Back in the late nineties, a breeder called Mr Soul, who with his partner Sly formed the Bros Grimm was in Amsterdam. At the time Sensi Seeds had a Coffeeshop where you could buy buds from their mother plants to sample the strains before you bought the seeds. Mr Soul visited this shop and found some seeds in a bag of weed:, as he explained in an internet post:
“I bought a 2 gram bag of Jack Herer buds (1996 Cannabis Cup winner) in Amsterdam at "Sensi Smile" coffee shop on Achterburghwal straat. The buds were supposed to be sinsemilla, but I was pleasantly surprised to find about a dozen seeds in the bud. I found the high to be cerebral and energetic, but not too long lasting; the buds appeared almost white due to resin coating. Of the 6 seeds I attempted to germinate, every one was successful and I got a 50% male/female ratio.”
One of those three females turned out to be very special and was given the name Princess:
"Princess was obtained from growing out seeds found in buds of Jack Herer that was purchased in Amsterdam at the "Sensi-Smile" coffee shop, an authorized outlet of Sensi Seed Bank. Thus, it is considered to be an f2 generation Jack Herer. The seeds were found only in the deepest part of the buds indicating that the father was an unusually early-maturing JH that the growers missed at first."
Mr Soul wrote a very vivid description of Princess:
Princess smells very much like pineapple both during flowering and when dried, but there's this "evil" scent in it too, like rotting meat, which has been linked with the most devastating weed (notably the Durban/Thai hybrid from SSSC, years ago). The taste is connoisseur quality when it's cured; VERY fruity. The high is almost too intense for a lot of people; Dr. Atomic actually refused to smoke any on our second meeting, after getting rather "hazed and confused" on the first sampling we did together a couple of weeks before, so he decided to try Shiva Skunk and found that more mellow and to his liking. Two hits of Princess will induce your body to tremble involuntarily and your heart to race and paranoid thoughts... very much like Haze, but not quite as intense. It also has a "creeper" quality that makes it easy to over-indulge...you get progressively higher during the first 10 minutes after smoking.
He sure does make it sound like a special plant! A plant with the power of a Haze is bound to be a worthwhile smoking experience, but what was really special about Princess was her vital statistics, as Mr Soul described:
“Princess grows vigorously, and is rapidly-maturing... 6 to 7 weeks of 12/12. It feeds heavily and requires about 50% stronger nutrient solution than an Indica does. It stays short, for a Sativa-dominant strain, and finishes at about 3 ft indoors. The yield from such a plant is about 20 grams.”
Highs of the order of Haze are usually only to be found in long flowering sativas, and such plants are difficult to grow indoors, rarely producing a worthwhile harvest. In Princess, Mr Soul had found a plant that had a sativa high of the highest order encapsulated in a plant with superb growth pattern for indoor growers. No wonder Mr Soul described her as a 'Holy Grail'. Canadian breeder Vic High was impressed by Princess and recognized her rare attributes:
“This strain is exactly what most people believe doesn't exist; a Sativa which grows VERY well indoors, stays short, and matures as rapidly as an Indica (faster than many), and has the great KILLER Sativa high/flavor. The yield is fine too. Mr Soul finds that the Indica strains are too leafy/stalky and much goes to waste with them, whereas Princess has an extremely high flower/leaf
ratio and therefore almost no waste.”
Being a breeder, Mr Soul decided to begin a breeding program to create a seedline that embodied the Princess qualities:
“Her characteristics were so fine I wanted to create seeds that would "replicate" this plant. She has the KILLER Haze-influenced high with the most DELICIOUS pineapple/evil scent, 50 day maturation in 12/12, and incredible resin production, doesn't stretch - yet clearly Sativa-dominant! Last but not least: Never a hint of hermaphrodism after 2 years of cloning & many different styles of grow.”
Princess ticked all the boxes, in Mr Soul's eyes she was worthy of replication. This was the genesis of one of the most famous breeding programs in cannabis history. Creating a stable seedline from a single F2 female of an unstable three-way polyhybrid was going to take some effort, I shall let Mr Soul explain:
“Jack Herer is an unstable strain bred from an unequal combination of Sk#1, NL#5, and Haze. Crossing a male and female Jack Herer creates an F2 generation which has a HUGE number of possible recombinations of the genes. I grew out some Jack Herer F2's and discovered a SPECIAL one, "Princess", which has many improvements on the original JH such as a shorter flowering time, denser bud structure and pineapple scent/flavour.”
