I was also surprised at just how average the plants were when I came onto the seed buying seen. I found it completely bizarre, and to this day I haven't found one standout plant in the potency dept. that matches what I was used to. I've encountered one example each of a reasonably strong Nevil's Hz and Mango Hz, but man you have to search through a lot of seeds to find them. What was that spin I read? The strongest plant on, or off the market??
These strains do offer something in the crossing dept. though, decreased flowering times, interesting terpenes, high yielding structures, and they don't always dilute the stronger plant they're being crossed to. what else can you say?
You always say what I'm thinking but you put it better than I can... because yeah I've had identical experience except I have found killer landrace genetics but you still have to wade through hundreds of plants. Plus you have to really hunt around to get the good landraces.
There used to be a guy who lived in Colombia and had mountain colombian landrace varieties that he could just drive down the road and get seeds off villagers. He had a website but then the nutter crossed everything with Dutch indoor hybrids because that's where the market is and then distributed hybrid seed to the villagers to cross with the landraces. He used to have genuine Santa Marta but now he just has rubbish mixed up crossbreeds. That's the sort of thing going on all over the world at the moment.
I also haven't found a "named" hybrid that I would call potent or trippy. Nothing. Zilch.
The strongest weed I've had in the last fifteen years was bagweed a guy gave to me because he'd accidentally seeded it and couldn't sell it. Little tiny white buds and miniature sativa leaves. Buds were tiny but tight... not wispy. Looked like real ditchweed and I nearly turned it down when I was offered it because I couldn't think why I'd want the seed of rubbish like that.
Might as well have dropped a tab of acid. That was some serious weed... and I already had a real high tolerance. Never had paranoia that bad in my life before even after dropping a cap of cannabis oil. Racy. I was like Taz the Tasmanian Devil charging around like a cat with it's tail on fire. Lost a whole day and still can't remember what I did. I was scared to smoke that stuff. That was twelve years ago and the next year I was busted and the cops got all the seed.
So there is stuff out there still.... Sure is a marathon effort wading through all the dross to find it though.
I still think the best stuff out there is stuff that is being grown by people who have gone overseas and brought local seed back with them from places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, PNG....
India has some real extreme weed but all you ever hear about is Kerala. India is a gigantic country with localised farmed strains that have been around for generations. Once upon a time drug cannabis was known as "Indian Hemp" all over the world. I've always thought something impressive will come out of India eventually.
scrubdog