So, funny story about the weed in that picture up above. It’s from 1973, and the picture is out of a High Times magazine. And the weed in the picture is currently at Steep Hill Laboratory in Oakland, California. In my strangely enigmatic travels I came across the gentleman whose hand is in this picture, and he took a liking to me. It turns out he was a distributor/rep for one of the earliest publishing companies handling cannabis cultivation.

He was responsible for the delivery of thousands of copies of, as he told me, “The book that taught everyone how to grow sinsemilla. It was a strategy for growers to get more for what they were growing because if there was less seeds, it meant it was more flowers to the weight. But, I feel like there is something very different about weed that’s been able to go through the full life cycle. I don’t know that un-seeded weed is necessarily better.”

Toby (that’s not his real name because I’m not gonna blow up dude’s spot and use his real name) is an older guy, in his late fifties or early sixties. He’s about 5’10″ with a mustache, and glasses. He paints, and drives an old school Volvo wagon. He’s a cool laid back guy. He would fit right into a poster of iconic middle-aged California dudes. If it were a calendar of said fellows he’d probably be June, or September. Anyways, I certainly trust him, and he has no reason to lie to me. So, when he told me that he had cannabis samples from 1973 I immediately thought of Steep Hill. And when I told Steep Hill they took interest immediately. “We’d love to be able to run some tests on something like that.” When I proposed the idea to Toby he was into it.

I didn’t see Toby around for a few months after that and when I finally did catch him again he told that he’d be moving. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be running into him anymore, as we’d had some enjoyable conversations in the past. But, he made sure to get me some of his untouched stash from long ago. When he handed it over he explained that the stuff he was giving me had also appeared in a photo in one of the books he had distributed. He then gave me a copy of the book, and pointed out the page where it appeared. There in 70′s dot matrix color was the same flower almost 40 years ago. He then handed me a copy of High Times magazine and pointed out another more-accurately colored version of the image.

When I took the sample to the lab we joked that if you smoked it you wouldn’t get high, you would just enter into some kind of wormhole through time and have a crazy weed sensei shaman experience. They ran it through a brand new testing technology that I’m not allowed to talk about with any degree of specificity (I signed a non-disclosure agreement to be able to see this thing), but it’s gonna have a serious affect on how testing takes place. Which brings me to what is perhaps the most exciting part of this post: the giveaway.

Of course the whole reason for taking this ancient sample to Steep Hill was to try and get an idea of what cannabis was like at an earlier stage in its genetic development. That development has, of course, been thoroughly affected by the last 40 years of human-helmed breeding. What are the more ancient genetic lines like? And more specifically what does the cannabinoid profile look like? We want you to guess. You don’t have to be exact, and you don’t really have to know shit about anything. With a little bit of basic research I’m sure you can find some accurate estimates, but it’s not gonna be that easy. We need you to guess the THC percentage down to the second decimal. So, for example that would be: “9.99″. Whoever gets the closest–whether you’re over or under–will win a High Times Cannabis Cup 2011 T-Shirt, Tote Bag, and an Incredibowl, the award-winning pipe that took Best Product at this year’s Cannabis Cup.

Send your guesses to: weedzach{ at }g__maildotcom. We’ll announce the winner next week. Contest is over stoners.

- Zachg