How to Tell the Good Buds From the Bad: The Subtle Art of Cannabis Appreciation
To an unlearned person, all cannabis looks much alike, a wash of greenish colors and crystalline effects. But to the outsider who knows, there is much significance in every bud, whose qualities may reveal facts about it. Quality of a cannabis bud can not only be gauged by its potency but also by its balance of effects, aroma, feeling and structure. This makes the knowledge and the power to recognize it to be really an art or rather a quest of the senses, incorporating scientific principles with instinct.
1. Notice the Structure
Good cannabis will not crumble to pieces on being crushed nor will it have a damp spongy feeling. The structure of the bud discloses much as to its origin and culture. Indica buds: These are dense, heavy and usually pointed in shape. Sativa buds: These are light, airy and long. Hybrid buds: These have qualities of both. The best quality bud should recover to its previous shape with elasticity after being crushed, indicating proper moisture and careful curing.
2. Note the Trichomes
Trichomes — delicate, sparkling crystals — are the standard of quality. They contain the psycho active ingredients (cannabinoids and the subsequent simultaneous THC- type reductions) and the flavor constituents (terpenes). If under natural, prevailing light, the premium bud shows a sparkling, frost-like luster it indicates that this important quality of trichomes abounds. At close range, the heads of trichomes should appear like a cloudy or amber appearance, which means it is fully matured.
3. Scent the Scent.
The smell is the soul of cannabis. The high-class bud will have a complex and full aroma, pleasant like noisome citrus, earthy pine, or sweet like flowers. The varied aroma of cannabis is due to the presence of symbiotic terpenes. The consumer should glean the information of the growing process and it possible the names of the grower and variety through smell. A bud, especially of the “less quality type,” will reveal a dull, musty smell — which usually tells of improper curing or molding before confined. The discriminating cannabis smoker knows that in the aromatic qualities of the strain revealed by the mouth-nose is located its individuality, each strain having its own unique aroma potentially comparable with a frint (more oxygen in sample) trace on the fingerprint.
4. Check the Color and Composition
Trait | Good Bud | Poor Bud |
Color | Vibrant greens, purples, and orange pistils | Faded, brownish tones |
Trichomes | Abundant and glistening | Sparse or dull |
Aroma | Pungent, fresh, layered | Weak or moldy |
Texture | Sticky yet dry to the touch | Damp, brittle, or powdery |
5. Handle the Texture
Appropriate feel of bud will reveal a well-cured product with its sticky texture due to resin. It will crush easily without turning to powder. Wetly cured buds will be more liable to molding; on the other hand, the overdry kind will lack aromatic and potency value. Touching is one of the better indicators of quality and if it feels alive it generally is.
6. Note the Origin
Masses of high class bud comes from cannabis growers who practice growing as the artist, carefully cultivating each plant by slow curing, light-cycles, soil balances. The name and, where possible, origin of the strains of the different cultivators gives a real guarantee of quality in the individual product. Most good cannabis curers will try to give strain, chemistry, origin and other pertinent information of the large growers.
Finally: Experience above Appearance
This expert indication of good buds is not to be based so much upon visual examination alone as to obtaining a duality of well balanced presentation of quantity, aroma, and materially. A well grown-out flowering type of cannabis with good bud-like healing character (where it manifests individually and becomes a self defined ideal) will have the coherence and self conformity of an essential being, useful not alone as medicine wheel (the Historical Self) but also revealing an intrinsic internodal unity between plant and consumer, it is not speciated solely as a consumable. The grower should be experienced in the attunement of powers, feelings and characters peculiar to each plant variety used by growers and not be ignorant as in this way often is turned by aspiring amateurs, disclosing most things to influence and sense of overall artistic effort.
Next time you think by examining a bud of good cannabis, pause a moment — listen to its clarity with regard to morality. Here there lies hidden not alone the realm of potency, but the picture of growth, richness, cure and power of plant fillers.
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