From Red to Purple Strains of Weed

April Pride (00:00): This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over. Hello, and welcome to the High Guide. I’m your host, April Pride. A cannabis plant’s color, and the slang for the plant itself, green, is from chlorophyll, also found in lettuce and other vegetables. Similar to chlorophyll is anthocyanin, which is the substance that makes weed plants turn shades from red to purple to blue. Follow along as we follow the cannabis rainbow of cultivars, or strains, with colors in their name. But before finding your pot of gold in a double rainbow of course, say, “Hey” to your high guides for this episode.

Lo Friesen (00:47): My name is Lo and I’m the founder and CEO of Halo Cannabis. So I actually usually take dry hits to hit off a joint before I even light it, or I’ll take a vape hit before I put it in the device.

Mario Guzman (01:02): Mario Guzman, AKA Sherbinski. I was like, you know what? She’s a woman, she’s in the industry, I respect her.

Shari Horne (01:09): Shari Horne. I’m on City Council here in Laguna Woods. I’m also a senior assembly woman with the California Senior Legislature.

Antuanette Gomez (01:18): Antuanette Gomez, the founder and CEO of Pleasure Peaks. And me being a very pleasure-curious person, I need to be creative.

April Pride (01:28): Me too Antoinette, which is why and how episodes like this one come to be. Because when you see the world in rainbows, I’d recommend rainbow Kush for smiles and tons of laughing. Yep. There is a giggly pot. It has a mild body high, focused mind, low THC for daytime use, and it helps to treat anxiety, stress, and depression.

Lo Friesen (01:51): Because Kush strains are really, really good at just that warm body sensation. And that ultimate just lift off your shoulders. Kush genetics have often been touted as pain healers or help with just general relaxation.

April Pride (02:11): Kush strains derive their name from the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan where growing conditions, the terroir, influence the structure and chemistry of indica plants characterized by dense nugs and a sweet lemon piney aroma. Kush strains typically offer a welcome and warm body buzz with an exceptional dose of euphoria. You will get real high is what that means. So high in fact, you can decide that the first color in the rainbow starts with pink.

Mario Guzman (02:43): Pink panties is again, it’s a few generations back and pink panties is, it leans more on the sativa side. With pink panties, a lot of people that are heavy smokers, that’s not their favorite strain. But for women, it has that sativa feeling. It has less of the indica.

Shari Horne (03:06): I guess I do like the sativa better than the indica, because I like the creative and the giggly stuff.

Mario Guzman (03:15): One hit off a joint and you’re like, cool. A good batch of Pink Panties, it gives you just this feeling that everything is all good.

April Pride (03:23): So why the name Pink Panties?

Mario Guzman (03:25): It’s a female plant. It’s a lady. And also, it had pink hairs when it was first coming out. So I thought, oh wow, the pink is very special and it’s a female. So at first, amongst our small little group, we called it Pink Pussy. And then my friend shout out Maya, Maya said, “Hey, I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t think women are going to want to smoke Pink Pussy. Well, how about Pink Panties?”

April Pride (03:51): Shout out to Maya indeed and that’s Maya of legendary edibles and co-creator of Whoopee and Maya. This is the woman Sherbinski was giving props to in his intro. I just wanted to make sure that you knew off the bat he was a good guy, despite the unfortunate original strain name. This is a great example of what’s behind a strain name.

Mario Guzman (04:11): Well, how about pink panties? I wear pink panties. Let me smoke that.

April Pride (04:15): So what happens when you take Kush genetics and mix it with pink?

Antuanette Gomez (04:20): There’s nothing better than Pink Kush. As a Canadian, your one of our best well-known, world-known really cultivar is Pink Kush. If you ask any Canadian, they’re like, “this is the greatest strain.” The U.S. absolutely knows nothing about it. I was dating an American. “He’s just like what’s Pink Kush. Is that actually pink?”

April Pride (04:43): In acidic environments, cannabis turns pinkish or red, the varying pedal colors of hydrangea best demonstrate the color changes when genetics and environment interact. So how does all this pink green make us feel?

Antuanette Gomez (04:57): I feel that Pink Kush is such a loving, energetic strain that makes you just feel encapsulated. It kind of brings you out of your body. You’re no longer in your stress. You’re no longer about your worries. That is so far beyond gone.

Mario Guzman (05:13): It’s not getting them too high. It’s making them feel good. And the next time they’re going to say, “Hey, Saturday night, how about we do that pink panties again? That was great.”

April Pride (05:24): If pink is for Netflix and chill type of Saturday nights, it must be because Friday was a seeing red kind of night, which is exactly what happened to me because I’d like to get high. And Red Congolese is just a euphoric high. That one scrambles your brain a little bit too. Red Congolese, I had to sample it before I got on a flight and if I choose to consume before I have to do something, I set alarms for myself and I make sure that I do what I’m supposed to do. And this was definitely what I had to do to make sure I didn’t miss my flight.

