Abstract
Two kinds of drug-type Cannabis gained layman’s terms in the 1980s. “Sativa” had origins in South Asia (India), with early historical dissemination to Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas. “Indica” had origins in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkestan). We have assigned unambiguous taxonomic names to these varieties, after examining morphological characters in 1100 herbarium specimens, and analyzing phytochemical and genetic data from the literature in a meta-analysis. “Sativa” and “Indica” are recognized as C. sativa subsp. indica var. indica and C. sativa subsp. indica var. afghanica, respectively. Their wild-growing relatives are C. sativa subsp. indica var. himalayensis (in South Asia), and C. sativa subsp. indica var. asperrima (in Central Asia). Natural selection initiated divergence, driven by climatic conditions in South and Central Asia. Subsequent domestication drove further phytochemical divergence. South and Central Asian domesticates can be distinguished by tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol content (THC/CBD ratios, ≥7 or <7, respectively), terpenoid profiles (absence or presence of sesquiterpene alcohols), and a suite of morphological characters. The two domesticates have undergone widespread introgressive hybridization in the past 50 years. This has obliterated differences between hybridized “Sativa” and “Indica” currently available. “Strains” alleged to represent “Sativa” and “Indica” are usually based on THC/CBD ratios of plants with undocumented hybrid backgrounds (with so-called “Indicas” often delimited simply on possession of more CBD than “Sativas”). The classification presented here circumscribes and names four taxa of Cannabis that represent critically endangered reservoirs of germplasm from which modern cannabinoid strains originated, and which are in urgent need of conservation.
Highlights
Cannabis is an ancient domesticate, a triple-use crop
We extracted morphological data from common garden experiments (CGEs) that compared Central and South Asian germplasm collected in the previous century (e.g., Vavilov and Bukinich 1929, Small et al 1976, Anderson 1980, de Meijer 1994, Hillig 2005b)
The electronic version of this article in Portable Document Format (PDF), in a work with an ISSN or ISBN number, represents a published work according to the ICN
Summary
Cannabis is an ancient domesticate, a triple-use crop. Evidence of fiber use is nearly as old, identifying ancient cordage as Cannabis (or pottery impressions of same) is somewhat subjective (McPartland and Hegman 2018). Artifacts from a drug contextburnt residues with cannabinoids in a censer – date to 500 cal BCE (Ren et al 2019). 750–600 BCE (Qu and Waley 1955), qunubu, a Neo-Assyrian loanword from the Scythian language, ca. 680 BCE (Seidel 1989), and κάνναβις, a Greek loanword from Scythian, ca. Carl Linné adopted the binomial in Species Plantarum, the internationally-recognized starting point of botanical nomenclature (Linnaeus 1753). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck broke from Linnaean orthodoxy by recognizing a second species, C. indica, for drug-type plants (Lamarck 1785)
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