This article is the eight 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:
Kazakhstan Ruderalis
Cannabis grows in all continents, in very different climates. It is possible to find it in very dry semi-desert areas, as well as in tropical humid climates, on high mountain ranges as well as in lowlands and swamps. No matter where it grows, no matter how different the expression of different strains of Indica and Sativa, cannabis relies on photo-period to regulate the growth and flowering processes. But there is one area of the planet, in central Asia, where this rule of nature found its exception. in Kazakhstan, and in parts of its neighboring countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, grows a cannabis landrace that does not rely on photo-period to grow and flower. it is the Ruderalis.
Some botanists consider the Ruderalis as a separate genus of the cannabis family, distinct from Sativa and Indica. Others consider it as a landrace belonging to the Indica genus. The arguing can go on forever, but what counts is the reality of facts: this is a different type of cannabis, different from Indica or Sativa. In my opinion, it is clear that Ruderalis cannabis is a separate genus, because its flowering mechanism and resulting traits are completely different from Indica or Sativa species.
Ruderalis cannabis has evolved over thousands of years to be able to survive and thrive in a very harsh environment, where the summer is very short and temperatures drop very low at night all year round. In this part of Asia the continental climate ensures always a very hot, short summer followed by a very short autumn and a long cold winter. The seeds lie dormant under the snow for several months, until the snow melts and the sun warms the wet soil, around end of May, beginning of June.
The seeds germinate and start growing, but after just two or three weeks that they are born they suddenly start flowering (in the middle of June, with a very long photo-period of around 18 hours of light). By mid July the males have already opened and pollinated the females, and by end august all the seeds are ripe and ready to lie under the snow for the winter. The plant has changed the metabolic functions that regulate the most important of all life processes: the flowering. This has not happened overnight. This kind of process takes hundreds, thousands of years. But it clearly shows the power and the flexibility of the cannabis plant. Moving north from the Hindu-Kush area the plant had to slowly adapt to a new, rigid environment, one where by end of July or beginning of August the night temperature begins to drop fast, and by September the first snowfall covers the ground. So in order to be able to finish their natural cycle the Ruderalis plants have to flower fast, and make new seeds, all before the snow comes.
This is an incredible accomplishment, one that produced a plant that is short, squat, very resistant to weather, wind and cold. And most important, it does not rely on photo-period to start flowering. It just flowers when it reaches sexual maturity, around 2 to 3 weeks after sprouting from the ground. The internode is extremely short, and the leaflets are slightly overlapping, revealing an Indica-related lineage. But this trait, like the others, has been modelled by the natural environment and by centuries of surviving tough winters. Branching is well developed if the plants are spaced, and the shape reminds a bonsai Christmas tree. The total package stays very short, which really helps when having to deal with extremely windy conditions. The flowers are very hard, compact, round nugs, they do not form a closed long cola but rather a series of round flower clusters. Towards the end of flowering they color of a dark shade of grey that borders into blue and purple.
This is clearly a product of the environment, where the drop in temperature during the night time stimulates the Anthocyanins pigment to come out. This way the branches can stand the weight of the buds and the seeds until maturity. The males in nature are very fast at spreading pollen, and tend to stretch a little more than the females, allowing the wind to do its job effectively. The Ruderalis has never been considered high-grade pot, because the resin is scarce and the cannabinoids content not very exciting. THC tests around 6% to 10%, while CBD seems very low. The terpenes are quite underdeveloped if compared with other landraces. The flavor and aroma are quite mild, sweet, fruity, but do not have great character, they somehow miss a kick. Smoking the Ruderalis is a mild experience, with a very average taste and a rather bitter aftertaste due to the combustion of pigments. But in central and northern Asia this is the best weed around, the only one that thrives naturally.
The greatness of the Ruderalis is the autoflowering trait, the one that allowed all the different autoflowering strains to appear on the markets of Europe and the world. Thanks to these traits, crossed and developed, today there are several possible choices for the grower to produce cannabis outdoors when normally it would not be possible. On the balconies of every major big city in Europe there are now flowered buds ready to be harvested as early as June. The Ruderalis has changed the concept of a single outdoor crop per year, and revolutionized the way we think about growing. Thanks to many pioneers who have been retrieving the Ruderalis genetics in the 1990s and early years of this century we all now know that even a low-potency cannabis plant can have a huge value. The Ruderalis is another example of how versatile the cannabis plant is, and of how we can learn to breed great commercial strains by crossing it and stabilizing it the right way. Landraces like the Ruderalis are so unique and special that they deserve to be collected, catalogued, preserved and crossed into many more great hybrids.
Franco – Green House Seed Co.
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