Jack Herer, also known as “JH,” “The Jack,” “Premium Jack,” and “Platinum Jack” is a sativa-dominant marijuana strain that has gained as much renown as its namesake, the marijuana activist and author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Combining a Haze hybrid with a Northern Lights #5 and Shiva Skunk cross, Sensi Seeds created Jack Herer strain hoping to capture both cerebral elevation and heavy resin production. Its rich genetic background gives rise to several different variations of Jack Herer, each phenotype bearing its own unique features and effects.
Jack Herer’s effects include feeling energetic, creative, and uplifted. Consumers typically describe this 55% sativa hybrid as blissful, clear-headed, and creative. Jack Herer was created in the Netherlands in the mid 1990s, where it was later distributed by Dutch pharmacies as a recognized medical-grade strain. Since then, this spicy, pine-scented strain has taken home numerous awards for its quality and potency.
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I have literally no idea why, nearly 25 years after Jack Herer’s exact genetics were revealed, that there are still so many online sources – including reputable ones such as Leafly – that continue to perpetuate the myth that Shiva Skunk was one of the parents of Jack Herer, which had always been an assumption in the first place. Yet even after Nevil & Sensi Seeds revealed the precise genetics & history of the plant, there are still so much incorrect information online, as well as a significant number of people that continue to believe that Jack Herer contains Shiva Skunk. Sensi Seeds very clearly stated that Jack Herer’s heritage consisted of (Northern Lights #5 x Haze A) x (Skunk #1 x Haze C). The exact version of NL5/Haze used was the very first version of that legendary cross – Nevil’s late 1980s (Northern Lights #5 x Haze A), which produced the holy grail known as Piff aka Cuban Black Haze, as well as the S1 seeds that later produced Karma’s legendary A5 Haze, the closest living relative of either of Nevil’s tragically lost Haze A & Haze C males. The same has been confirmed by Nevil. THERE IS NO SHIVA SKUNK IN JACK HERER!
Nevil spent years working hard to isolate the desirable traits, & to breed out the garbage genetics present in the Haze Brother’s legendary & unimaginably valuable, yet very genetically inconsistent Santa Cruz Original Haze aka O Haze, the 1970s F1 cross of three phenomenal, yet totally raw Colombian landrace Sativas.
In its original form, O Haze seeds resulted in very high quality offspring about 50% of time, & decent offspring 25% of the time. The final 25% of its offspring occasionally had some desirable traits, but would produce total garbage plants – worthless offspring, with mostly undesirable, poor quality genetics. Genes left over from the genetics of the original landraces used to breed the O Haze.
To make matters worse, the O Haze offspring all require 20-24 weeks to flower, with some traits apparent early in their development cycles, but the ultimate quality of the plants grown from O Haze seeds really only apparent after the plant had finished blooming, been harvested, dried, trimmed, cured, & the buds smoked. Whether or not the offspring was quality or not, depended almost entirely on traits that were only apparent after smoking the flower.
O Haze remained totally inconsistent for nearly a decade, until Nevil spent the greater part of the late 1980s working several generations of O Haze, in order to breed the mediocre & poor quality traits that remained in its genetic profile out of Haze, selecting only the plants that expressed the most desirable qualities as parents for each subsequent filial generation.
After 3-4 years of selective breeding, Nevil finally succeeded in producing two Haze males, both with very different characteristics, yet which each expressed concentrated, high quality desirable genetic traits of the O Haze, with little to none of the garbage genetics that were present in the genetics of the Haze Brothers’ Original Haze. These were the Haze A and Haze C males, & while both have been lost, they were both extremely crucial plants in the history of cannabis hybrids.
Either one or both of the Haze A and Haze C males form the backbone of several of the greatest hybrids ever bred, including Nevil’s Diesel, Neville’s Haze, Jack Herer, Super Silver Haze, Mango Haze, Afghan Haze, Skunk Haze, G13 Haze, the Amnesia Hy-Pro cut of Super Silver Haze, & so many more vital plants in the history of cannabis breeding, and the majority of Nevil & Shantibaba’s late ‘90s-2000s breeding work for Shantibaba’s Mr. Nice Genetics used them, including arguably the very best work Mr. Nice released after Super Silver Haze & Mango Haze: the Haze AC ~ (NL5 x Haze A) x (Skunk #1 x Haze C) – (those genetics look very familiar). While the Haze AC was never released to the public, it served as the male parent in Mr. Nice’s series of crosses named after famous rock bands: The Doors, The Stones, The Cure, Pink Floyd, & U2. The Doors in particular is supposed to be a holy grail cross, consisting of Nevil’s original version of (Northern Lights #5 x Haze A) x Haze AC. It’s not an easy plant to find, although there may be some packs of unpopped seeds in collectors’ seed fridges, a few packs still available from certain European Seed Banks, & there’s definitely a clone of The Doors that’s not easy to find, but definitely pops up occasionally in the stock of some clone resellers. I last saw it for sale about 6 months ago from a US clone bank, so it’s definitely still floating around.
The Super Sativa Seed Company used the Haze A and Haze C males fairly extensively, as did several other Amsterdam based breeders before the plants were lost for good.
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We have the ‘love & hate’ relationship, me and Jack. It’s a legendary strain and when you smoke it, you just know this is some oldschool, powerful stuff. The era of weed when each strain had it’s own, unique effects. But let’s start with it’s smell and taste. The smell is and always will be an absolute abomination. It smells like old rotting herbs lying in Skunk’s funk. It makes you almost dizzy how powerful is that smell. The taste is not THAT horrible… but it’s still not very good hahah let’s be honest. It tastes like if someone made a joint of earth, herbs and skunk’s musk. Now the effects! Jack is very “sunshine-y” you feel like your mind is opened to some greater knowledge. Very cerebral. Like the windows to your head would be opened after some long time. Could be almost psychedelic, unique and I really wouldn’t recommend it to newbies. It makes your eyes and throat extremely dry and is not usable for pain-relieving purposes. It’s an oldschool, powerful and UNIQUE strain which if you try once, you remember it forever. It’s a window to a different times of weed.
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Was recommended this legend, and I typically don’t like Sativa Hybrids because they can cause me to bug a bit, but this is deeeeeelightful. While I can’t say I’m a fan of the smell, and the taste (for me) is generally a black pepper/earth flavor, the effects are sublime. A gentle lift, a burst of energy, and then it’s just clear-headed, relaxed, calmness. Not stoney feeling, or locked at all. Great for reading, listening to music, cleaning, or really anything you just need to focus on. My new daytime favorite for when I can’t find The Soap.