ways, each getting specific benefits from the other.
I write this book because symbiosis is a very interesting biological phenomenon. In the past century, symbiosis between living things on this planet has merited the attention of leading biologists everywhere. Symbiosis appears to be something much greater, and with more intricacy, than we previously realized.
Throughout everyday existence we take many things for granted. A lot of the time when we stop to examine these things we get a surprise. For instance, the origin of living things was once a mystery, but Darwin and Wallace solved this in the middle of the nineteenth century. The solution to this puzzle was natural selection, a mechanism (essentially an algorithm of non-random mating plus genetic diversity) driving biological evolution from its early primordial molecular form up to all the diversity we see in life today. Biologists continue to confirm this amazing discovery; symbiosis has an important role to play in it.
Cannabis enthusiasts take for granted that they like cannabis, but do they know that cannabis also likes them? That is symbiosis. We, as humans, sometimes have the tendency to see things from our own point of view. Imagine seeing things from another. Describe what the earth would look like from the point of view of the moon. Visualize how a stone would seem from the point of view of a sparrow. Picture what the world looks like from the point of view of cannabis. Think about how cannabis sees you.
Cannabis happens to be one of our earliest symbiotic plant partners with use throughout our ancestry. These relatives, through to us, have used cannabis in a variety of ways. We have bred cannabis by selection. Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection was based on environmental pressures influencing genetic variability creating, basically, all of biology. Natural selection promotes fitness, selecting genes that do best in the environment in which they are found. In evolution, gradualism, over long periods of time (at least 3 billion years: 3 x 109 years, or 3,000,000,000) produces the kind of complexity we find in living things, making them appear as if they have been engineered by intelligence. On closer examination of these complexities we find that nature is, in fact, more than capable of this task.
Experimentation is a great thing.
I have been interested in creating the best possible access to cannabis cultivation information for a long time. In 2000, I began to work extensively on compiling a text with a whole new view of cannabis cultivation.This work culminated in the production of the first edition of the Cannabis Grow Bible, published in 2003. The importance of its influence can be seen in cannabis cultivation and books that followed in its wake. I put this revolution down to a few things. The first is that I genuinely wanted to present readers with correct information as opposed to pseudoscience. I feel that the Cannabis Grow Bible is a landmark correction that separates cannabis cultivation mythology from cannabis cultivation reality. Next, I had to deal with putting forward the best reality possible.That meant rediscovering how cannabis cultivation should be done. Not only that, but I had to present the best way of generating the best results. It wasn’t long before I realized that genetics had to play a major role in this.
Explaining genetics to people is not easy, but it is not too difficult either and the rewards for doing so are both intellectually stimulating and very productive. I not only wanted the reader to learn about genetics, I wanted the grower to feel genetics. Without electron microscopes we haven’t a hope of seeing genes themselves, but we can see and understand their phenotypes (how those genes are expressed in the way an organism appears to us).
It isn’t enough just to understand basic genetics though; you have to understand it in terms of how you can get the most from it, learning to work with it as a potter does with clay. I can’t say that regular grow books, such as ones about growing tomatoes, have not had an impact on cannabis cultivation; they have. I suspect, however, that the popularity of cannabis cultivation has had a greater impact on tomato growing.
The development of growing is evolutionary, from hunters and gatherers to farmers. Symbiotically, humans have always lived with and worked with cultivated plants. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have made it as a race, and we wouldn’t be here to read this. I believe we should all have the genes for a green thumb. Anyone who thinks they can’t grow only needed better guidance about it. I hope this book will provide that guidance.
Moreover, I believe that reading this book will be a deeply satisfying experience. I want every page to give you something that you didn’t know. Returning readers from the first edition will come across equally exciting new material.
I believe that the combination of good genetics and understanding the cannabis plant holds the key to successful cultivation. This is not only true for cannabis, but for any type of cultivation project, and even domestic breeding programs for other organisms.
I hope, as an author, that what I write will have an enduring impression. The first edition of the Cannabis Grow Bible has not been short-lived. The second edition is an update with new material. The encouragement that I need to continue this project is found in the results that have been generated.There has been little contemporary criticism of my approach and it seems that the orientation of this book toward genetics has put an end to opposing points of view.
Long live this new direction. It is called the “Gene-centered view”. May your fruits be bountiful thanks to this applied gene selection theory.
1
The Cannabis Plant
A Brief History of Cannabis
Cannabis has been growing on this planet for thousands, maybe millions of years, since quite some time before human intervention. Cannabis can be grown nearly anywhere, as long as the temperature is not consistently cold and there is enough sunlight and food for the plant to flourish. In Asia, you can travel to various regions around Mongolia and visit the cannabis plant growing naturally on hillsides and across vast plains, sometimes covering entire hill faces and spreading across the valley below. The origins of cannabis are not entirely clear, but biologists and cannabis researchers generally agree that the plant first took root somewhere in the Himalayas. The evidence for this conclusion is found in cannabis’ paleobotanical record.1
Cannabis Paleobotany
Support for the theory that cannabis began its life in the Himalayas comes from historical record. Paleobotany is a branch of paleontology that deals with plant fossils and ancient vegetation. Palynology is the scientific study of spores and pollen. Cannabis fossil evidence is accessible in the form of plant fibers, pollen grains, seed remains, trichome remains, and artificial compounds found at locations of archaeological interest. An abundance of primordial pollen grains have been recovered from many European sites. Asia has lots of cannabis plant impressions on ancient pieces of ceramics, along with seed remains. Africa and Europe have some incinerated residue or ash deposits but the instances are rare. Cannabis trichomes remain the best possible paleobotanical evidence for cannabis’ history because they do not decompose quickly. Ancient trichome remnants have been analyzed for cannabinoid content and can be matched with specific cannabis plant populations.2
Map of Asia: the square indicates where cannabis is believed to have originated.
Mankind
