Cannabis strain history is mostly oral history. Where it was recorded at all, it was recorded by people with a commercial interest in the outcome, at a time when the activity was illegal and keeping records was a liability. Any account of where a famous cultivar came from is therefore a mix of documented fact, plausible reconstruction and marketing.
This post separates those three things as it goes. Where something is contested, it says so. Anecdote is labelled as anecdote. For a broader look at how strain-origin myths form, see topic 1302.
What the commonly repeated account says
Haze is said to have originated in Santa Cruz, California, in the early 1970s. Two brothers, generally recorded only as R. Haze and J. Haze, are said to have run a multi-generational breeding programme using landrace seed supplied by a neighbour and friend.
The breeding sequence, as it is usually repeated in breeder and retailer accounts:
- A cross between a Mexican landrace sativa and a Colombian landrace sativa
- Selected females from that cross, backcrossed to a South Indian landrace male
- Females from that generation crossed to a Thai landrace male
On this account, the result was a hybrid drawing on four landrace sativa sources (Mexico, Colombia, India and Thailand), and it was marketed from then on as essentially 100% sativa.
The Thai contribution is worth pausing on for readers of this forum. According to the story, the final cross behind the most influential sativa line in modern cannabis breeding used a Thai male. The citrus note that Haze descendants are known for is routinely credited to that Thai input. No published chemical profiling has tested whether that attribution holds. The pedigree is widely repeated, but it rests on breeder accounts. For the Thai landrace side of the story, see topic 1305.
Haze reached the Netherlands in the mid-1980s (accounts give 1984 or 1985). It was carried by the American breeder known as Sam the Skunkman (David Paul Watson), who moved there from California around that time and sold Original Haze seed under the Cultivator’s Choice label.
Nevil Schoenmakers (2 February 1956 – 30 March 2019), who founded The Seed Bank in the Netherlands in 1984, bought Original Haze seed from Sam in the mid-1980s and is best remembered for the F1 hybrid Northern Lights #5 × Haze. He later worked with Greenhouse Seeds (Arjan Roskam). His full story, including The Seed Bank, its sale to Sensi Seeds and Operation Green Merchant, is told in The History of Northern Lights.
Nevil’s Haze carries his name. Super Silver Haze was released by Greenhouse Seeds. Nevil’s role in breeding it is claimed rather than documented, and some accounts credit Shantibaba instead.
NL#5 × Haze lines do appear among documented Cannabis Cup winners. The published winners list gives the 1989 Cup to Early Pearl/Skunk #1 × Northern Lights #5/Haze from The Seed Bank, and the 1993 Cup to Haze × Northern Lights #5 from Sensi Seed Bank. Its daughters went on to be widely used in later prize-winning lines.
What is contested or unverifiable
Whether the Haze Brothers’ account is complete. Their given names are not reliably recorded. Their breeding notes, if any existed, are not public. Even the four-landrace sequence above is breeder lore, and every detail beyond “Mexican × Colombian, then Indian, then Thai” is reconstruction.
Sam the Skunkman’s role is the most disputed subject in cannabis strain history, and this post is not going to settle it. There are competing accounts of what he bred, what he was given, what he stabilised and what he claimed. Anyone presenting a settled version is presenting one side of an argument that the participants themselves never resolved. Most accounts do agree that he brought Haze seed to the Netherlands and sold it there.
Whether “Original Haze” from any current source is the same plant. Fifty years of selection, backcrossing, seed storage of varying quality and commercial relabelling stand between the Santa Cruz plants and anything you can buy. Sources note that early Haze showed many different phenotypes, which suggests the line was not stable when it left California. A cultivar that was unstable when it first reached Europe, and has since been propagated by dozens of unrelated operations, is not a fixed entity.
Cannabis Cup results are not potency measurements. Super Silver Haze is listed as the High Times Cannabis Cup winner in 1998 and 1999. It is often described as a three-time winner for 1997–1999, but the 1997 win claimed in breeder and retailer listings (a category win) is not the overall Cup: the published winners list gives the 1997 Cup to Peace Maker from De Dampkring. Either way, Cup wins are dated facts about a competition. They are not evidence of chemical superiority. Cup judging in that era was not blind, not verified in a laboratory and not methodologically controlled.
Why Haze is difficult to grow
This part is horticulture rather than history. It is where the four-landrace-sativa pedigree stops being a curiosity and starts being a problem.
