Skunk: the history of a cultivar and what analysis says

16 September 202610 min readUpdated on 16 September 2026

The word "skunk" covers two objects that nothing obliges us to conflate. On one side Skunk #1, a cultivar born from the crossing of an Afghan line with Acapulco Gold and Colombian Gold, stabilised in California then distributed by the Dutch seed houses. On the other "skunk" on its own, a generic name used by the British press and by public reports to speak of cannabis high in THC. The Skunk flower in the catalogue belongs only to the first register: hemp with Δ⁹-THC below 0.3 %, batch PG-26-7188 measured at 14.3 % CBD.

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Contents

011. Skunk #1: a documented cross, a Californian selection
022. How "skunk" became a common noun
033. The two senses of the word, side by side
044. The French figures, and what they measure
055. The catalogue Skunk: a hemp, and its batch
066. What the batch analysis actually measures
07Frequently asked questions
08Sources

Few variety names have travelled as far, or drifted as much.

> Key points > > - Skunk #1 is a three-parent cross, stabilised in California between the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s. > - "Skunk" without a number refers, in the United Kingdom, to a product category and not to a variety. > - The 2004 European report recommends writing sinsemilla rather than skunk. > - The flower sold here is measured at 14.3 % CBD on batch PG-26-7188, Δ⁹-THC below 0.3 %.

1. Skunk #1: a documented cross, a Californian selection

1.1 Three origins brought together in one line

Open variety databases attribute Skunk #1 to the Californian collective Sacred Seed Co. The line brings together three geographical origins: an Afghan genetic, the Mexican Acapulco Gold and Colombian Gold. The selection aimed not at an aroma but at regularity: an offspring uniform from one generation to the next, where until then a packet of seeds gave dissimilar plants. It is that stabilisation, more than the cross itself, that earns Skunk #1 its place in the history of plant selection.

Open sources do not agree to the year. Leafly places the first flowering at the end of the 1970s; the English-language Wikipedia entry puts the appearance of these lines at the start of the 1980s in the United States, before their development on a larger scale by Dutch growers. Keeping the range rather than picking a side is the honest position.

1.2 The move to the Netherlands, then the drift of the name

The name crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 1980s. Leafly lists the descendants of the original Skunk #1 in the gardens of Sensi Seeds, Dutch Passion, Flying Dutchmen, Nirvana Seeds and Royal Queen Seeds. "Skunk" then became a handy prefix and suffix: Super Skunk, Lemon Skunk, Skunk Haze. The word stopped identifying a plant and came to designate a family, then a way of growing.

Five Kush flowers compared batch by batch show that a shared family name says nothing about the contents of a pouch.

2. How "skunk" became a common noun

2.1 The word enters British public vocabulary

In July 2007, the British Home Office asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to review the classification of cannabis. The report published in 2008, "Cannabis: Classification and Public Health", reproduces the terms of the referral: the concern bears on the most concentrated forms of the substance, "commonly known as skunk". There the word no longer designates a Californian cross, but a segment of the market.

The same report sorts the products available in the United Kingdom into three families: resin, so-called traditional herbal cannabis, and sinsemilla "including skunk". Its glossary defines sinsemilla as the flowering tops of unfertilised female plants grown in intensive indoor cultivation, and skunk as a form of sinsemilla with a characteristic smell. A variety name had become an administrative sub-category.

2.2 What the European Monitoring Centre holds against that vocabulary

Four years earlier, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction had already flagged the problem. Its report "An overview of cannabis potency in Europe", written by Leslie A. King and published in 2004, states that it reads as sinsemilla everything the literature calls "flowering tops", "nederwiet" or "skunk", and recommends using sinsemilla rather than those market names. The reason is methodological: a trade name carries no analytical definition.

The report also examines the figures then in circulation. It judges almost useless a 2004 press statement placing the most concentrated form, skunk, at 30 % THC, for want of knowing the low value, the mean or the size of the sample. The reproach bears not on the number but on the absence of a protocol behind it: exactly the logic of a batch certificate.

3. The two senses of the word, side by side

What the word covers	Skunk #1, the cultivar	"skunk", the generic name	Skunk, the catalogue page
Nature	a stabilised line	a product category	a hemp sold by the gram
Origin of the name	Californian selection, 1970-1980	British press and public reports	reuse of the line name
Defined by	a cross and generations of selection	a smell and a high THC content	a catalogue variety and an analysed batch
Cannabinoid put forward	none	THC	CBD
Reference figure	none	13.9 % THC median (2005)	14.3 % CBD, batch PG-26-7188
Δ⁹-THC	variable, outside the French framework	high by construction	strictly below 0.3 %

The 13.9 % median comes from a study taken up by the 2008 British report, on 452 samples handed over by five English police forces in 2005; the same work gives 3.5 % for resin and 2.1 % for traditional herbal cannabis. Figures from an illicit market, not from a catalogue.

