The Eden icon legend
A shorthand for picking cannabis by what it actually smells and tastes like, rather than by a strain name that tells you nothing.
Three dimensions do the work: flavour group, terpene type, and cannabinoid content.
Why flavour groups
The flavour of a cannabis plant comes from its terpenes, the aromatic compounds it produces to attract pollinators. Every plant carries several at once, each with its own smell, and what reaches your nose is the blend rather than any one of them.
Describing it works the way describing whisky works. There are notes and hints, the sensation shifts across a breath, and the same jar can read as subtle to one person and overwhelming to another. Think of the groups as neighbourhoods of smell rather than exact addresses.
The fuel group
Burning rubber in the distance. Petrol on your shorts. Something a car got the better of. This family is unmistakable and specific to cannabis.
It can be a lot for a nose that has not met it before, and it is the one regular smokers most often come back looking for, in the way a strong cheese works on people who already like strong cheese.
The other six groups
Purple covers strains that show rich purple in their buds, leaves or stems. They are commonly sweet, with berry or grape on the nose and sometimes an earthy or floral note underneath.
Fruit is about hint notes of blueberry, strawberry or banana: subtle, and sometimes arriving in the back half of the inhale. Citrus is bright and zesty, with lemon, orange, tangerine or lime, usually from terpenes like limonene, terpinolene and valencene.
Sweet is candy sugar rather than fruit sugar, the first bite of vanilla ice cream. Pine is a walk through a pine forest in the morning dew, or the smell of cut grass. Sour is the juice of a Meyer lemon, or the tang of pickled red onion.
Terpene types
Terpenes are not unique to cannabis, and there are several ways to extract them while keeping the nose of the strain. The terpene type tells you which one a product used.
Live cannabis terpenes are drawn from the plant while it is still alive, by steam distillation, a method pioneered in Alameda County and reputed to be the freshest expression of cannabis in the field. Live resin is a preserved collection of the plant's oils, terpenes, flavours and aromas, like a fingerprint of the strain.
Live rosin is pressed from the flower bud and keeps its full spectrum of cannabinoids, flavonoids and terpenes. Botanical terpenes are supplemented with essential oils from plants other than cannabis.
Reading it with the cannabinoid number
Flavour tells you what the experience smells and tastes like. The cannabinoid figure on the label tells you the potency. They are independent: a jar can be loud on the nose and modest on the number, or the reverse.
The legend marks seven cannabinoids: THC, CBD, CBN, CBG, THCa, THCv and Delta 8 THC.
Ask whoever is on the floor to open a jar. That is the whole point of buying flower in person.
