What Is a Haze Strain? The History, the Effects and the Real Family Tree

Quick answer: A Haze strain is any cultivar descended from Original Haze, a pure sativa assembled in Santa Cruz, California in the early 1970s from Colombian, Mexican, Thai and South Indian landrace stock. It flowered for 12 to 16 weeks, which nearly killed it commercially, so Dutch breeders crossed it with indica to speed it up. Terpinolene is the terpene that still gives the family away.

Almost every citrus-sharp sativa hybrid on a Washington shelf owes something to four plants crossed by two men whose real names nobody has ever published.

Where did Haze actually come from?

Santa Cruz, California, in the early 1970s. Credit goes to two growers usually written as R. Haze and J. Haze, the Haze Brothers, who worked with imported landrace seed on the central California coast and kept selecting until they had something stable enough to hand around.

That is the version every seed company repeats. It also has almost no paper behind it.

No full names. No dates for individual crosses. No seed catalog from the period, no contemporary account written down while it was happening. What exists is testimony given decades later, plus forum threads running hundreds of pages where breeders still cannot agree on the sequence.

The Santa Cruz origin is accepted by essentially everyone in the industry and is almost certainly true in outline. The details are oral history, and where the tellers disagree, this article says so.

The four landraces

The commonly reported build, in the commonly reported order:

1. A Mexican landrace crossed with a Colombian landrace.
2. Selected females from that cross taken to a South Indian landrace.
3. Those females taken to a Thai male.

Four sources, none of them local, all long-flowering equatorial plants. That last point shapes everything downstream. Those parents evolved where day length barely changes, so they never developed the hard autumn deadline temperate plants have. Left alone, they keep going. Some accounts drop the South Indian and call it three parents. Our primer on landrace strains explains why those imported populations differed so much.

How did Haze get from California to Amsterdam?

Through two men, and the order of events is the most contested part of the whole story.

David Watson, known universally as Sam the Skunkman, was a Californian breeder who carried Original Haze seed to the Netherlands and sold it under the Cultivator's Choice name in the early 1980s. That much is broadly agreed. The dispute is over how much Haze he had and how much he had improved it himself.

Nevil Schoenmakers, an Australian-born breeder in the Netherlands, founded The Seed Bank in 1984 and bought Californian material from Watson, including Original Haze and Skunk #1. Nevil did the thing that saved Haze. He crossed it with Northern Lights #5, a compact indica, and got offspring that kept the character but finished closer to a normal timeframe.

He sold The Seed Bank to Sensi Seeds in 1991, later helped start Green House Seed Company, and died in March 2019. Two footnotes: he spelled his first name with one L, though menus write Neville's Haze. And accounts differ on whether he had Haze stock before Watson.

The Haze family tree

Here is the line as usually drawn. Read the indentation as descent.

Original Haze (Santa Cruz, early 1970s)
Colombian x Mexican x South Indian x Thai
Flowering: 12 to 16 weeks
|
+-- Haze x Northern Lights #5 (Nevil, mid 1980s)
|     |
|     +-- Nevil's Haze
|     |     NL#5/Haze female x pure Haze male
|     |
|     +-- Silver Haze
|           NL#5/Haze x Skunk #1
|           |
|           +-- Super Silver Haze (Green House Seed Company)
|                 |
|                 +-- Super Lemon Haze (Lemon Skunk x Super Silver Haze)
|                 +-- Blue Dream (Blueberry x Haze, cut disputed)
|
+-- Amnesia Haze (Soma, Haze-heavy, exact parents disputed)
|
+-- Jack Herer (Haze x Northern Lights #5 x Shiva Skunk)
|
+-- a large share of modern citrus and pine hybrids

The same information as a table, which is easier to scan at a counter.

Notice the shape. Everything after 1985 has indica in it. There is no commercially successful pure Haze and has not been one for forty years, so the Haze family is really a family of Haze hybrids. Worth remembering before you judge a jar against a plant nobody has smoked since the Carter administration. Our rundown of hybrid strains covers the rest of the modern shelf.

What makes something taste like Haze?

Terpinolene, mostly. It carries the sharp, piney, slightly floral note with a soapy-fresh edge, and it is the most reliable marker of Haze ancestry on a lab panel. Ocimene sits under it adding a sweet green lift, and limonene supplies the citrus.

Terpinolene is also uncommon as a dominant terpene. Most cannabis leads with myrcene, limonene or caryophyllene. When terpinolene comes out on top, something in the lineage put it there, and in practice that is usually Haze, Jack Herer or a Trainwreck-type line. Which gives you a test.

The three-line Haze check

Ask for the terpene panel and run three checks.

1. Is terpinolene in the top three? If yes, the flower is behaving like a Haze. If it is absent entirely, be skeptical of the name whatever the lineage claims.
2. Are ocimene or limonene there in support? That combination makes the bright, almost effervescent top note people associate with Silver Haze and Lemon Haze.
3. Is myrcene running the show? A myrcene-dominant flower with a Haze name is either an indica-leaning hybrid wearing the label loosely or a different plant altogether.