Flowering time. Haze and near-pure Haze descendants flower for 10 to 16 weeks, and some lines take longer. The indica-dominant commercial lines typically take 7–9 weeks. That is not a small difference. The flowering period can be twice as long, which means twice the electricity, twice the exposure to pests and mould, and half as many harvests a year from the same room.
Stretch. Equatorial sativas evolved where daylength changes little across the year. They do not have the compact, determinate growth habit of high-latitude material. A Haze can double or triple in height after the switch to flower. Growers who plan canopy height from an indica-based intuition run out of room.
Flower structure. Haze buds are airy rather than dense. In a humid climate this is a real advantage, because airflow through the flower reduces Botrytis risk. To anyone judging by density, though, it looks like poor yield.
What changes in Thailand, and what doesn’t. Almost every guide describing Haze as difficult is written for northern Europe or North America, where the long flowering period runs into autumn cold and damp. Thailand removes that particular problem but adds others. This section applies only to licensed, legal cultivation in Thailand. Cultivation remains illegal in most of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and Malaysia, and nothing here is guidance for those countries.
- Photoperiod. At around 13–15°N, daylength stays roughly between 11 and 13 hours all year. A photoperiod Haze grown under natural light gets short days that push it toward flowering, not a long vegetative season, so planting must be timed around the calendar.
- Monsoon. A 10–16-week flowering period easily overlaps the rainy season, roughly May to October in much of Thailand. Airy buds help, but weeks of rain and high humidity late in flower still mean real mould risk.
- Budworm. Caterpillars boring into flowers are a serious tropical pest, and a long flowering period gives them more weeks to do damage.
The landrace parents in the Haze story came from latitudes like Thailand’s, including a Thai one. That makes the plant more at home here than in the Netherlands, but “less hostile” is not the same as easy. Topics 1073, 1325 and 1280 cover photoperiod, monsoon timing and budworm in detail.
The influence
Haze does not matter because it is a good strain. It matters because it is upstream of a large share of what is grown commercially.
Haze descendants commonly named in breeder and retailer listings include Super Silver Haze, Nevil’s Haze (sold as Haze-dominant; the percentages quoted for it are breeder claims), Amnesia Haze, Purple Haze and the NL#5 × Haze F1. Through those, Haze genetics are said to reach a very large number of modern hybrids, including much of the “Amnesia” and “Silver” family and a long list of later crosses that no longer carry Haze in the name.
The general pattern is that pure Haze was too slow and too tall for commercial indoor production. Breeders therefore crossed it again and again into indica-dominant lines to shorten flowering time while keeping the effect profile. As a result, Haze genetics survive almost everywhere in diluted form and almost nowhere in their original form.
How to read strain history generally
A few habits that will serve you well beyond this one cultivar:
Ask what the primary source is. Most strain histories online trace back to a small number of breeder interviews and blog posts from the 2000s, recycled. Following a claim back to its origin usually takes three clicks and often ends nowhere.
Distinguish the pedigree from the plant. A pedigree is a claim about ancestry. It says nothing about what is in the seed you bought.
Treat competition wins as dated events, not as quality grades.
Be suspicious of precision. An account that gives you exact percentages of landrace ancestry from an illegal 1970s breeding programme with no records is giving you arithmetic, not history.
Genetic testing exists now and has barely been applied to these questions. Published genomics shows why caution is warranted. Sawler et al. (2015, PLOS ONE) found that the reported sativa/indica ancestry of commercial strains correlated only moderately with their measured genetic structure. Lynch et al. (2016, Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences) identified at least three major genetic groups in Cannabis, each with its own cannabinoid and terpenoid profile. Neither paper settles the Haze pedigree. Until that work is done, strain history remains oral history and should be read as such.
Sources: High Times, “Nevil Schoenmakers, The Original Seed Bank Founder, Passes Away” (4 April 2019; dates of birth and death); Cannabis Cup winners list, Wikipedia “Cannabis Cup” (1989, 1993, 1997–1999 winners); Wikipedia “Sam the Skunkman” (move to the Netherlands, Haze); Sawler J. et al., “The Genetic Structure of Marijuana and Hemp”, PLOS ONE 2015, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133292; Lynch R.C. et al., “Genomic and Chemical Diversity in Cannabis”, Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 35(5–6):349–363, 2016; Alchimia Grow Shop, “The origins of Haze” (breeding sequence). The breeding sequence rests on breeder and retailer accounts; the Haze Brothers’ account is not independently documented.