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India - Himalayan Mal


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This article is the seventh of 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 characteristics, and therefore resulting in countless combination. 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:

Himalayan Mal

During my last trip to the Himalayas, I discovered that cannabis isn’t just another strong plant. It can outperform most crops in some of the harshest areas of the globe. Why? The answer is: adapting to the local environment.

No other species of plant has evolved and adapted to new challenging environments the way cannabis did over the last 10,000 years of the planet’s history. The interaction between animals, man and cannabis made possible the worldwide diffusion of the plant. Cannabis made its appearance in central Asia, and from there it has spread to every continent, to every climate, with the exception of the poles.

The slow process took thousands of years, and was made possible by two prominent factors: human intervention and cannabis adaptability to new and diverse climates. The first factor is very easily understandable: humans have used cannabis since the dawn of civilization, selecting and breeding for fibre (hemp) or resin (marijuana).

The second one presents somewhat trickier answers: cannabis has been able to adapt to new environments fast, efficiently and with great success. How?

The answers are still unclear to scientists and botanists, mostly because the illegal status of the plant has hindered research and discouraged people from investigating the truth.

In my travels I had the chance to see cannabis perform in all kinds of environments, and I always felt I could explain the adaptation process with simple, logical assumptions on slow evolution patterns. But on the Himalayan mountain range, for the first time in my life, I have witnessed how adapting to new environment is a capability that the plant can manifest directly, without need for time, for slow morphological changes shaped by hostile factors over many generations.

On the Indian Himalayas I have seen cannabis plants that are able to modify their appearance, growth pattern and general traits based on altitude on the sea level.

Obviously with climbing of altitude, the summer season gets shorter, and temperatures can drop close to the freezing point at night, even in the warmest months.

Cannabis from the Himalayan region is able to structure and shape some of its traits based on the altitude factor, creating what I came to define as different phenotypes.

I have witnessed seeds from the same genetics becoming very different looking plants depending solely on the altitude at which they were planted. The higher the altitude, the more the plants look indica, with shorter internodes, thicker leaves, wider leaflets, and shorter flowering time. At lower altitude, down in the valleys, the traits are far more sativa: longer internodes, longer and thinner leaflets, longer but less dense colas, longer flowering time.

The scientific definition of phenotype explains it as a genetic as well as environmental expression of defined plant traits. But before travelling on the Himalayas I always attributed the expression of phenotypes to transmission of characters and genetic code. Now I know that the story goes on. Environmental factors can play a huge role in determining the expression of phenotypes.

There are many types of cannabis growing on the Himalayas, and none of the imported strains shows signs of change due to altitude. It is a peculiarity that is exclusive to the local landrace, one that becomes more and more visible when we start paying attention to it.

Thanks to precise and clear indications from people who lived and worked all their life with cannabis in this region, I started understanding how to spot the local landrace and then it became very clear that the phenotype expression had a direct correlation to altitude, and all the factors that come with it.

Few other regions of the planet present such a change of climate in such a small geographical extension as the Himalayas. Here we go from a fully tropical climate in the valleys, to almost artic conditions in a few hundred kilometres, sometimes less. What triggers such a change is simply altitude on the seas level. Plants grow up to 3500 meters on the Himalayas, and cannabis is one of the best high-altitude crops of the region.

It would be very wrong to assume that altitude is the only factor involved. But certainly altitude is one of the key factors in one of the most interesting phenomena I ever witnessed in cannabis.

Many experts and scientists will disagree with my vision, or with my choice of words to identify the phenomenon. Maybe these variations are not different phenotypes but just different expressions of the same landrace. It is not on the words and definitions I will argue. I have learned another very valuable lesson from the plant I love the most: staying flexible is a key to success.In the Himalayas cannabis is the main source of income for many isolated communities, people who live in harmony with the mountains and the environment, and use the cannabis as the only real cash crop. Himalayan Mal, the strain that gives birth every year to the best charras in the world, should be a protected cultural heritage of the region. Instead it is prosecuted and eradicated by local police forces, with contributions in money from the European Union and the United States of America.

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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Thanx for sharing absolutely loving reading these landrace articles - you should put them in a nice coffee table type book with a load of Mr Xs pics, i would buy that for sure.

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I agree w/Maffro I was just thinking how much I enjoy reading franco's stuff, and wish there was a book about it.

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One of the highest legendary strain! A bit long to flower and fluffy say some people, but really worth it to smoke because of the wellness high it produces. Ideal to make our own charras if the grow is big enough. The highest is the field, the highest should be the effect, isn't it?! Just waiting to grow it !!!... Really nice also to know exactly where does this plant comes from in her original place of birth.

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Franco... Not only Himalaya, other strains also present in South India

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