I have been wondering about the alleged Thai component in NL5. I'm sure I've read in numerous places over the years (books, magazines, online strain bases, etc.) that NL5 was 20% Thai sativa, 80% Afghani. Glad to finally have that cleared up, after all these years. Thanks musashi!
Cheers! - FF
I no longer participate in the RIU forum but a couple years ago the asshat from Authentic Genetics posted a fluff/marketing piece on the history of Northern Lights, trying to hawk his seeds. With my Bullshit Detector pegged in the red, I did a deep dive into my old archives for everything that I had saved over the years on Northern Lights, both in this forum and IC Mag. If you are interested in what the people who developed Northern Lights actually wrote in forum posts about its development (most of which have been deleted both here and on IC Mag), check out this link, but I most assuredly don't recommend this over-moderated, newbie run forum:
Facts are cool. But speculation has no place in history. My biggest beef is with writers trying to create cannabis icons. High times, skunk, grow mags... Are all for greenhorn greenthumbs. Such speculations as... ' For a long time the true story about the origin of Northern Lights was never...
rollitup.org
It's a hell of a long read, but these are cut and paste quotes _directly_ from NL Seattle Greg and Nevil. If you have the patience to wade through it all, what you'll find is that older people's memory is sometimes not totally accurate, to say the least. Both Neville and NL Seattle Greg posted varying and conflicting accounts on the exact nature of the numbering system, how they obtain seeds, etc.
As someone who has worked exclusively with Sensi's Northern Lights for almost 25 years now, here's what I know: Sensi's Northern Lights was a combo of #2 and #5 that was directly and actively worked by Nevil. Exactly where he sourced #5 is anybody's guess, given the conflicting stories that have been posted but the fact that he tried to back door NL Seattle Greg to get additional #5 seeds leads me to believe that if Nevil couldn't obtain pure #5 seeds, then nobody could. That's why I always chuckle and laugh when I see specific Northern Lights numbers being marketed/hawked by seed slingers, they're almost always... For Boomers, By Boomers.
So try not to get caught up in all the numbering categories and associated bullshit because the actual, certifiable Northern Lights numbers have been long gone, for many decades now.
There was a thread here on Mr. Nice by a former admin, the nym of JeSSe, who posted an extensive thread on Northern Lights back in the day but the thread may have been pulled, can't find it right now.
One of the things that I've always respected about Shanti is that if anybody had a right to glom on and use the names of famous strains of cannabis, it would be him. Yet when he split off on his own, he didn't use the names he actually created, to sell and market his products. He renamed them.
That takes a very special man.