What is the difference between indica and sativa, and do the labels mean anything? This covers where the two names come from (Linnaeus in 1753, Lamarck 32 years later), why the DNA suggests cannabis is probably one very diverse species, what a Canadian study of 124 plants and a Colorado study of 30 strains found, what lab tests on almost 90,000 US flower samples show about THC, CBD and terpenes, what a study of 101 regular users found about indica and feeling sluggish, and what tells you more than the label.
The full answer
Indica vs sativa: what's the difference?
Indica versus sativa, what's the difference? On a shop label, indica means a heavy body high and sativa an energetic head high, but when scientists tested the plants behind those labels, the names matched their genes and chemistry only loosely. I'm Justin Hartfield, and I've been selling cannabis for twenty-five years. The names go back to the seventeen hundreds, when sativa meant the European hemp people grew for fiber, a plant that doesn't get you high.
Where do the names indica and sativa come from?
Where do the names indica and sativa come from? In 1753, the botanist Carl Linnaeus named the plant Cannabis sativa, and he meant European fiber hemp. Thirty-two years later, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck named a second species, Cannabis indica, for plants from India, Southeast Asia and South Africa, and he wrote that it went to the head and brought on a kind of drunkenness that makes you forget your sorrows. Lamarck's indica was fairly tall and loosely branched with narrow leaves, which is what a shop today would call a sativa. In the twentieth century, botanists studying hashish plants in Afghanistan put the name indica on short, bushy, broad-leafed plants instead, and by the 1980s indica and sativa had become everyday words for two kinds of drug plant.
Are indica and sativa different species?
Are indica and sativa different species? The DNA says they most likely aren't. John McPartland and a colleague compared DNA barcodes, the short stretches botanists use to tell species apart. Between European hemp and the Asian drug plants, the original sativa and indica, the gap was about the size you see between two subspecies of one plant. A 2023 genomics review concluded that cannabis is probably one very diverse species. Today's shop labels are even blurrier, because growers have crossed the drug plants so often. McPartland points to one hybrid that won Best Sativa at a cannabis competition in 1999 and Best Indica four years later.
Is there a genetic difference between indica and sativa?
Is there a genetic difference between indica and sativa? In 2015, a Canadian team read about fourteen thousand points of DNA in eighty-one drug plants and forty-three hemp plants. The indica or sativa ancestry listed for each strain matched its DNA only moderately. One strain listed as one hundred percent sativa was nearly identical to one listed as one hundred percent indica from Afghanistan. And in six of seventeen comparisons, a sample was closer to strains with other names than to ones with its own name. In 2019, a Colorado team tested thirty strains from dispensaries in three states. The plants fell into two genetic groups, and neither lined up with the sativa, hybrid or indica labels.
Is there a chemical difference between indica and sativa?
Is there a chemical difference between indica and sativa? In 2022, researchers went through lab tests on almost ninety thousand flower samples from six US states. Ninety-six and a half percent were THC-dominant, and the labels didn't reliably separate them by chemistry. Naming each sample after its most abundant terpene sorted them better. The one clear tilt was a group heavy in a terpene called terpinolene, which carried about twice the expected share of sativa labels. A real but partial link turned up in 2021, when a team re-analyzed almost three hundred samples from the Netherlands. Flower labeled indica tended to have more myrcene and three heavier terpenes, flower labeled sativa had more of a tea-smelling one and a fruity one, and myrcene alone accounted for about a fifth of the variation in the labels.
Is indica a body high and sativa a head high?
Is indica a body high and sativa a head high? Plenty of people who use cannabis believe it is. In 2023, an Arizona team followed a hundred and one regular users for two weeks, and about four in five preferred one or the other for the reasons the industry gives. They rated their effects within half an hour of smoking, and flower labeled indica went with feeling more slow and sluggish, even after the researchers accounted for what people expected to feel. But the label and main terpene of each strain were looked up on a strain website rather than measured. In app data from about twelve hundred people logging almost four thousand sessions, the indica, sativa and hybrid labels made no difference to how much their fatigue eased. I found no blinded trial that gave people the same dose of an indica and a sativa and compared them.
What makes cannabis strains different?
What makes cannabis strains different? What you can measure is the balance of THC and CBD and the mix of terpenes, the smell molecules. In that US data, only a few percent of flower had about as much CBD as THC, or more. The THC-dominant flower fell into three terpene groups: one high in caryophyllene and limonene, one high in myrcene and pinene, and one high in terpinolene and myrcene. The old landraces really were different. McPartland and the Canadian botanist Ernest Small describe plants from South and Central Asia that differed in their THC to CBD ratio, their terpenes and their shape, and they write that fifty years of crossbreeding has wiped out those differences in what's sold today.
What should I look at instead of indica or sativa?
What should I look at instead of indica or sativa? The THC number tells you the most, because the dose decides a lot. In a 2017 Chicago study, seven and a half milligrams of THC calmed people through a stressful speech, and twelve and a half left them feeling worse. At the ratios most products carry, CBD matters less than people assume: in London, forty-six people vaped THC with up to three times as much CBD, and it changed none of the effects measured. The terpene list tells you more about the plant than the sticker, and whether terpenes change the high is the next question. Your own brain counts too. Men who smoked every day had fewer CB1 locks in the cortex, and it took about four weeks off for the locks to come back, so my guess is that tolerance is a big reason the same flower hits people so differently.
The whole film is on my site, linked below. Next: What are terpenes, and is the entourage effect real?
What the studies show
Every claim in this answer, the study behind it, who was studied, and who paid for the research. “None listed” means the paper names no funder.
