OG Kush CBD: the history, and what the name really tells you

No document dates its birth: three growers' accounts, told years later, place it in Florida in 1991, in California between late 1993 and 1995, or near Lake Tahoe in 1996.

The Florida account rules out Chemdawg, which all the others place at the plant's origin, and SeedFinder now presents the Lake Tahoe and California accounts as its old information, which it calls wrong. No catalogue and no kept sample dates any of these steps. The variety spread as cuttings passed from hand to hand, so there is no original seed to analyse and no certified pedigree. Lemon Haze went through the same oral history before reaching the catalogues.

"Kush" refers to the Hindu Kush, between Afghanistan and Pakistan; our comparison explains what Kush means. "OG" remains unclear: Leafly gives "Original Gangster" and "Ocean Grown", Sensi Seeds wavers between the two, and the California account places the nickname in southern Los Angeles County around 1995.

Its popularity, at least, can be counted: in December 2023 OG Kush had 4,203 reviews on Leafly, among the ten most-reviewed strains of a database that listed 7,037 (Yoon et al., 2026), which says nothing about consumption.

Many descendants are attributed to it, among them Girl Scout Cookies, Headband, Skywalker OG and Strawberry Kush, and Leafly names phenotypes such as Tahoe OG, SFV OG and Ghost OG. These pedigrees come from breeders or databases, with no published genetic analysis to check them.

It shows that the name does not refer to a single plant: although it is said to spread as cuttings, OG Kush yields samples that are barely related to one another.

In 2019 a team at the University of Northern Colorado genotyped 122 samples of 30 strains from dispensaries in Colorado, California and Washington State. Just 4 of the 30 strains were genetically consistent across outlets, 11 when one outlier sample was left out, 15 when two were.

OG Kush, which the authors class as "clone only" after SeedFinder, had four samples there, from Denver, Fort Collins, Garden City and San Luis Obispo: a mean relatedness of 0.13, then 0.25 without the most distant one, whereas, on the authors' scale, clones exceed 0.9 and first-order relatives fall between 0.46 and 0.89. Chemdawg, the supposed parent, was more uniform: 0.42 on average across seven samples, six of them first-order relatives. The authors consider its history unverifiable, and the study does not test the link between the two. We found no study that tests it: on 28 October 2026 Europe PMC returned 36 records mentioning "OG Kush", and the 3 that also mention Chemdawg, parentage or pedigree do not put the lineage to the test.

In 2022 the same team compared eight samples sold as OG Kush in Colorado at ten genetic markers. Two were identical (1.00), two more nearly so (0.91), and the other pairs ranged from 0.06, a low relatedness, to 0.75. Smelled by 55 people, four of these flowers had similar earthy, herbal and woody scents, except the genetic outlier, which smelled more of cheese and wood and less of tea.

A study published in 2021 in Nature Plants compared more than 100 samples genotyped at more than 100,000 markers. It cites OG Kush as an example: two samples with the same name were often as genetically and chemically distant as two samples with different names.

Indica or sativa?

None of these sources says how its figure was arrived at. In 2019 the genetic groups did not match the sativa, hybrid and indica categories of online databases, and in 2021 nothing at genome scale separated samples labelled "indica" from those labelled "sativa". Our article on indica and sativa goes through these results.

The published panels of 2018 and 2022 describe it first as earthy, herbal and woody, which only partly matches the "lemon, pine, fuel" that Leafly announces. The "OG" suffix does not fix the smell: in 2018 another "OG" fell among the citrus strains.

That year, Gilbert and DiVerdi had 61 people with no training in sensory analysis smell 13 samples of 11 strains from two Fort Collins dispensaries, ticking a list of 48 words. For OG Kush the most ticked were "earthy", "herbal" and "woody", then "flowery", "sage" and "nutty": it fell among the earthy smells, and Snoop OG among the citrus ones. In 2022 the four OG Kush samples joined a group with the same three leading words.

Leafly, which says its data come from products tested in labs it certifies, puts myrcene ahead of limonene and caryophyllene, with no published method and no reference sample to check it against. Our guide to terpenes presents these molecules.

In 2022 a study in PLOS ONE sorted 42,843 commercial samples from six US states into three families: caryophyllene and limonene, myrcene and pinene, terpinolene and myrcene. Trade names generally matched these families poorly, though some held steady: every "Dogwalker OG" fell into the caryophyllene and limonene group. Some credit these terpenes with a role in the effects, through an "entourage effect": that is a hypothesis still under debate.

By crossing an OG Kush-type line, high in THC, with a CBD-rich plant, then selecting. According to a model published in 2003, the THC to CBD ratio depends mainly on a single locus: the first generation gives only mixed plants, and at least one more generation is needed to get CBD-dominant plants.

A system proposed in 1973 classes plants by their content (Monti et al., 2022); type II, the intermediate one, contains similar amounts of THC and CBD.

