Cannabis Chronicles

 Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers - a 3LB book review

Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers
by Jim Richardson - Photography by Arik Wood
1976 - And/Or Press - Berkeley, California
96 pages
ISBN 0-915904-23-3

To the best of our knowledge, Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers by Jim Richardson was the first of it’s kind, the pioneer, ushering in the concept of the “bud book”. That’s the term we use for coffee table style books designed to capture the imagination and attention of cannabis lovers and connoisseurs through artistic pictures, and in some cases, flowery text. Not only do books of this sort provide interesting “eye candy” for medical users and enthusiasts alike, they each provide a still-life snapshot look into the history of cannabis and the cannabis culture.

Although we can’t know for sure, as the first of it’s kind, Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers could be said to have inspired the full range of works that inevitably followed in it’s footsteps. Coming in at just under 100 pages, it certainly wasn’t extravagant in size, but it’s 8 1/2″ x 11″ format and numerous page sized plates of full color photography, make it a wonderfully nostalgic reference for older heads sitting around reminiscing about days gone by. Perhaps it also may hold some utility for younger smokers as well. It may even provide an entertaining moment or two for the most recent generation of tokers who shake their heads at the `old geezers’ who talk about the way pot used to be.

One of the first things we noticed when starting to page through Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers, was the Preface. It spells out the intent of the book’s authors in a fashion better than we might be able to from our current perspective, 30 years after the book was published. So, we’ll let Jim Richardson speak for himself as to the purpose behind this sweet little gem.

“Sinsemilla is the sweet un-pollinated flowers of the female hemp plant. It is a Spanish word meaning “without seed.” This book is about the genesis of the seedless marijuana plant, from the germination of the seed to the ripening of the flowers. This is a photographic study of the changing rhythms of the living plant, a tour of a sinsemilla garden through a magnifying glass. We have tried to express the delicacy and subtlety of this power plant which has come down to us from antiquity. There are many voices of the hemp and we have chosen one to tell our story.”

Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers turns out to be a pretty worthy attempt at such a lofty goal. It is a very good effort at capturing the “essence” of cannabis, the “spirit” of the plant, as it grows and matures. As such, it’s composed of four separate sections: Part One - The Seed, Part Two - Adolescence, Part Three - Florescence, and, Part Four - The Smoke. But we are getting ahead of ourselves by jumping too far into the book so fast. Before progressing further, we must take a moment to acknowledge the Foreword, penned by a famous counter culture icon.

“Sinsemilla. Smugglers brought me my first word of it: “And if you think this is good, you should see the incredible seedless weed that the farmers grow for themselves.”These seedless ladies are so strong, and they carry such enormous weight in buds that just a few plants can give a person, with the patience to raise them, all the joyous smoke they want from season to season.
The surprise of it is that these ladies give as much pleasure to me with the fragrance of their flowers, their color and symmetry as they give by being unquestionably the best smoke in the world.”
David Crosby - July 1976

In `76, the United States of America was celebrating her bicentennial, and the founder of the three_little_birds was living in Alberta, celebrating the first birthday of her first child. Her husband wore a fringed buckskin coat that winter, and the way we remember Crosby, he probably was still wearing one too. The most experienced member of our flock smoked their first marijuana that year, so 1976 was a milestone for us as well. It’s not real likely that David Crosby can remember the “spirit of `76″ that well anymore, but the words he left behind for us paint a picture of an age more innocent and simple than today in many different ways. That’s pretty much the way we remember those days too, simpler, and kinder perhaps.

The quality of Arik Wood’s photography in Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers generally ranges from good to very good. By today’s standards, some of the photographs might be seen as being slightly fuzzy or grainy. However, considering the photographs were all shot on film using available light, they were likely a true revelation in their day. Using only available light may have been a challenging task for the photographer, however as a method it does serve well to help illustrate the different “moods” of growing with the seasons outdoors.

A few of Wood’s pictures are absolutely stunning, rivaling the best overall images of Cannabis we’ve ever experienced. We find the final color image of the book to be particularly inspiring, consisting of a tall dark green flowering Cannabis sativa, silhouetted by an eye appealing tropical sunset, with a backdrop of blue-green ocean seemingly stretching off forever in the distance. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to bring to mind a truly intoxicating aroma, the mingling of a sweet ocean breeze with the complex blend of aromas produced by our favorite herb as it’s flowers mature and ripen.

Jim Richardson’s text has it’s own moments of inspiration. While being both flowery and descriptive, it also has a pretty sound basis in the botany of Cannabis. We’d have to think that it was truly revolutionary in it’s day, fully describing the development of a Sinsemilla plant, when many of us were still smoking imported weed riddled with seed.

As individuals who once produced a “grow-along” thread at Cannabis World, documenting the journey of a group of plants from seed to weed, we do find the author’s tone and understanding of the plant to be excellent. At times it truly seems to capture the spiritual connection many individuals end up feeling with their plants. And Richardson’s description of the nascent potential held in a seed, perhaps exceeds our own best efforts at descriptive prose.

“From the Mother Plant is born the seed: the plan of life and the hope of regenesis. From the parent plants, the seeds inherits the genetic code which defines the basic physical characteristics and the essential nature of the smoke. The seed determines the potential of the plant and favorable conditions must be created which will realize this potential.”

