greek landrace strains

OregonBorn said:

No point in arguing about this with bone heads.

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have a nice day!

ngakpa said:

Contrary to what you're saying, I've addressed the archaeological evidence, and explained how you've misunderstood it, including your misrepresenting the studies you refer to

You're straw-manning me now, so I'm out

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Well, if you cannot stand the heat... then yes, by all means leave the kitchen. But no, all you have said is that EVERYTHING I have posted here is wrong. By your interpretation. You have not addressed the archeological evidence, or the interpretations of the persons doing those studies of which I have ample sources for. These archeology site finds cannot all be 'mis-interpreted." They are from a collection of 20 or 30 different observers in the field from around Europe and North Africa. As in, every one of us cannot be wrong. Which is why I have piled on the evidence. You want to call it straw manning? Whatever. There is more evidence, from way more archeological sites than what I have posted here. I have sources for them all if you want. In many of them, these are their conclusions, not mine.

But whatever.

Thank you guys for the history lessons..
Honestly..It’s really useful..
After passing through mountains of difficulties,kalamata IBL strain is still on the road..
Harsh cannabis laws in my country does not giving me the opportunity to be faster with her..
I m working on kalamata strain a few years now and patience has become my great virtue.
Kalamata it’s not the easiest strain to work with.

After another successful outdoor open pollination project, my breeding goals now are to stabilize traits like the quality of the electric/motivating high of this strain,the unique oldschool hashy terpene profile and the great adaption in very hot climates.
At the same time,I’m trying to eliminate intersex issues and low yields.
As you can see, flowers are so fluffy and have a very
high leaf to bud ratio..this kind/structure of flowers is a fine answer to the question of why people here stop growing these heirlooms and many years before they choose to grow mostly albanian or dutch hybrids.

Also I’m planning to use kalamata ibl in order to create a few different F1 hybrids with strains that have opposite genetic background and could also improve adaption on indoor growing.

Hi Delicorganic my cousin who lived in Greece and did his military has spent time there as his Dad side is from Crete.I asked him about Creation Red in early 2000 he new nothing about it.Then a few years later he went on holiday and ended up having a smoke with an old villager who was a little unwilling to talk about the red. Turns out the American service personal have been after the red for years so the locals keep it under tight raps and sell the Americans what they call green creation.The locals smoke the Red and going by my cousin the flowers are red.


I know Greeks brought it here in the 60s many would pf mistook it for Colombian red i only know it came here by some older guys from up along the murray confirmed it.


I dont think people understand just how much cannabis was grown in Crete and possible still is. 15 or so years ago i saw the news from there talking about a huge grow 30.000 plants were growers were battling firing on Greek army and police as others were harvesting as much of the crop as they could.The Island would see police and military road block to try and stop the movement of the cannabis after harvest.

kalamata red

kalamata red

I'm now testing a few plants of kalamata red strain from the last outdoor open pollination project.

Kalamata red ibl

Kalamata red ibl

I think I might have Kalamata Red. I started one of those Greek landrace seeds from Tropical Seeds Co and it is just past seedling stage and she has a redish color and black tipping at the growing chute. Super excited. It's said to have come from a Greek family who has been growing it for 60-100 years mostly unspoiled. Though there was mention of colombian gold possibly being in the mix, if I recall.

My Greek plant is a BEAST! After just one month. I picked a female seed by using a visual technique. Further testing is needed, but I am having a lot of success picking female seeds from this and other landrace Cannabis varieties, by inspecting the base of the seed. Specifically the shape of the seeds detachment point.

[YOUTUBEIF]7V_YBbyfkQ0[/YOUTUBEIF]

did these seeds ever circulate feel like I been watching for a couple years waiting

Hi to everyone!
All these years i talked with a lot and met with a few urban growers from different places in the country who claimed that hold greek heirloom seeds such as Kalamata red or Cretan and others.
My choice was not to collect any of those,cause
i knew that this wasn't the right pathway to find the true old genes.
Everywhere in the country,where the seedstocks was close to a big city with internet access and modern culture, probably will be older Dutch or at least Dutch/Albanian contaminated seedstocks.

By this move, selection became simpler and collection much much harder.


That wasn't an easy journey..
It took me many years with good and bad days to collect them.


The Detached villages and islands with mountainous areas of my country are not easy to have access.
There are villages which not have internet access and normal roads for normal cars,many times you 'll need to take specific details from locals to approach them.
There are People until nowadays using traditional practises in every aspect of their life.
they never speak about cannabis to the foreigners but when you finally walk with them in the woods you can easily understand that they preserve great knowledge on the cultivation part.

So words like mountainous,Detached, alive traditional culture and cannabis culture became my compass and fortunately my country is still alive and have plenty of well hidden paradises.

Here is a list of the greek heirloom/landrace strains that i ve collected in the last 15 years.
,Everyone of those are definitely heirloom oldschool genes that needs to be preserved for many reasons but most of all the importance of the localy adapted genetics.