This is not a purity test. Plenty of excellent flower fails all three and is still worth your money. It just tells you whether the word Haze is describing the contents or borrowing a reputation. Our guide to what terpenes actually do goes further into reading those panels, including why total terpene percentage often matters more than which one leads.

The same check works on a Maui Wowie or an Acapulco Gold, and the White Widow line tells a similar story about a famous name outliving the original plant.

Why does Haze take so long to flower, and why did that nearly kill it?

Because its parents came from places where the seasons barely move. Equatorial plants from Thailand, Colombia and South India have no reason to rush, so they finish late. Original Haze commonly runs 12 to 16 weeks, and some phenotypes push past 16. Now do the arithmetic a grower does.

A pure Haze costs a farm a large share of its annual output against a nine week cultivar, while stretching hard after the flip, growing taller than most rooms allow and yielding less per square foot than a compact indica. That is why Haze almost disappeared in the 1980s, and why Nevil's Northern Lights crosses mattered. Growers were not rejecting the effect. They were rejecting the calendar.

Why is real long-flowering Haze rare on Washington shelves?

Same arithmetic, applied to a regulated market. Washington producers operate under the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board in a closed system where every gram is grown in state and tracked from seed to sale, and room time governs almost everything.

A farm filling a flower room is choosing between a cultivar that turns over five times a year and one that turns over three. The slower plant has to sell for much more per gram to break even, and Washington's wholesale market has spent years pushing the other way. Our piece on why some weed is more expensive unpacks that math.

So what you find here is Haze descendants: Super Silver Haze, Amnesia Haze, Lemon Haze, Blue Dream, Jack Herer crosses, and newer hybrids with Haze several generations back. Occasionally a small Washington farm runs a long-flowering Haze as a passion project. Those are worth buying, and they do not last on the shelf.

What does Haze feel like?

Customers most often describe Haze-forward flower as alert, talkative and mentally busy, with little of the physical heaviness people associate with indica-dominant cultivars. It has a reputation for being a lot at higher doses, especially for people who do not use cannabis often.

The reported profile varies enormously between individual cultivars in this family, and the sativa label on the jar is a weaker predictor than most people assume. Our breakdown of what the sativa and indica labels actually tell you explains why those categories drifted away from anything botanical.

Start small if Haze is new to you, and talk to a healthcare provider who knows your history if you are using cannabis for a health reason.

Asking about Haze at our counters

Our Cannabis Guides at West Seattle and Redmond get asked for Haze constantly, and the useful conversation is never about the name. Ask which jars are terpinolene-forward this week. That gets you to the right flower faster than asking for a cultivar that may not be in stock, and it works even when the producer has given the plant some invented name.

Ask about harvest dates too. Terpinolene is volatile and fades faster than heavier terpenes, so an eight month old jar of Lemon Haze smells duller than a two month old one even when the panels look similar.

Check what is in the case on the West Seattle flower menu or the Redmond flower menu, then bring the panel question with you.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Haze strain?

A Haze strain is any cultivar descended from Original Haze, a pure sativa put together in Santa Cruz, California in the early 1970s from Colombian, Mexican, Thai and South Indian landrace stock. The family is defined by a sharp incense-and-citrus aroma driven by terpinolene, a tall airy plant structure, and flowering times far longer than most modern cannabis.

Who were the Haze Brothers?

Two growers in Santa Cruz, usually written as R. Haze and J. Haze, credited with making the original crosses in the early 1970s. Their full names have never been published and no contemporary documentation of their work exists. Everything known about them comes from accounts given decades later by other breeders, so treat it as oral history rather than settled fact.

How long does a Haze strain take to flower?

Original Haze and near-pure Haze lines commonly run 12 to 16 weeks in flower, and some phenotypes go longer. Modern Haze hybrids carrying Northern Lights or Skunk in the lineage usually finish in 9 to 11 weeks. That difference is the entire reason the modern Haze family exists in the form it does.

What terpene makes a strain taste like Haze?

Terpinolene above all. It carries the sharp, piney, faintly floral note people call the Haze smell. Ocimene adds a sweet green lift and limonene adds citrus. If a lab panel shows terpinolene sitting at or near the top of the list, the flower is behaving like a Haze regardless of what the label promises.

Is Blue Dream a Haze strain?

Yes, by descent. Blue Dream is a Blueberry crossed with a Haze, which makes it one of the most widely sold Haze descendants in the country. Which specific Haze was used is disputed, with Super Silver Haze cited most often and no breeder record to confirm it. The Haze half is why Blue Dream keeps that bright top note.

Why is true Haze hard to find in Washington dispensaries?

Economics. A licensed Washington producer running an indoor room can harvest a nine week cultivar roughly five times a year. A fifteen week Haze cuts that to about three, on taller plants with lower yield per square foot. Most farms cannot justify the room time, so what reaches shelves is usually a shortened Haze hybrid instead.

Origins Cannabis is a licensed Washington retailer serving adults 21 and over in Redmond and West Seattle. Nothing here is medical advice. If you are using cannabis for a health reason, talk to a healthcare provider who knows your history.