In the worlds of recreational and medicinal cannabis, everyone seems to be
talking about “Sativa” and “Indica.” This vernacular taxonomy of drug-type
Cannabishas gone viral. Enter“Sativa versus Indica”into Google, and the search
returns 45,000 hits. Please stay alert to the fact that“Sativa”and “Indica”in
quotation marks are not the same asC. sativaandC. indicawritten in italics.
“Sativa”and“Indica”have become sources of confusion (Small 2007 ; Erkelens and
Hazekamp 2014 ; McPartland 2014 ; Russo 2016 ). Hazekamp and Fischedick ( 2012 )
call for an alternative approach,“from cultivar to chemovar,”where plants are
identified by their chemicalfingerprint, rather than a whimsical name.
The goals for this chapter are four-fold: (1) review the formal botanical taxon-
omy ofC. sativaandC. indica; (2) trace the history of vernacular“Sativa”and
“Indica”and their misalignment withC. sativaandC. indica; (3) recognize dif-
ferences between“Sativa”and“Indica”in phytochemistry and genetics; (4) align
the vernacular taxonomy with the formal botanical taxonomy.
4.2 Formal Botanical Nomenclature:C. sativa
Linnaeus namedC. sativainSpecies Plantarum,the starting point for botanical
nomenclature (Linnaeus 1753 ).C. sativa in the strict sense,sensu stricto, is
demarcated by Linnaeus’s protologue. TheInternational Code of Nomenclature
(ICN)defines a protologue as everything associated with a taxonomic name at its
first valid publication. It includes the species’s description, synonymy, and
herbarium specimens (McNeill 2012 ).
Linnaeus’s protologue ofC. sativais described in full for thefirst time by
McPartland and Guy ( 2017 ). It is abstracted here: Linnaeus’s description was
exceptionally brief: a generic account offlower parts, which applies equally to any
plant ever describe in the genusCannabis(Linnaeus 1753 , 1754 ). Linnaeus listed
four synonyms:C. foliis digitatis, C. mas, C. erratica, C. femina;andfive authors
who used those names: himself, Dalibard, van Royen, d’Aléchamps, and Bauhin.
The authors and their synonyms delimitC. sativato plants from northern Europe.
His herbarium specimens also came from northern Europe. Linnaeus’s type
specimen ofC. sativais stored at the Linnaeus herbarium (Fig.4.1). The seeded
pistillate plant’s morphology is consistent with a northern Europeanfiber-type
landrace. Its inflorescences are loose, not dense; subtendingfloral leaves have a
sparse covering of sessile glandular trichomes; perigonal bracts that enclose ach-
enes (seeds) have a relatively sparse covering of capitate stalked glandular
(CSG) trichomes. Evidence by Stern ( 1974 ) indicates that Linnaeus collected the
specimen in Sweden. OtherC. sativaspecimens collected by Linnaeus and stored at
the British Museum are consistent with“the old cultivated hemp stock of northern
Europe”(Stern 1974 ).
Linnaeus notably excluded Asian plants from theC. sativaprotologue. He
certainly knew about AsianCannabis. Sixteen years earlier, Linnaeus ( 1737 ) cited
six authors who assigned names to psychoactive AsianCannabis: C. Bauhin
102 J.M. McPartland