Cultivators are not botanists…
But they should study more than just scrog sog light and nutrients… 
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What it doesn’t mention is that even when forced by law to barcode their plants, folks STILL loose the damn labels and GUESS at which strain they’re cloning/harvesting/throwing in the extractor…
I’ve had patient groups hand me back new clones from strains I donated with totally different strains names on them…it’s not just that the names don’t have meaning, it’s also that they are being repeatedly scrambled by drug addled wooks.
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This all makes me wanna get back to school and look at analytics more seriously…
This is basically a think tank and we all can’t agree on if a strains name even matters.
What’s heads and tails here?
I think we need to sort up a definitive list of things that define very specifically what each nomenclature pertains to. It seems many have a personal idea, and it doesn’t seem definitive, and certainly isn’t constructive, because now we have a general public that’s woefully uneducated, commercial growers that are taking pot shots, and us bonking idea’s to make sense of it.
Also, how would we structure that information to ensure it doesn’t get lost in “the great game of telephone” that happens?
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I think terpenoid-and-leaflet centric chemovar chemotaxonomy is the future of cannabis cultigen and biotype discrimination and classification. But the current ‘pick a random funny/cool sounding name’ and then randomly choose ‘indica, sativa, or hybrid’ nomenclature and taxonomy schemes are, sadly, here to stay for the foreseeable future. It would be nice if the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP) played a role.
The chemovar vs. cultivar (or, unfortunately, so-called ‘strain’) discussion has occurred in published papers over the past few years. While the phenotypic plasticity of cannabis under different cultivation, harvest, and drying conditions, especially concerning terpenoids and their concentrations, seems a considerable challenge. Maybe the ratio of primary terpenoids to each other, ignoring their relative concentrations, may prove fruitful.
And don’t even get me started on the supposed entourage effect, conceptualized and coined by a Ethan Russo, MD (a neurologist and psychopharmacology researcher). The for and against argument among scientists is ongoing within published papers. Just put me in the doubtful camp.
Papers to add to the discussion, some old, some new:
Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica versus “Sativa” and “Indica”:
Here’s part one of the paper @cyclopath cited:
Cannabinoids and Terpenes as Chemotaxonomic Markers in Cannabis
In this paper, we present principal component analysis (PCA) results from a dataset containing 494 cannabis flower samples and 170 concentrate samples analyzed for 31 compounds. A continuum of chemical composition amongst cannabis strains was found instead of distinct chemotypes. Our data shows that some strains are much more reproducible in chemical composition than others. Strains labeled as indica were compared with those labeled as sativa and no evidence was found that these two cultivars are distinctly different chemotypes
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Have you seen these?
Chemovar typing of Cannabis strains Using MarkerView™ Software and the SCIEX X500R QTOF System
Powerpoint describing the above while paper:
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“Wild cultivars”?
Cultivar = “cultivated variety” 
Just a friendly poke. I love reading your posts 
EDIT:
Yes and no. Sativa and indica refer to two different species of cannabis. The speciation of cannabis (a whole seperate agrument) as C. sativa and C. indica was based on plant structure, leaf size, leaflet number, and so on, which are determined by genotype. However, cultivation methods and the environment can affect plant structure. Cannabinoid ratios, and I suspect terpene ratios, are also determined by genotype. Phenotypic expression, including concentrations of secondary metabolites (terpenes, cannabinoids, pigments, etc.), results from the cultivation methods, environment, and genotype.
Taxonomic classification of cannabis using binomial nomenclature began with Carl Linnaeus coining “Cannabis sativa.” He proposed the genus Cannabis was a single species (Cannabis sp.). While Jean-Baptiste Lamarck argued the genus Cannabis comprised more than one species (Cannabis spp.), coining “Cannabis indica.”
