Dear God, What Is It?

By Grammy Green

We got a question from a neighbor about his plants, and so we paid his backyard a visit. We came face-to-face with a strange-to-us plant that looked more like a jalapeno pepper than cannabis.  After some judicious Googling we concluded that it was some sort of ruderalis hybrid.  Then, of course, we had to research ruderalis. There are various stories about its origin, either South America or Asia, but all seem to agree that it's a landrace, or heirloom strain.

Ruderalis is commonly used these days as a cross with Indica to create a hybrid cannabis with low THC and high CBD.  Another common use is to create auto-flowering hybrids, as all cannabis ruderalis are auto-flowering, and all auto-flowering hybrids have ruderalis in their lineage.  Another ruderalis characteristic is that it's a small plant amenable to growing indoors on a window sill, which makes it something that apartment dwellers could grow.

The problem in this case is that our good neighbor was not looking for a small, auto-flowering, low THC plant for his window sill.  He bought the plant at a local retailer without any idea of what he was getting.  We suspect that the bud tenders at that particular establishment didn't know what they were selling, either.