Flower 101: how to read the label.

A cannabis label packs a lot into a few lines. A strain name, a percentage with two decimal places, a word like indica or hybrid. None of it is hard to read once someone explains it. This guide walks through every line on our label, so the next time you're standing at the case you know exactly what you're looking at.

What a strain even is

A strain is a named variety of the cannabis plant, the same way Honeycrisp is a named variety of apple. One species, different genetics. Those genetics decide how the plant smells, how it tastes, and what kind of high it leans toward. Growers cross two varieties, keep the seedling they like best, and name it. There is no naming authority, which is why some strain names sound elegant and others sound like inside jokes.

The grower matters as much as the genetics. The same strain raised by two different farms can come out noticeably different, because genetics set the range and the grow decides where the flower lands inside it. About half of what's in our flower case we grew ourselves, indoors, seed to jar. The room stays sanitized and the climate stays under our control, which is how a strain comes out the same way twice. The rest of the case is other brands we chose because we liked what was in the jar.

Indica, sativa, hybrid

One of these three words shows up on every label. The folk version says indica sits you down, sativa gets you moving, and a hybrid lands somewhere in between. As shorthand on a shelf, it works. It also runs looser than most people assume. When researchers genotyped about a hundred samples in 2021 and ran full chemical panels on them, the labels lined up mostly with a few aroma compounds, myrcene above all, which is probably how the shorthand earned its reputation in the first place. Nearly everything grown today is a hybrid of some kind, so plenty of flower plays against its own category. There are indicas that spark conversation and sativas that end the night early. Ask anyone who's worked a counter for a season and they'll have examples.

The word points at the plant's family tree and at the general direction it leans. Treat it like red versus white on a wine list. A fair place to start, with the sharper information sitting a little lower on the label.

The THC number

THC is the compound that gets you high, and the percentage says how much of it the batch carried when the lab tested it. That number tells you your dose. Divide the price per gram by the percentage and you get what you're paying per milligram of THC, which is the honest way to line two jars up against each other. It measures quantity, the way alcohol content does on a beer. A 9% stout and a 5% lager tell you how to pace yourself, and they say nothing about which one you'd order twice.

Potency also flattens out toward the top end. In a 2020 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers put regular consumers on flower in the teens and twenties alongside concentrates testing 70 to 90 percent. Blood levels came out worlds apart. How high people said they felt landed in nearly the same place. So the step from 24% up to 27% moves the dose math, and the rest of your evening comes down to what else is in the jar. Flower in the teens rides gentler, anything close to 30 deserves a slow start, and most of what you'll see on our menu tests in the twenties, which is what healthy indoor plants produce.

Terpenes

Terpenes are the compounds that give each strain its smell, and they're the reason two jars testing the same THC come across as different products. Limonene smells like citrus. Myrcene smells earthy. Pinene smells like a cut Christmas tree. About twenty of them show up in flower in any real quantity, and you don't need to memorize one, because your nose already speaks the language. Open a jar and love what you smell? That's a preview.

Smell is the part we know for certain. There's real evidence terpenes shape the rest of the experience too. Caryophyllene, the peppery one, binds a cannabinoid receptor in the body, which researchers established back in 2008. It's a receptor out in the body rather than the one in your head that gets you high, so caryophyllene isn't making anything stronger. In a 2024 double-blind trial at Johns Hopkins, people inhaling vaporized THC with limonene added reported less of the anxiety THC can bring on, and the high itself came through unchanged. Past those two, the work on myrcene, pinene, and linalool is mostly animal studies, so when we say a strain runs heavy or bright, that's what we hear from customers and what we notice ourselves. Bodies differ. The same jar lands two ways on two people, and yours is the only one that gets a vote.

Shopping by smell sounds unscientific until you remember it's the same chemistry the lab measures, read through your nose instead of a report. Every write-up on our strains page names the leading terpenes, so you can put words to what your nose already decided.

Reading our label line by line

Time to put all of it together on a real jar from our shelf. Take Boofscotti, one we grew. Top to bottom, the label gives you:

• The name and the type. Boofscotti, an indica. There's your family tree.
• Total THC. 27.79%. Strong, near the top of our case.
• The terpenes. Limonene out front, which promises citrus in the nose and a brighter ride than the number alone would suggest.

Now hold that against Johnny Boy, an indica testing 26.51% with myrcene leading. On paper the two sit a point apart. In practice they're different evenings. Boofscotti comes on loud and citrusy, Johnny Boy settles in earthy and heavy. The THC line can't show you that. The terpene line just did.

What to ask at the counter

The label gets you most of the way. The person behind it gets you the rest. Half the case is flower we grew, and we hand-picked the other half, so ask us anything. Our budtenders can walk you through any label on the shelf. Ask what a strain smells like out of the jar. Ask what the staff takes home on a Friday. Tell us the best high you've ever had and we'll work backwards from there. No purchase required, and no such thing as a dumb question. Want the lab results on a specific batch? Ask and we'll pull them up at the counter.

Prefer to do your homework first? The menu shows what's in the case right now, and the rest of our guides cover pre-rolls, edibles, concentrates, and the rest of the shelf. Stay couth.