The plants shown in the book, while obviously marijuana, may not all appear totally familiar to the most recent generations of pot enthusiasts. Many of those individuals are most familiar with Cannabis indica and Cannabis afghanica, so it’s quite possible they could be surprised by the overall look of marijuana genetics with a serious amount of Cannabis sativa in their background. Certainly, the least experienced cannabis user in our medicinal collective was somewhat amazed at how leafy some of the finished product appears to be in part four. In fact, she has commented that she now finally understands why some herb was called “grass” back in those simpler days.

Certainly, many of plants pictured in Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers will look familiar to today’s sativa afficionados, just as they will stir the memories of older heads who likely “came of age” smoking herbs that look like those pictured in part four. The founder of the three_little_birds medical cannabis collective did some limited preservation work with a landrace Oaxacian Cannabis sativa variety a few years back, and she found it perhaps even more sparse and leafy than the outdoor varieties pictured here.

Somewhat frustrated in her own effort to trim the extensive amounts of small leaf matter from the Oaxacian that she hadn’t seeded, our founder found herself reduced to tumbling the sparse little sativa buds in her homemade dry sieve tumbler based on a rotisserie and ingenuity.

While it was some of the tastiest and most uplifting kief powder we’ve ever experienced, it was a somewhat disappointing final result for plants she’d spent many months tending, to the exclusion of some other much needed medicinal strains.For those who approach herb from a purely commercial perspective, the reasoning behind the movement towards more commercially exploitable hybrid varieties is made obvious from the pictures included in this book.

Plants that include significant percentages afghanica and indica genetics in their composition obviously have greater weight potential and bag appeal for eventual sale. Some of the final dried product of the sativa based genetics pictured in Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers would appear to actually have no real marketable value today in a “pot-glutted” Province like British Columbia. Today’s jaded consumers would very likely refuse to purchase herbs that appear so leafy.

When being compared to more modern publications, we’d note that Jason King’s Cannabible series features wonderfully detailed bud shots and close ups that are likely superior in technical quality to anything in Richardson’s book from thirty years ago. Almost by definition, King’s sort of “eye candy” for tokers is focused less on whole plants or whole gardens, than it is on individual bud shots. That’s another detail which separates Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers from today’s crop of “bud books”, it’s focus on the entire life cycle of Cannabis, not just the finished product.

The contrast is even greater perhaps when comparing Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers to Ed Rosenthal’s ongoing Big Book of Buds series. While interesting in their own right, the photographic quality of the pictures included in the various volumes in the Big Book of Buds is more uneven than that of it’s predecessor of nearly thirty years. And, in our final analysis, Rosenthal’s series is really little more than a listing of some currently available commercial seed offerings, rather than any kind of photo essay. While some individuals may appreciate the information given in the Big Book of Buds, the pictures included there certainly do not carry any kind of real “artistic” merit like the pictures found in Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers or any of Jason King’s various volumes of the Cannabible.

Hopefully, it’s obvious by now to our readers that we very much enjoy the content of Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers. Because of their ability to capture a particular moment in time, Arik Wood’s photos and Jim Richardson’s text certainly have nostalgia value for older heads who’d like to have a memento of days past. Sinsemilla does manage to effectively capture a specific moment in time in the history of North American Cannabis cultivation. Therefore, preservationists may also find some value in the book, as a sort of snapshot look at some of the diversity Cannabis expressed thirty some odd years ago. Sadly, to our eyes, some of what we call the “homogenization of Cannabis” that has occurred among modern drug cultivars is also already obvious in some of the pictures featured in Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers.

Richardson’s and Wood’s book has a number of positives, and very little to criticize. Since it doesn’t focus at all on strain names, Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers is not going to “show off” any of today’s hottest and sexiest varieties, however that particular subject seems a big part of Jason King’s niche with his various volumes of the Cannabible. Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers is certainly not going to serve as a kind of guide to currently available genetics like some of the books Rosenthal is publishing, it’s from an entirely different era. It’s not a book necessarily designed to create a desire, like seems to be the case so often in today’s world of cross marketing.

Instead, Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers is a pictorial record of another era. It’s virtues are both artistic and historic. Sadly, it is also long out of print. To the best of our knowledge, there are no current plans to republish this nice little book. To the collector, this has the potential to increase the value of the copies that remain available, however this particular book does still remain relatively affordable when compared to other “relics” of that earlier era. The ability to access used book sellers through online sources has made the modern book collector’s job much easier, so individuals who hope to add a copy of Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers to their own collection don’t face as difficult a task as they might have before the advent of the world wide web.

We are not alone in our praise for this book. In an essay titled, “Sinsemilla Heritage - What’s in a Name?,” published as the introduction to Jason King’s Cannabible in 2000, Robert Connell Clarke rather prominently mentions Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers, saying:

“In 1976, a coffee-table book called Sinsemilla Marijuana Flowers by Jim Richardson and Arik Woods revolutionized marijuana growing in North America. Not only did the authors accurately and sensitively portray the sinsemilla technique with their excellent text and lavish color photographs, they made the first attempt to describe the proper stages of floral maturity for an optimally potent and tasty harvest. Most importantly, this publication, just twenty-five years ago, suggested to growers that if marijuana can be grown without seeds, it follows that select female flowers can also be intentionally fertilized with select pollen to produce a few seeds of known parentage. This realization, in turn, gave birth to the expansion of conscious marijuana breeding . . .”

Certainly any book that’s regarded so highly by R.C. Clarke deserves consideration for inclusion in the collection of any really serious stoner. Our copy of Sinsemilla: Marijuana Flowers holds a special place in our hearts and on our bookshelf. It’s a little faded and aged, but so are we.