See:
In his original 1753 classification, Carl Linnaeus identified just one, Cannabis sativa . The first indication of dissent came in 1785 when another eminent biologist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, was given some plant specimens collected in India. On the basis of several characteristics including their firm stems, thin bark, and the shape of their leaves and flowers, Lamarck felt that they should be distinguished from C sativa . Accordingly he invoked a new species, C indica .
And a paper I included in my previous post:
The nomenclature of Cannabis has been the object of numerous nomenclatural treatments. Linnaeus in Species Plantarum (1753) described a single species of hemp, Cannabis sativa , whereas Lamarck (1785) proposed two species of Cannabis : C. sativa , the species largely cultivated in Western Continent, and Cannabis indica , a wild species growing in India and neighboring countries. The dilemma about the existence of the species C. indica considered distinct from C. sativa continues up to present days.
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“Legal THC-dominant Cannabis products are marketed to consumers as if there are clear-cut associations between a product’s label and its psychoactive effects,” the study says. “This is deceptive, as there is currently no clear scientific evidence for these claims and our results show that these labels have a tenuous relationship to the underlying chemistry.”
“Although the origins of this pattern are unclear, one hypothesis is that it echoes patterns of phytochemistry that may have been more distinctive prior to the long history of Cannabis hybridization in the US,” the study says. “It is conceivable, for example, that certain cultivars commonly associated with ‘Sativa’ lineages may have historically displayed a chemotype reliably distinct from those in other lineages. Over time, hybridization and a lack of standardized naming conventions may have decorrelated chemotaxonomic markers from the linguistic labels used by cultivators."
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@moronnabis ought to love this one.
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More like they never had a relationship to an absolute entourage spectrum, but only related loosely to geographical origin and external morphology and flowering time.
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So…we are agreed that the current system is complete nonsense, where do we go from there?!?
Indica vs Sativa vs Hybrid: How are you labeling your cannabis?
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Simple - we expect every consumer to memorize 15 cannabinoids, 20 terpenes, 10 flavonoids, and the effects they’ll get from combining each in varying ratios (of course also knowing how their genetic biomarkers and personal pharmacokinetics will affect each ratio)
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I nice chunk of people in the industry know that different terpenes lead to different smells of pot , I’d be willing to bet a smaller amount of people know that different terps lead to different effect on body/different high.
My working theory Is
Taste/smell of pot+plus the visual pleasure of how the flower looks+ plus the effects of cannaboids/terps on body = overall evaluation or high.
If your a Pepsi drinker, and taste coca cola, you may get the sugar and caffeine rush, but most likely your enjoyment of experience would be dampened by your not liking the flavor profile of coca cola
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The existential problem is that WE DON’T UNDERSTAND ENTOURAGE
Until we understand the process it’s kind of hard to quantify the agonists involved in whatever the desired effect is.
Until then, it’s all guesswork.
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I’ll take that train-guess x maybe-cookies…
Or some of that Durban-it-might-be-poison
Even IF the labels were solid, I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve seen folks GUESS what the missing label on their weed was…not only is the nomenclature unsupported, actual labels are mismatched and misapplied on the regular…
I actually got into head-space terpene analysis to sort some of that out once upon a time. It was better than sniffing buds and claiming to be able to tell the strains appart.
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Sniffin’ buds works tho Nose goes.
this has a chem-farty-piney-ghost-like-train-peppery feel man
This is my curiosity about this puzzling problem, we know naming is just to designate that ______ has this smell (generally), once we’ve hybridized to a point, at what point is it no longer of its original origin.
Guess for example like original “Haze”, you only ever see it as a hybrid now. It still has those characteristics, but, at what point in genetic dilution do you consider it just a novel “that’s kinda useless, but neat” attribute?
How far down the genetic line is it not really expressed by the plant, so much so, you wouldn’t designate it as any part of it?
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Merge the two threads as a start?
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Did you know that the team that made that kick ass strain wheel with terps and effects is also the one that helped fund the most recent study coming out of CU Boulder?
Pretty cool what the scientists and computer nerds are doing over there. How I miss the Republic of Boulder… -long sigh-
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