On an early autumn walk, I found several cannabis ruderalis plants growing wild. To my surprise and delight, I found several seed-bearing plants and even one sinsemilla bud, which must have been upwind of the male plants I saw, already dried and dead, near the seed-carrying females up the road.

The particularly cool part of the story is that the one larger, seedless bud had an amazing orange/pepper/cream aroma that I’d rank up there with some of the better sativa plants I’ve had the pleasure to sniff. Sadly, the whir of weed-whackers was not far behind me; a road crew was out for a late summer cleanup. I would have loved to let the beautiful sinsemilla bud mature, but I decided to pick her now in order to get some better pictures and a chance to sample the immature bud. I hurried ahead of the cutting crew and gathered seeds from the other female plants I could find. Hopefully a few of the couple dozen seeds I gathered will produce a plant with that amazing orange/pepper/cream aroma phenotype. In any case, they will serve as a great breeding platform for some autoflowering hybrids of my own. It will be great to have a ruderalis plant that already produces great aromas as stock to cross with other varieties (like my current favorite “Double Gum”) and see if I can cross-breed some heavier yielding autoflowering stock of my own. Perhaps these will become the “Panik Plants”?

Below is a picture gallery with shots of the wild Cannabis Ruderalis plants growing on a sunny roadside. Notice the very sativa-like thin leaves. These plants were likely hit at least once by mowers, but still managed to put out seeds by early September (some plants I found were already long gone to seed). There are also shots of the typical small, black, and very hard ruderalis seeds, as well as closeups showing the trichomes on the leaves and buds, immature as they unfortunately were. Cool stuff, regardless, and I look forward to growing the gathered seeds in a nurturing environment. Expect more posts about these plants:

Wild Harvest Cannabis Ruderalis Smoke Report: Well, it isn’t fair to judge these plants based on the few wisps of bud I gathered in a hurry, but the good news is that they do produce a mild sativa-like effect. As is to be expected with a ruderalis (especially one with a few seeds on it) the smoke is a bit on the ropey side, but they do create a mild but pleasant head high. This is a very good start for a wild strain. If I can find that orange creamsicle pheno in the seeds I gathered, we may be onto something here.

Writer Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes here, for the Amazon Kindle or via  Smashwords here.  You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here.