A.Three different/similar seedstocks of Kalamata red (alagonian bud)
One of them had at least 37 years of local cultivation.
Two of the three seedstocks are almost genetically identical.
1983/2001/2005


B.2 different seedstocks of
Cretan-mylopotamos Sativa
1993/2002-at least 25 years of local cultivation

C.Pyrgos-pelloponesse at least 15-20
years of local cultivation

D.Arcadian hashplants/Tripoli-at least 25-30 years

E.Syros island-at least 20-25 years

F. Two genetically identical seedstocks of Ikaria island-at least 15-20 years

G.Olympos mountain- 70 years ..yes that's the oldest one..

H.Trikala- pertouli- at least 25-30 years

I.Larisa -melivoia-at least 20-25 years

These are for sure Greek locally adapted cultivars or heirlooms, dna analysis could give better understanding of their origins.
Most of these cultivars are Sativa Dominant plants and grows almost like wild hemp plants.
Terpene profiles are often superb and high psychoactive phenotypes are present in a good rate.
I guess that THC doesn't exceed 13-15% in everyone of these cultivars.
*At the time i m working with Kalamata red and Cretan seeds which i ve already made of them open pollination seedstocks and this is the 2nd year in stabilization process.

My first intension is to setting year by year open pollination breeding projects for each one of them in order to preserve the widest genetic diversity of these cultivars,before starting the stabilization process.

Our government becoming more harsh against cannabis growers this year.. and that's shame accordingly to what happening around the world with cannabis right now.

In the near future i m planning for further DNA analysis, strain by strain so i could see there for possible relatives, contaminations, genetic variation levels and genetically distant varieties.

^Amazing, sounds like you collected some real Greek gems much worthwhile saving in pure form for later generations. You should collaborate with a preservation group. They can help you in several ways.

Awesome post! I'm growing a Greek landrace from Tropical Seeds Co. What are your thoughts on these. I am growing one now and I think it could be kalamata red.

Thanks hempy!
"Athina'' from tropical seeds is a strain from Serres which is North Greece and is very far from south and Kalamata.
Although it could easily be relatives with Kalamata Red
Hope to enjoy pleasant creative/energetic highs and oldschool earthy hashy terps as happening with most of these strains.

delicorganic,
first of all I applaud your efforts and wish you luck with finding what you seek.

From reading your posts I get the feeling that you must be much younger than I am (in my 60's) and probably from the larger metro areas. My family is from Peloponnessos. Tripoli on one side and Acadians on the other which is the people I grew up with. They are the ones from way up the mountain at the end of the goat trail. Those communities are very backwards and they are Ultra Conservative and vehemently anti cannabis. Those small villages have no room for non conformists, free thinkers or rebels. They wouldnt have tolerated Hippies. I am afraid that if you do find something out there that it would have come in after the de population in the 70's when the younger people left the villages to raise their families where there were jobs and prosperity.

The Revverend and Ngakpa have given some good info including fairly recent info that seems to be backed up by the music from the 1890's to after the second war. The Rembetes and Manges left us literally hundreds of songs about Hashish and its origins which I think gives us some pretty decent clues to where the older strains may have came from. Smyrna (Izmir) Isfahan (Iran) and taking small boats to Morocco are all mentioned. I dont recall mention of local Greek Hashish but it could be that they had their preferred sources back east.

I have Macedonian friends and will try to have a conversation with them and see if they know anything about old lines up that way

Thanks for your interest rembetis mou.
I m sure that most of them have very old roots.
I agree with you in some point and thank you for your post.
I think this is a much more complex subject.
At the provinces of the country, in many cases you will met ultra conservative Christians that doesn't have any cannabis culture.
They don't even accept medicinal properties of the plant and they only use alcohol as their recreational drink.
But as you also know Greek province cultures is not flat,our provinces preserve a diversity of cultures, dialects idioms,many different music roads and many different levels of modern civilization.
A Pelloponessian,a Thracian and a Cretan man of province are three totally different Greeks and characters.
People from different places/origins of province in the country doesn't showing culture uniformity,they are not masses to do that and we can't lump all them in a generally "Greek" culture.
We also count many different integrated minorities from Asia minor refugees which brought with them their habits and culture.

?n 1924 with the treaty of Lausanne was executed populations tradings between Greece and Turkey.
Muslim Thracian minority, Armenian minority,Pomakoi in Xanthi are some more examples of cultural diversity in our country.

Kalamata, Crete and Tripoli and more regions counts many years of cannabis culture.
This is well known to everybody in the country, every place has its own and different history.
For example Crete is a specific situation of cannabis cultivation culture.
There is an interview from an ex mayor of mountainous villages(mylopotamos/Rethymno) on Crete,wh? supports that after WW2,the first seeds of psychoactive populations on Crete was introduced from Kalamata's chief of police who's moved to work on Rethymno police station in 1952.

This could easily teach us that there was already present/alive psychoactive populations on Peloponesse at that time.

Our provinces culture seems to the geomorphology of the provinces.
Nothing is flat, everything is a wave in every level.

