Indica equals “In Da Couch” and Sativa gets your mind stimulated. That, along with earthy aromas for indica and a sweeter smell for sativa, is how the thinking goes.
But this may be an extreme simplification that just doesn’t hold up when analyzed. A team of researchers at Dalhousie University went deep, studying hundreds of chemical compounds, including their THC, CBD, terpenes, and genetic profiles. The study was published in Nature Plants, and one of the authors summarized some of the findings at The Conversation.
They found that many strains labelled indica were equally as closely related to some sativa strains as other indicas.
They also point out a silly example where a cannabis strain titled “AK 47” won the Sativa Cup in 1999 at the Cannabis Cup, and went on to win the Indica Cup just four years later. Same strain, opposite understanding.
It seems that these strains may have had meaningful differences in the beginning, but over decades of hybridizing, the terms are largely meaningless.
Our current method of labelling is binary, and any living thing can only be haphazardly rounded down into that compartment. Think of wines–it’s as if we were just identifying them as red or white, ignoring the hundreds of subcategories within each.
Over a hundred different aromas and psychoactive effects are created within the scope of marijuana, and using these two descriptors dulls our senses to all the incredible intricacies within each puff.
Read the original article at The Conversation.