A University of Basel team determined the content of three OG Kush plants grown from cuttings in a Swiss greenhouse in 2020 under a research authorisation (Monti et al., 2022): 8.68% THCA, the acid form of THC, CBDA below the limit of quantification and no CBD detected, which is chemotype I. These figures hold for those three plants only.

By crossing pure-CBD and pure-THC plants, de Meijer and colleagues obtained only mixed plants, which, once selfed, gave pure-CBD, mixed and pure-THC plants in a 1:2:1 ratio, hence their model of one locus with two codominant alleles. In 2021 the genome of CBDRx, a CBD-dominant cultivar, came 89% from drug-type lines, yet its CBDA synthase gene came from hemp and it had no complete THCA synthase gene (Grassa et al.). A CBD flower can thus keep a drug-type pedigree and its name, without the name telling you what it inherited from OG Kush, or even whether it descends from it.

The word "CBD" guarantees nothing either: Medical Seeds announces 12% THC and 12% CBD for its "OG Kush CBD" seed ("OG Kush × Medical CBD"), which is chemotype II at 40 times the French ceiling of 0.30%. Only a batch certificate of analysis tells you the composition.

The texts target the plant and its content, without mentioning the trade name. A high-THC OG Kush falls under the cannabis ban; a hemp flower sold under that name is authorised only if it comes from a catalogue variety, at no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC. Texts consulted between 20 and 28 October 2026.

Cannabis and its resin are listed, with no distinction between varieties, in annex I of the order of 22 February 1990 setting the list of controlled drugs. Article R5132-86 of the French Public Health Code bans, among other things, their production, possession, transfer, acquisition and use. The penalties are set out in our article on French cannabis law.

For hemp, Article 1 of the order of 30 December 2021 authorises only varieties listed in the catalogue, the EU common catalogue or the official French one, at no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC. Flowers and leaves must come from certified seed, the sale of plants and the practice of taking cuttings are banned, and only active farmers may grow flowers and leaves. Section III applies the same ceiling to extracts and the products that contain them. The legal THC level and the EU framework have their own article.

Section II banned the sale of raw flowers and leaves to consumers. The Conseil d'État annulled it on 29 December 2022 (decision no. 444887, Article 3). In the same decision it notes that, on current scientific data, CBD "ne présente pas de propriétés psychotropes" (has no psychotropic properties).

Hence a paradox: OG Kush owes its legend to cuttings, and French law bans taking cuttings from hemp, a ban the Conseil d'État upheld on 26 March 2025 by rejecting a challenge (decision no. 489210). An "OG Kush CBD" grown lawfully in France therefore cannot come from a cutting: it must come from certified seed of a catalogue variety, whatever name it is sold under. CBD seeds have their own article.

To know what a flower sold as "OG" contains, you have to read its batch analysis. In our catalogue, four "OG" flowers are described by four different terpenes, and these descriptions are not measurements: as of 28 October 2026, none of their pages publishes a certificate of analysis, and their terpene figures are presented there as example values.

The highlighted terpene changes on every row: a name only signals the family a flower claims.

Four checks tell you more than the name:

1. The batch certificate of analysis, to request from the seller: Δ⁹-THC is determined on each harvest. Our guide to reading a certificate of analysis lists the lines to look at.
2. The terpene profile, where published, since it describes smell and taste.
3. The harvest date, because terpenes evaporate as the months pass.
4. Whether name and description agree: an "OG" sold as fruity strays from the earthy, woody profile that the panels describe.

The aroma profile of each variety is given in our CBD flower selection, and our comparison of five Kush strains sets OG among its relatives.

Sources consulted between 20 and 28 October 2026; the dates below are publication dates. The origin accounts are testimonies with no primary source, and our product pages describe without measuring.

• SeedFinder (relayed testimonies) and Leafly: changing databases. Sensi Seeds and Medical Seeds: seller declarations, undated.
• Schwabe and McGlaughlin, Journal of Cannabis Research: 2019. Schwabe et al., Frontiers in Psychology: 2022; PLOS ONE: 2023.
• Gilbert and DiVerdi, PLOS ONE: 2018. Smith et al., PLOS ONE: 2022. Watts et al., Nature Plants: 2021.
• de Meijer et al., Genetics: 2003. Grassa et al., New Phytologist: 2021. Monti et al., Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry: 2022.
• Yoon et al., JMIR Formative Research: 2026. Europe PMC, "OG Kush" searches: 28 October 2026.
• French Public Health Code, Article R5132-86; orders of 22 February 1990 and 30 December 2021; Conseil d'État, no. 444887 (29 December 2022) and no. 489210 (26 March 2025).
• Phytogrammes, Skywalker OG, Alien OG, OG Mint and Strawnana OG product pages: recorded on 28 October 2026.