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Colombia - Colombian Punto Rojo


darko.gh

his article is the number eleven in a series focused on the most important landraces of cannabis. All the thousands of strains of cannabis we use today are derived from a limited number of landraces, which have been used for medicinal, religious and recreational purposes during centuries. Cannabis originated in central Asia, and from there it has spread to all corners of the world. Sometimes helped by nature, sometimes by man, cannabis seeds have conquered unimaginable distances, spreading their genetics, adapting to new environments, changing their carachteristics, and therefore resulting in countless combinations. Some of these combinations stabilized themselves through inbreeding, and resulted in landraces. Some of these landraces have preserved themselves, isolated in remote areas of the planet with no contact with other cannabis strains for long periods of time.

My name is Franco, my passion is cannabis, and my work is strain-hunting for Green House Seed Company.

And this is the history of:

Colombian Punto Rojo

Colombia is a green, lush, beautiful country located in northwestern South America. Colombia borders Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and has a coastline on the Pacific Ocean and one on the Caribbean Sea. It is a land of extreme landscapes and high mountains, and has lots of different micro climates. There are over 45 million people living in the country, mostly natives. The Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of colonization, taking as slaves or killing most of the local population. After centuries of colonization, independence from Spain came in 1819, and after a period of transition the country took the shape it has still today, when Venezuela became an independent country as well. The independent Republic of Colombia was declared in 1886. Since the 1960s, government forces, left-wing insurgents and right-wing paramilitary forces have been involved in one of the continent's longest-running conflicts. Fuelled by cocaine and cannabis trade, the violence escalated in the 1970s and 1980s but in more recent times the fighting has steadily decreased. Many paramilitary groups have disappeared or surrendered to the government, and the guerrillas have lost control of many rural areas. Economical progress has helped a lot in this sense. Colombia is now a very powerful economy in Latin America, trading coffee and minerals and boosting a very diversified economy.

Colombia is ethnically diverse, with many cultures integrating together: original native inhabitants, Spanish colonists, Africans brought as slaves and twentieth-century immigrants from Europe and the Middle East, all call themselves Colombians. The majority of the cities are in the highlands of the Andes mountains, but Colombian territory also includes the Amazon rainforest, tropical grassland and the long Caribbean and Pacific coastlines

The history of Punto Rojo goes back thousands of years, and it is almost impossible to trace the origins of the landrace.

Colombian cannabis became famous for the first time during the 1970s, when large crops were planted to satisfy the growing demand from the United States and Canada. At the time the cocaine trade was already booming, and the same cartels that controlled the cocaine production started getting involved with the production of cannabis on a large scale. The local population used cannabis since before the arrival of the Spanish in the fifteenth century. Seeds arrived on the American continent from Asia through migrations and animal propagation, and the favorable climate produced many landraces all over the continent. In Colombia there are several different landraces but they all can be grouped in two separate categories: highland and lowland cannabis. Highland landraces grow at altitude, in cooler and less humid areas, and are more potent and psychedelic; the most famous are Punto Rojo and Colombian Gold. Lowlands landraces are less powerful and more commercial (for example, Colombian Red), and they are cultivated in the grassland or near the coastlines.

Punto Rojo is considered the highest grade cannabis in the country, a slim sativa that grows above 800 meters on the sea level, and up to 2000 meters. The plants are tall, slender, with long branches growing almost horizontally, parallel to the ground. The internode is long and stretchy, but stalks are thick and capable of supporting heavy weights. The leaves are lime-green, with long non-overlapping leaflets and very sharp edges. The flowering time is quite long, but the tropical location allows multiple crops per year. Buds start forming as the plants reach the meter of size, and continue to develop and ripe for 10-12 weeks. The resin is produced in large amounts and has a typical thickness, forming a uniform coating all over the buds. The Punto Rojo smells fruity, like lime and mango, and has a very distinct woody background like most highland sativas from the south American continent. Smoking the Punto Rojo is a unique experience, even for the experienced stoner. Already at the second or third puff the creeping effect starts, delivering a powerful psychedelic high, fast hitting and long-lasting. It is a rush-high that has a very social side to it, stimulating and very funny. It is considered unrivalled in quality by many artists and by more mature smokers.

Many people tried to grow the Punto Rojo indoors after collecting seeds and bringing them abroad, but the potency can never be replicated. There is something in the sun that activates a whole different range of terpenes and cannabinoids in the resin, and in combination with the rich Colombian soil it is a very powerful cocktail. It is a combination of natural factors that ensures the top potency.

The fields of Punto Rojo are often hidden deep into the forest, in remote rural areas, directly under the control of the cartels or the guerrilla troops. Seeds are planted during the wet season by the farmers. Each square meter of field is planted with hundreds of seedlings, so nature selects the strongest ones. At the end of the crop there will be only 4-6 plants per square meter, sometimes less. They grow very dense, branching into each other and forming thick bushes, sometimes reaching 3 meters of height or more. The total production of Punto Rojo represents a small part of the cannabis coming out of Colombia, and it is considered the top of the line when it comes to quality. The price per kilogram on the market is higher than any other local strain, and fluctuates according to the production and the availability.

Of all the names of landraces that became popular in the 1970s, Punto Rojo is surely one of the few that survived untouched, unspoiled, and still thriving on the international markets. The quality has been preserved, the flavor is still the same, as many old-school smoker can tell. Perhaps the fact that the genetics are in the hands of real guerrilla growers helped.

Franco – Green House Seed Co.

This content is copyright of Green House Seed Co. © Green House Seed Co. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.


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