Antuanette Gomez (06:00): Like I’m on mushrooms. Tangie just gives me that mushroom feeling.

April Pride (06:03): Tangie is a cross of California orange. Remember the balanced classic cultivar we discussed in the fruit name episode? And a skunk. Known for their skunk-like aroma, skunk strain varieties, or cultivars provide a balanced and uplifting psychoactive effect and full body buzz.

Antuanette Gomez (06:23): It makes me melt into my body. It makes me just really let go of all of my worries.

Lo Friesen (06:29): I generally think of the skunk variety as being more like the skunk smelling.

April Pride (06:41): Okay. When you say it smells skunky, you said it smells-

Lo Friesen (06:47): Like earthy, musky-

April Pride (06:49): And you know what comes from the earth and rainbows? Gold. A little ounce of Acapulco gold was pretty good.

Lo Friesen (06:57): The strain is called Acapulco gold. And I do have to say that it just felt so clear and I felt really calm, really grounded. And it was a really terrific experience. Acapulco gold is a land, race strain.

April Pride (07:11): All modern cannabis genetics derive from land-race strains. Think of these as ancestral strains. These are strains that come from throughout the world: Jamaica, India, Africa, Mexico, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and central America. What makes them different? Low THC, higher in CBD, more therapeutic, and less intoxicating. In the 20th century, nearly all of the CBD was brought out while simultaneously levels of THC, the stuff that gets you high, increased wildly, like from 6% to 26% ish. It’s like smoking sunshine. It’s like green crack perfect to use in the daylight hours because it keeps you energized.

Lo Friesen (07:54): Me being such a lazy body. You couldn’t even get me to work out most days, but when I smoke Korean crack, it really gets me all the energy I need.

April Pride (08:05): Break a sweat. Sometimes growers don’t sweat the small stuff like bothering to better the genetics of a plant. Instead, they take winning DNA and give it a name to match.

Lo Friesen (08:16): Blue Dream. And Snoop dream are the same. Some genius was just like, I think sometime Snoop said Blue Dream was his favorite or something. And so he was like let’s put Snoop Dream together and-

April Pride (08:28): Semantics clearly. But what about when a strain like Blue Dream also known as America’s favorite strain keeps its name, but the high is somehow different. The Blue Dream from one grow may look, smell, and make you feel different than a Blue Dream from another grow like state to state. Or whether the plant is grown indoor versus outdoor. Where and how the cannabis has grown will actually have a pretty big effect on how you feel when you consume it. And another one that was a lot like that was Lilac Diamonds, which I picked up in Oregon on a road trip. It’s like if OG Kush and Headband had a baby. Everything just feels easy. The only thing standing between you and a good time is the not so simple act of dropping your shoulders and that pesky to-do list. Enter Purple Arrow, one of the best strains for tackling pain. And how do strains confront pain?

April Pride (09:24): They turn purple and maybe a kind of antifreeze protecting plants from cooler climates. Again, the purple coloration is from the presence of anthocyanins, a group of around 400 water-soluble pigments belonging to the category flavonoids after cannabinoids like THC and CBD and terpenes like limonene and myrcene, which we discussed in the fruit strain episode. Flavonoids are one of the three most important components of cannabis chemovars and purple purp is the most important component to many a strain name. Granddaddy purp.

Lo Friesen (09:58): I mean, it’s just, it’s a good one. And you can usually find it in every state. In fact, it’s very popular here on the west coast. I recommend it for nighttime use. And if strains were defined, granddaddy purp would probably be translated to couch lock, mind free.

Antuanette Gomez (10:17): You’re just in this positive, loving energy with this high. This is one of the strains that I didn’t fall in love with. It fell in love with me. Super silver haze.

April Pride (10:30): Haze strains offer a deep sense of relaxation that follows the intense cerebral high.

Antuanette Gomez (10:37): It’s like the MDMA.

April Pride (10:38): It’s no coincidence that when I chose the Van der Pop party strain, I chose Super Silver Haze from Bondi farms here in Washington. And yes, the trichomes on the bud give the strain a silver hue from which it takes its name. Thanks to our high guides in this and every episode of the High Guide. Tune in for the final episode featured on the How To Do The Pot podcast feed in two weeks. But don’t worry. The High Guide will continue with me as your host. You can follow and subscribe to the High Guide now, wherever you listen to podcasts like this one. And I hope you enjoy this episode. Many of you who listen have followed my cannabis journey and I’m very excited to share in this next chapter, so please follow along on Instagram @aprilpride.