The Cannabis Grow Bible. Greg Green

grown nearly anywhere, as long as the temperature is not consistently cold and there is enough sunlight and food for the plant to flourish. In Asia, you can travel to various regions around Mongolia and visit the cannabis plant growing naturally on hillsides and across vast plains, sometimes covering entire hill faces and spreading across the valley below. The origins of cannabis are not entirely clear, but biologists and cannabis researchers generally agree that the plant first took root somewhere in the Himalayas. The evidence for this conclusion is found in cannabis’ paleobotanical record.¹

Cannabis Paleobotany

      Support for the theory that cannabis began its life in the Himalayas comes from historical record. Paleobotany is a branch of paleontology that deals with plant fossils and ancient vegetation. Palynology is the scientific study of spores and pollen. Cannabis fossil evidence is accessible in the form of plant fibers, pollen grains, seed remains, trichome remains, and artificial compounds found at locations of archaeological interest. An abundance of primordial pollen grains have been recovered from many European sites. Asia has lots of cannabis plant impressions on ancient pieces of ceramics, along with seed remains. Africa and Europe have some incinerated residue or ash deposits but the instances are rare. Cannabis trichomes remain the best possible paleobotanical evidence for cannabis’ history because they do not decompose quickly. Ancient trichome remnants have been analyzed for cannabinoid content and can be matched with specific cannabis plant populations.²

      Map of Asia: the square indicates where cannabis is believed to have originated.

      Mankind has been using cannabis as far back as we know he existed. The burial shroud of a Celtic chieftain found at Hochdoft (550–500 BC) was made from a cannabis fiber textile. Danish Bronze Age skirt cords made from cannabis fiber have been dated back to 1250 BC. The Gravettians were an industrial culture of the European Upper Paleolithic (the Old Stone Age); considered hunters and gatherers, they also developed human technology such as stone tools. Hunting nets made from cannabis and used by the Gravettians have been dated by researcher H. Pringle from 24,980 to 22,870 BC.³ Pringle′s findings at the Czech Republic sites also revealed more impressions of cannabis fiber in the clay floors of excavated living quarters.

      Ancient cannabis breeding is archaeologically recorded by the botanist N.I. Vavilov, who worked with wild cannabis populations to reproduce the first domesticated cannabis cultivar, thought to be first bred some 6500 years ago in Mongolia⁴—although throughout this region and into China pollen was transmitted over long distances by bees to northeast India.⁵ Major domestication occurred in northern China and still continues to this day.⁶ While the evidence for the Mongolian cultivar origins is good, there is general consensus that the larger center of domestication was probably Pan-p’o, China, around 4500 BC.⁷

      The record of pollen evidence for the dispersal of cannabis across Europe and the Middle East shows that it was established in the Balkans during the Greek and Roman Empire, spreading upward and east.⁸ Evidence for Roman usage is well documented in their literature, but cultivation was almost nonexistent for environmental reasons. Poland has deposits of pollen evidence in lakebeds that are dated to 3500 BC,⁹ with some grains dating back to 5000 BC.¹⁰ Great Britain has provided a wealth of cannabis palynological evidence for early cultivation and usage, dating back to the start of the first century.¹¹

      The cannabis plant has managed to travel across the globe without the involvement of humans. As we have learned, the seed has been carried by the wind, bees, in bird droppings, and has attached itself to animals that trek over long distances, thus globally dispersing the plant naturally.

      Today, human intervention has forced the cannabis plant to be grown under more controlled conditions and in areas where the plant would not have previously existed. That same intervention has also forced indigenous cannabis and foreign cannabis crops to be destroyed.

Landrace Cannabis

      Landrace, also known as land race, is an important word when it comes to understanding types of wild cannabis and types of domesticated cannabis. While originally the term was meant to refer to a specific breed of hog, in later times it has been adopted by the scientific community to mean something else—especially in botany. J. R. Harlan defines landrace as having

      a certain genetic integrity. They are recognizable morphologically; farmers have names for them and different landraces are understood to differ in adaptation to soil type, time of seed, date of maturity, height, nutritive value, use and other properties. Most important, they are genetically diverse. They are balanced populations—variable, in equilibrium with both environment and pathogens and genetically dynamic.¹²

      Italian botanical glossarists suggest that landraces “are crop populations in balance with their environment, and remain relatively stable over a long period of time.”¹³ Robin Pistorius records that landraces are “farmer-developed cultivars of crop plants, which are adapted to local environmental conditions.”¹⁴ Friis-Hansen and Sthapit state that landraces are

      farmer-developed varieties of crop plants that are heterogeneous, adapted to local environment conditions and have their own local names. In other words, landraces are farmers’ varieties, which have not been improved by formal or private/NGO breeding programs. Modern cultivars can be grown by farmers and over a period of time, especially when self-seed is used and selection is practiced, can ‘evolve’ into a landrace.¹⁵

      Nomenclature of cultigens based on evolutionary process. Here the four categories of nomenclature of Cannabis cultigens would be “wild species”, “Landrace”, “Farmers’ Variety”, and “Improved Cultivar.”

      More recently, Sanjeev Saxena and Anurudh K. Singh published an article titled “Revisit to Definitions and Need for Inventorization or Registration of Landrace, Folk, Farmers’ and Traditional Varieties Published by Current Science.” In that article, they produced the following nomenclature of cultigens based on evolutionary process.

      The Afghani plant has been used by many modern cannabis plant breeders to create improved cultivars. Kush, Master Kush, and the Hash Plant are well-known landrace strains. Farmers’ varieties can make their way back into the wild species populations. In Afghanistan there are several different landrace cannabis along with several farmers’ varieties. The improved cultivars of these are mostly found to be bred for modern domestic drug cultivation.

Cannabis and Modern Law

      Wild and landrace cannabis plants are rarer in countries that have tried to eliminate the plant by burning fields and conditioning woodlands. In certain countries, the cannabis plant has been identified as a dangerous drug and has been eradicated by government and law-enforcement officials. Highly adaptable, however, the cannabis plant has survived these attempts at eradication in secret indoor and outdoor grow spaces around the world.