Sativa or indica?

Phytoplankton

Well-Known Member
No way to really know for sure, when you get into Sativa dom or Indica dom, the differences can vary greatly or be very subtle. I don’t see a lot of difference between the pics.
 

conor c

Well-Known Member
Hi, hoping for some advice as to whether this plant is either an ak-47 auto (sativa dom) or blueberry auto (indica dom). I have both types of seed and I thought I planted an Ak-47 but to me this looks more indica....
Its a hybrid an also a auto and as others already mentioned ruderalis for the most part has skinny leafs the broadleaf thing is either due to adaptations for lower light or compound leafs due to mans influence/selection i go by how it smokes rather than just leaf shape as the whole sativa indica things ok for generalizing but not everything fits easily into these categories cos you get thinner leaved indicas and fatter leafed sativa stuff also landrace stuff dont always fit in to it so easy for example take mazari sharif or even chitral from pakistan they have both thin and fat leaved phenos so its not so clear cut so if it gets you more stoned and isnt very cerebral id say its more indica if it gets you high and is stimulating its more sativa imo how it smokes is the best way to judge
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
It's a hybrid so you won't see any of the really distinctive features of a pure Indica or a pure Sativa. It doesn't have the super-fat, overlapping, dark green leaf blades of a typical Indica. It doesn't have thin, wispy leaves of a typical Sativa.

In my opinion, the whole "Sativa will give you this kind of a high and Indica will give you a that kind of high"....no. That was just a marketing scheme, in my opinion. It made it easier for growers to harvest too early, when the trichomes are all clear, and then say it was Sativa dominant, so you can expect to get an "up" and "energetic" high. Meanwhile, the buds that got old from sitting around and had a bunch of degraded trichomes, would be marketed as a "couch lock" Indica because all the THC had degraded to CBN. Shit, I bought into the whole thing for awhile, too! It was exciting to buy weed legally. The market could have convinced me of anything at that time.

Anyway, it looks like a nice, healthy plant and it will probably turn out some nice smoke if all goes well. Good luck!
 

Tolerance Break

Well-Known Member
It's a hybrid so you won't see any of the really distinctive features of a pure Indica or a pure Sativa. It doesn't have the super-fat, overlapping, dark green leaf blades of a typical Indica. It doesn't have thin, wispy leaves of a typical Sativa.

In my opinion, the whole "Sativa will give you this kind of a high and Indica will give you a that kind of high"....no. That was just a marketing scheme, in my opinion. It made it easier for growers to harvest too early, when the trichomes are all clear, and then say it was Sativa dominant, so you can expect to get an "up" and "energetic" high. Meanwhile, the buds that got old from sitting around and had a bunch of degraded trichomes, would be marketed as a "couch lock" Indica because all the THC had degraded to CBN. Shit, I bought into the whole thing for awhile, too! It was exciting to buy weed legally. The market could have convinced me of anything at that time.

Anyway, it looks like a nice, healthy plant and it will probably turn out some nice smoke if all goes well. Good luck!
I agree most modern lines being marketed as sativa are bullshit, but sativa and indica produce very different highs.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
I agree most modern lines being marketed as sativa are bullshit, but sativa and indica produce very different highs.
Not in my experience they don't. Most all of the weed we used to get in the upper midwest in the 70's came up from Mexico. I KNOW this. ;) Okay, so everything that was in Mexico was landrace sativa. There was no Indica. ON OCCASION, we would get a batch of the skunkiest, blueberry on the face of the Earth that would melt anyone into the couch and make all the colors get richer and made you forget your way home...etc. All of it was sativa. And on certain occasions, someone would bring in Gold Columbian or Panama Red or something from even further South....ALL of those were sativas, too.

Indica was SO rare in those days. No one where I lived even knew it existed until the Vietnam war ended and the soldiers came home. Thai weed was what we first experienced as being Indica. Was it different than the Mexican sativa? In a way....yes. But it had nothing to do with making anyone feel energized and "up" or whatever they say sativas are supposed to do these days. In those days, all good weed got people "stoned". I guarantee you that no one was going to smoke ANY of that sativa and then go to the gym! :) If it got you stoned, then that meant you were "laid back" and "mellow" -not outgoing and adventurous.

None of that marketing stuff made sense to me, so I eventually started to put all of the buds I bought, under the scope. Almost always, the so-called sativas had nothing but clear, underripe trichomes. The other strains that were supposed to be couch lock Indicas, usually had pale amber colored trichomes -or it looked fuzzy and had all the trichome heads knocked off altogether. A person could smoke underripe weed and NOT feel stoned, and then have the suggestion be that the lack of stoned-ness, was merely a unique quality of sativas. I say no.