4. The French figures, and what they measure

The OFDT publishes an annual review of the supply of narcotics. The edition covering 2024, published in February 2026, gives an average THC content of 29.6 % for resin seizures, against 15.9 % in 2012, a rise of 86 % over twelve years. For herbal cannabis, the OFDT puts the average content at 14.3 % in 2024, almost unchanged from the 14.1 % of 2023.

Those averages bear on seized products and say nothing about the hemp sold in shops, which falls under a distinct regime. The coincidence is nonetheless worth noting: 14.3 % is the average THC content of herbal cannabis seized in France in 2024, and it is also the CBD content of the batch of our Skunk. The same number, two unrelated molecules, two opposing legal frameworks. The hemp threshold is set out in what the 0.3 % limit actually covers.

5. The catalogue Skunk: a hemp, and its batch

The Skunk flower in the CBD flowers category is grown indoors, with no growth regulator and no synthetic pesticide. Its nose is woody and resinous, marked by beta-caryophyllene. The batch in stock carries the number PG-26-7188 and shows, by HPLC: 14.3 % CBD, 1.0 % CBG, 0.7 % CBDA, 0.3 % CBN, 0.0 % THCA, and a Δ⁹-THC shown at 0.3 % that the product page states to be strictly below the 0.3 % threshold. The price grid runs from €4.95 per gram to €1.92 at the 50 g tier.

The framework is that of the order of 30 December 2021, which restricts the sector to varieties of Cannabis sativa L. listed in the common catalogue or the French catalogue, with a Δ⁹-THC content that is not higher than 0.30 %, and of Conseil d'Etat decision no. 444887 of 29 December 2022, which annulled the ban on selling raw flowers. A non-food product, reserved for adults, which is not a medicinal product.

The consequence is the heart of this article: the Skunk sold here and the "skunk" of the British reports share nothing but five letters. Measured against Δ⁹-THC, the composition of this flower bears no relation to that of the sinsemilla samples in the literature. Leaving the doubt hanging would mislead in one direction as much as the other.

6. What the batch analysis actually measures

The batch is analysed by an independent laboratory accredited to ISO 17025, under four distinct methods.

HPLC, for the cannabinoid profile: this is where the 14.3 % CBD and the Δ⁹-THC line that conditions the legality of the batch come from.
GC-MS, for the terpenes: what makes the woody nose and the beta-caryophyllene dominance objective.
ICP-MS, for heavy metals, which the plant can accumulate from its substrate.
LC-MS/MS, for pesticide residues.

What remains is what none of these methods measures: genetic descent. No certificate says whether the plant really descends from the Californian Skunk #1. A variety name remains a commercial assertion that only a genetic analysis would verify, and that is absent from the file. Everything else can be checked line by line, and that is what the regulation looks at. The approach is set out on our laboratory; storage and shipping are gathered in the FAQ.

Frequently asked questions

Is Skunk a cultivar or a category?

Both, depending on the context, and that is the source of the confusion. Skunk #1 is a precise cultivar, a cross of an Afghan line, Acapulco Gold and Colombian Gold, stabilised in California between the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s. "Skunk" without a number became, in the British press and in public reports, a generic name for cannabis high in THC.

Does the catalogue Skunk flower contain much THC?

No. On batch PG-26-7188, Δ⁹-THC is shown at 0.3 % and the product page states it to be strictly below the 0.3 % threshold. The majority cannabinoid is CBD, measured at 14.3 % by HPLC. A composition with no relation to the sinsemilla samples of the British literature.

Why do British public reports use the word "skunk"?

Because the political referral used it. In July 2007, the request to review the classification, addressed to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, targeted the most concentrated forms of cannabis, "commonly known as skunk". The 2008 report took up the term and defined it in its glossary as a form of sinsemilla with a characteristic smell.

What is the CBD content announced on a Skunk page worth?

It is worth what the certificate that accompanies it is worth. A value with no batch number, no method and no accredited laboratory cannot be checked. Here, the 14.3 % refers to batch PG-26-7188, measured by HPLC in an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. A following batch will have its own values.

Sources

Written by the Phytogrammes team

Every article in this journal draws on primary sources (ANSM, EFSA, EUR-Lex, peer-reviewed publications) and on the lab's own practice: batch-by-batch HPLC analyses, measured cannabinoid profiles. Our approach.

Article published on 16 September 2026. CBD is not a medicine.