed of Arctic Fox - there were notable differences in the temperament and behaviour of the animals, physical differences included things like losing the large, very hairy tail needed in Arctic conditions and evolving smaller, shorter tails, the coats became thinner, the hair shorter and less coarse. I am not sure what selection processes they carried out, but it only took them 27 years to breed a fully domesticated generation of animals that could not be recognised as being Siberian Arctic Foxes. From their research, they concluded that it probably only took 80 to 100 years from when the first wild wolves made the step from scavenging human leftovers to actually accepting food offered to them by humans and the appearance of the first domestic dog breeds. They also presented archaeological evidence to support this after examining and dating remains of domestic dogs found in burial sites in Siberia.

So if it only took 80 to 100 years to breed wolves into dogs, perhaps it only took a few decades for the wild hemp of Yunnan to be bred into drug varieties for ganja or hashish? I'm no geneticist, but surely cannabis, being a plant, has less complex DNA than a mammal such as a fox so if foxes can be altered into a domestic dog breed in 27 years, I wonder how long it would take to breed a drug cultivar from a feral cannabis population?

 

[charlie garcia]

thx I thought you were meaning shorter terms to evolve or to make them evolve. Thx for clear it up... I ve seen here how some short indica hybrids could change in just 3-4 generations od and stretch like sativas that you wouldnt recognize them just a few years later

very interesting, appreciate you kindness to explain it.. as always plenty of good info. About Joaquins question? Any project? We never stop to learn from you!

A real pleasure Sam, thx




Take care

 

[Bluebeard]

Sam, so, you're suggesting that the Indica phenotype was exported from yunnan as a seed cultivar? I can buy that, and following Arab trade routes from 200 BC to 500 AD, it actually fits, although was possibly a little earlier than you suggested.

Currently, there is quite a booming drug cannabis production industry in yunnan catering to western tourists. In the Tiger Leaping Gorge, many of the locals who live along the hiking trails grow and pick wild ganja for sale. I cannot speak about the quality or the origin of the seeds being used to grow the flowers being sold, but they certainly sell a lot of it. From what I have seen reported, none of them grow sustainable populations, or populations large enough to do any constructive breeding, just a few plants in the household garden probably taken from wild seeds.

I've seen some long flowering Mazar's and other Afghans what would typically be classified as Indica also. However, none of these were of the exaggerated "California" phenotype, all were consistently over 3' tall and the leaves still weren't the gigantic type exemplified by a Bubba Kush, or a Deep Chunk. Instead, they display some plasticity and similar to feral and wild varieties can be bred in noticeably different directions, some closer to a sativa than others.

In retrospect, I think we are kind of saying something similar. I believe that through selective breeding many of the broader wild varieties and possibly some feral and domesticated varieties can be bred in the direction of Indica or Sativa, just as you are suggesting was done in Yunnan. It is just a matter of population size, population breadth, and selective breeding. I also don't believe that the full distinction between indica and sativa phenotypes was something that completely occurred in the wild but is a man made phenomena, something that it fully repeatable using the right population and selective breeding.

Dubi and Charlie, thank you for posting those pictures. What I tell people when they are seeking a medicinal variety high in CBD, I tell them there best clue is to find a plant which has good resin production and produces no effect whatsoever. From the way I understand it, if the plant gets you high then the odds are it cannot have much more than 7-8% of the overall THC level, and probably much less than that. Typically for the CBD levels to go any higher than that, it has to make a jump up to being ~= to the THC level which should block the THC for the most part.

 

[Dignan]

Hats off to you guys... very important and interesting discussion. You fellas rock.