Olympos,taygetos,psiloreitis,pilio and more, are some of the mountains where you could find untrodden places and almost unexplored (or hidden) local treasures until our days.

In my opinion folklore writers,alternative scientists, underground writers and Greek folk/rock musicians of the remote past(ilias petropoulos,grivas,karampelas,oikonomopulos/sidiropoulos,vamvakaris,tsitsanis,e.t.c.)
are by far the most valid cannabis "historians" in the country.


i have the strong belief that in this selection could also exist cultivars that was cultivated in the country before WW2..
So until further DNA analysis happen,
im not convinced at the time for any known scenario mentioned about the origins of Greek psychoactive cultivars.

here's kalamata red

Apparently Greece had a hashish culture back in the early 1900's. Here are a few excerpts from a book called "Pearls, Arms and Hashish - Pages from a Red Sea Navigator."

"The "honey" could be purchased, he told me, in Morea, the district where it was grown, eight hours by train from Piraeus. The priest himself would accompany me. In exporting the "honey", it was advisable and in fact customary not to pass through the customs, in order to avoid a heavy export tariff. My majestic companion, greeted me on the street with every mark or respect and consideration, led me to a cafe where I arranged with a specialist of the appropriate name of caravan, to carry the "honey" aboard a boat for Marseilles for the reasonable sum of fifty centimes a pound."

"The hashish was stored in an outbuilding - a dozen sacks pressed beneath heavy stones. Cousin Nikopopulos opened one of the sacks, and for the first time I laid my eyes on the merchandise I had traveled so many miles to purchase: a dark brown, waxy solid that gave off a faintly resinous odor. Determined not to betray my ignorance by injudicious remarks, I examined the fragment tendered me, and passed it without comment to the priest. Cousin Nikopolulos misinterpreted my silence. "But I have much better," he hastened to protest." "Then show it. We have no time to waste on inferior grades." After a careful scrutiny of other samples, we discussed prices, (At the time, I could detect no difference in the grades, but later I learned that first class hashish is distinguished by a more strongly defined odor and by an increased content in resinous matter. We fixed on the sum of of nineteen francs the ocque (about 1200 grams) for 400 ocques of hashish, to be delivered in zinc lined boxes containing fifty packages of one ocque each."

"Hashish growing and manufacture, I gathered, represented once of the principal industries of the province of Tripolis. Nearly all the peasants of the region raised hemp, selling leaves to specialists who prepared the drug for market. The chief secret of hashish growing, I was told, consisted in the removal of all male plants from the hemp field. Subsequently a resinous coating forms on the upper surfaces of the leaves of the female plant. The leaves are gathered, dried and rubbed into powder on a fine screen. The powder so obtained is collected in sacks and stored for sale. In time it amalgamates and hardens. Before selling the drug, however, it must be broken up again and resifted."

"For thirty six hours, Cousin Nikopoulos's barn hummed like a factory. The process took much longer than I had imagined, though everyone worked at top speed with enthusiasm that reminded me vividly of a vintage in my native Roussillion. In on corner a carpenter and a plumber hammered away making the zinc lined cases. Ten women and four men occupied the center of the floor. One group broke up the hardened cakes of hashish by beating the sacks with heavy sticks. Another emptied the contents of sacks on a huge sieve, rubbing the powder through the screen to collect below in a sheet stretched to receive it. It was then stirred vigorously in an iron cylinder (generally hashish from two successive crops is mixed together) and shoveled into the sacks Mrs Nikopoulos stitched busily on her sewing machine. The sacks of powder were then run through a press from which they emerged in the form of hard, flat bricks - the inches by five, and one and one half inches thick. Each brick weighed on ocque. When night came, the work went went on without interruption in the smoky light of beeswax candles and little pottery lamps filled with olive oil. At six o'clock on the morning of the departure, the last case was nailed shut. I took hurried leave of Cousin Nicopoulos, who kissed the priest and myself on both cheeks, inviting me heartily to come again and "bring all the family."

That's amazing!
many great and rare infos from Henry De Monfreid.
Thank you very much for sharing.

Greetings All,

I am happy to report that my Female outdoor grown 'Athena' Greek landrace (Tropical Seeds) has been harvested and trimmed and is now curing in her jars. She grew absolutely beautifully. She even had gorgeous pink pistils! A very strong hash plant scent. The info from Tropical seeds said she takes 8-10 weeks and is ready in mid October. My girl was perfect by September 9th. Early smoke tests had a potent and pleasant hash plant high, somewhere between bubba kush and og kush. I saved a cutting and will be incorporating her into an open pollination seed crop, using the rest of the seeds in the original pack. This plant had absolutely stunning deep maroon red stalks and stems with mint green resin covered buds, with pink pistils. The structure was very hempy and I topped her once or twice, but she wanted to grow straight up with many stalks close together. The stalks do not bend very well. All in all, an exquisite hash plant which finished in early September at about six feet tall. I yielded just over 6.5oz on a plant with about 12 tops and grown in a 20gal fabric pot.