It wasn't until the advent of legal weed that suddenly these differences started to be discussed....and that's no coincidence.
 

amneziaHaze

Well-Known Member
You can pull early and get an energiesed hhigh but it will last 15min max. All i know when i smoke a sativa there is no way for me to go to sleep my brain will think about all.and when i smoke a good indika i will be brain dead and sleep like a baby
 

DeadHeadX

Well-Known Member
Not in my experience they don't. Most all of the weed we used to get in the upper midwest in the 70's came up from Mexico. I KNOW this. ;) Okay, so everything that was in Mexico was landrace sativa. There was no Indica. ON OCCASION, we would get a batch of the skunkiest, blueberry on the face of the Earth that would melt anyone into the couch and make all the colors get richer and made you forget your way home...etc. All of it was sativa. And on certain occasions, someone would bring in Gold Columbian or Panama Red or something from even further South....ALL of those were sativas, too.

Indica was SO rare in those days. No one where I lived even knew it existed until the Vietnam war ended and the soldiers came home. Thai weed was what we first experienced as being Indica. Was it different than the Mexican sativa? In a way....yes. But it had nothing to do with making anyone feel energized and "up" or whatever they say sativas are supposed to do these days. In those days, all good weed got people "stoned". I guarantee you that no one was going to smoke ANY of that sativa and then go to the gym! :) If it got you stoned, then that meant you were "laid back" and "mellow" -not outgoing and adventurous.

None of that marketing stuff made sense to me, so I eventually started to put all of the buds I bought, under the scope. Almost always, the so-called sativas had nothing but clear, underripe trichomes. The other strains that were supposed to be couch lock Indicas, usually had pale amber colored trichomes -or it looked fuzzy and had all the trichome heads knocked off altogether. A person could smoke underripe weed and NOT feel stoned, and then have the suggestion be that the lack of stoned-ness, was merely a unique quality of sativas. I say no.

It wasn't until the advent of legal weed that suddenly these differences started to be discussed....and that's no coincidence.
Interesting reflection. I started smoking in the 80s and definitely heard the terms indica and sativa often as I became more versed. Amsterdam was a paradise to visit. In the US, we always smoked what we could get our hands on generally. By the late 80s, we had a great source of something definitely sold to us as “indica”. Hard to know. I always figured I was smoking mostly indica when I was younger, as that’s what I seem to prefer today. Seems everything is a hybrid really. I recently harvested a skywalker og that seemed to favor the sativa phenome, and the slightly “jittier” high seems to back that up. A like things stonier. Definitely didn’t go too early on that one, just the nature of that particular plant.

As far as going to the gym, I’ve gotta think that’s more a state of habit than a state of mind. I love getting really stony and getting a good workout. I always blaze before I hit the gym! I know many who function similarly. We’re not all just hitting the weak, early harvest, lol. State of mind is everything.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
Interesting reflection. I started smoking in the 80s and definitely heard the terms indica and sativa often as I became more versed. Amsterdam was a paradise to visit. In the US, we always smoked what we could get our hands on generally. By the late 80s, we had a great source of something definitely sold to us as “indica”. Hard to know. I always figured I was smoking mostly indica when I was younger, as that’s what I seem to prefer today. Seems everything is a hybrid really. I recently harvested a skywalker og that seemed to favor the sativa phenome, and the slightly “jittier” high seems to back that up. A like things stonier. Definitely didn’t go too early on that one, just the nature of that particular plant.

As far as going to the gym, I’ve gotta think that’s more a state of habit than a state of mind. I love getting really stony and getting a good workout. I always blaze before I hit the gym! I know many who function similarly. We’re not all just hitting the weak, early harvest, lol. State of mind is everything.
Can you tell me WHY you think that is the case? What are the chemicals and constituents that make sativa be different from Indica? I see these things being said all the time, now. I never used to hear anything about these differences until things became commercial. It should be easy by now to look under a microscope and find out exactly what these supposed differences are....but no one has come up with anything to lend any credence to the claim. THC is THC...CBN is CBN....CBD is CBD...and so on. So, then what, exactly are the chemicals that make sativa or indica so distinctive?
 
