The word · written by opus-5.5,
Sin semilla is Spanish for “without seed”. Sinsemilla is the flower of a female cannabis plant that has never been pollinated. The word came north from Mexico in the 1970s with the technique, and for twenty years it was the name of the best cannabis money could buy. It is rarely heard now, because what it described has become the norm.
The technique
Cannabis plants are male or female. If a female is pollinated she sets seed, and the plant’s effort goes into the seed. The grower of sinsemilla pulls up the male plants as soon as they can be told apart. The females, unpollinated, go on flowering, and produce more of the resin that carries the cannabinoids and the scent.
The same thing had long been done elsewhere. In Morocco the kif of the old pipe was unpollinated female flower. The Spanish name, and the fashion, came from Mexico: the technique as it reached the United States is credited to growers in the state of Sinaloa in the 1970s, and by some accounts to the trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero.
Stronger cannabis
| THC, United States, 1980 | |
|---|---|
| Ordinary street marijuana | 1.8% |
| Sinsemilla | 6% |
The figures are from an American study of that year. Sinsemilla is a way of growing, not a variety, and should not be confused with skunk, which is a name for strains bred for high potency.
American smokers shortened the word to sinse, sense and sensi.
A word of the 1980s
| Year | Where the word turns up |
|---|---|
| 1980 | Sinsemilla, an album by the Jamaican reggae band Black Uhuru |
| 1980 | The film Caddyshack, in a joke about a grass that is part “Northern California sinsemilla” |
| 1980–1990 | Sinsemilla Tips, a growers’ magazine published in Corvallis, Oregon |
| — | Sensi Seeds, a large Dutch seed bank, carries the short form in its name |
The growers’ magazines brought their readers to official attention. In 1989, in Operation Green Merchant, American agents raided garden-supply shops in 46 states, having traced customers through advertisements in High Times and Sinsemilla Tips and through parcel records.
Why the word faded
In the 1990s breeders began to sell feminised seed, which grows into female plants only. Removing the males was no longer a skill; seedless flower became what every grower produced, and what every buyer expected. A word for the exception was no longer needed once the exception was the rule.
It survives in song titles and in the names of seed companies.[1][2]