Last edited:

DeadHeadX

Well-Known Member
Can you tell me WHY you think that is the case? What are the chemicals and constituents that make sativa be different from Indica? I see these things being said all the time, now. I never used to hear anything about these differences until things became commercial. It should be easy by now to look under a microscope and find out exactly what these supposed differences are....but no one has come up with anything to lend any credence to the claim. THC is THC...CBN is CBN....CBD is CBD...and so on. So, then what, exactly are the chemicals that make sativa so distinctive?
No, sir, I don’t have good answers here and my experiences are purely anecdotal. I’ve got no science. Totally unusual to me that a marijuana strain has the jittery effect on me also. Maybe just a weird plant, but different varieties do seem to have different qualities to the high at times. Who knows what variables either chemical or psychological may be at play. But using alcohol as a parallel, isn’t it true that different forms give different buzzes, though they all contain the same psychoactive compounds. Again, I’m not a scientist. Shorting on the dark, but differences clearly seem to exist.
 

Fangthane

Well-Known Member
I'd thought it was more or less scientifically settled that Indica or Sativa tells more about plant morphology than much of anything else. Isn't it the terpene profile that decides what kind of high you get?
 

Tolerance Break

Well-Known Member
Can you tell me WHY you think that is the case? What are the chemicals and constituents that make sativa be different from Indica? I see these things being said all the time, now. I never used to hear anything about these differences until things became commercial. It should be easy by now to look under a microscope and find out exactly what these supposed differences are....but no one has come up with anything to lend any credence to the claim. THC is THC...CBN is CBN....CBD is CBD...and so on. So, then what, exactly are the chemicals that make sativa or indica so distinctive?
The difference is tens of thousands of years in entirely different environments causing charictsristic changes. Sativa and Indica is a simple way to differentiate equatorial strains from the shorter flowering, highland varieties you would find in places like Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, etc.

In hybridizing all these landraces, the characteristics that make them unique gets dulled, especially for sativas. Long, stringy buds, 20+ week flower times, 20+ foot tall plants, none of these are attractive characteristics. But true sativas have been preserved none the less.

I can't point at a chart and tell you the difference, but it makes less sense that thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation to completely different environments would only change the growth structure and have zero effect on the composition of molecules that cause the high.
 

Modern Selections

Well-Known Member
There is most definitely a difference in effect between pure sativa and indica lines.

Pure Haze is a rocket ship ride, clear, focused, energizing, hours long soaring high.

Pure Affie is red eyed couch pilot, attack the fridge before passing out.

Complete opposite effects.

Once you begin hybridizing all bets are off concerning effect.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
I'd thought it was more or less scientifically settled that Indica or Sativa tells more about plant morphology than much of anything else. Isn't it the terpene profile that decides what kind of high you get?
Yeah, I used to think this, too and I was willing to just leave it at that....but, two, different indicas will also have two, different terpenes from one another, too. There isn't just one indica taste and smell and same goes for sativas. They ALL have different terpene profiles. If there was just one sativa taste and just one indica taste, then it would be easier to differentiate. Having said that, I used to love how the old skunk blueberry strains would linger on your palette for a long time...also stuck to your clothes to the point of having to cover it with the most God-awfu smelling stuff EVER -patchouli oil! ;) Anyway, I digress. Yeah, I'm still looking for an answer to this long-running question.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
The difference is tens of thousands of years in entirely different environments causing charictsristic changes. Sativa and Indica is a simple way to differentiate equatorial strains from the shorter flowering, highland varieties you would find in places like Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, etc.

In hybridizing all these landraces, the characteristics that make them unique gets dulled, especially for sativas. Long, stringy buds, 20+ week flower times, 20+ foot tall plants, none of these are attractive characteristics. But true sativas have been preserved none the less.

I can't point at a chart and tell you the difference, but it makes less sense that thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation to completely different environments would only change the growth structure and have zero effect on the composition of molecules that cause the high.
I agree with much of what you said about the plant morphological differences....but that still doesn't answer the question of what, exactly, differentiates the effects of a sativa from that of an indica. There should be a real explanation that's as clear as the distinctions being claimed....but I've never read anything that states these clear and distinct differences. There should be a reoccurring chemical compound that is unique to one one or the other. That's what I'm trying to determine. The two plants grow differently, but, as far as I know, the chemicals and terpenoids that are supposed to be the ones that impart the effects, are produced in both sativa and indica. It's just that, in order for an equatorial sativa to produce them, it requires a long time and the plants to grow tall and wispy. Meanwhile, across the planet, some indicas produce those chemical compounds with short, dark, bushy plants in a much shorter amount of time.

For example....I forget the name of the compound...but someone said that Cannabis ruderalis contains some kinds of chemicals that are not found in either sativa or indica. If that is true ,then could there also be chemicals and compounds that are unique to sativa or indica, as well? That's what I'm looking to learn.

I'm old. I judge the quality of weed by how strong it smells and tastes. If it's good, ripe weed, then I'll be stoned on my couch and listening to music. If it's underripe weed, then I won't get stoned and probably just go about my day as usual. :)
 
Top