So how to go about stabilising a female? The obvious step would be to cross her to one of the three males that were grown from the same seeds, but Mr Soul wanted to improve one of the less desirable traits of Princess:
“I wanted to "cube" Princess but add a little beef to her branches because the buds were always too heavy at harvest and branches needed staking to keep from flopping over. I crossed my ShivaSkunk female with one of the males from the same group of seeds that Princess came from. THIS cross produced a male which was then crossed to Princess, creating "P.50" (using a shorthand notation I developed to indicate the fraction of Princess genes in the cross).”
Mr Soul now had a batch of seeds composed of 50% Princess genes, 25% Shiva Skunk genes and 25% Princess' brother. From here, the route to stabilisation lay through backcrossing a male from this seed generation to the Princess mother plant. Mr Soul then did three more backcrosses to Princess, each using male pollen from the latest seed generation. The progression Mr Soul went through was:
P.50 = Princess/(ShivaSkunk/Princess'Brother)
P.75 = Princess/P.50
Cinderella 88 = Princess/P.75
Cinderella 99 = Princess/Cinderella 88
Mr Soul described the breeding process:
“I have been continually back crossing Princess with her male offspring (generation after generation) which eventually creates a stabilized strain having her special characteristics found reliably in most females grown from those seeds. Each generation is composed of a 50% genetic contribution from Princess (since she's the seed parent) and a 50% contribution from the pollen parent (which also has an increasing percentage of Princess' genetics with each generation). The progression goes: P.50, P.75, P.88, P.94, and P.97...at that point it's considered stabilized (a male and female P.97 can be crossed and the offspring are essentially the same as the parents). I have been VERY pleased with the way this project is going; even the P.75 generation was rather stable in the sense that the individuals were all rather uniform and HIGH quality. “
He also described each of the filial generations, which gives much insight into the stabilization process:
“Each generation is the result of crossing a male from the previous generation to Princess herself
Blow-by-blow description of the generations:
P.50 = Heavy, single-cola type plants with mellow high (too much influence from the ShivaSkunk) Sweet fruity scent/flavor. Unstable in most traits - for example, 10 days difference in fastest/slowest maturation period in a group of 20 seedlings.
P.75 = Plants leaning MUCH more in the direction of Princess in floral cluster and bud structure, scent/flavor turned more "tropical" like pineapple. The stability was becoming better - two major phenotypes; short & dense (potent too) or tall/HUGE (Not so potent).
P.88 = Renamed Cinderella 88 when first released on the market. It grows fast and produces excellent yields of FROSTY buds in 7 weeks! Generally uniform seedlings with minor differences in floral formation and some height variance, but the smoke is quite consistent from all plants - Dense, heavy nuggets of fruity scented & flavored (like wild berries) and covered in resin glands, the dried buds have distinctly ORANGE pistils.
And now P.94 = Cinderella 99. This project has been a huge success. The strain has been embraced by the "net"work of growers with rave reviews. “
The seed from of the P88 generation were released onto the market as Cinderella 88 and received glowing praise from many growers. A year later, the P94 generations seeds were released as Cinderella 99 and a legend was born. Mr Soul wrote what has become a legendary description to accompany the Cinderella 99 release:
“Brothers Grimm Cinderella 99:
This strain may be the "Holy Grail". The result of painstakingly back crossing a VERY RARE female to her male progeny over 3 generations. This hybrid was specifically bred for indoor cultivation. Short statured & heavily branched, this plant grows LONG, dense colas with an EXTREMELY high flower/leaf ratio and OUTRAGEOUS resin production. The breeder has observed a "giant leap" in potency with each progressive generation and, as expected, Cinderella 99 has topped all previous results -her high is heavily influenced by Haze; clear, energetic & devastatingly psychoactive. A plant with all of the above is rare enough, but Cinderella 99 finishes flowering after a scant 50 days of 12/12! Above average yields of crystal covered buds reeking of tropical fruit aromas can be harvested every other month once a mother plant is selected and asexually propagated. One final accolade - preliminary results from the breeder indicate Cinderella 99 will breed true... IMAGINE!
Flowering: 50 days
Height: 100 cm
Yield: 1-2lbs per 1000W lamp “
Growers quickly discovered that Cinderella 99 was indeed a special strain, it grew well in all types of gardens and had only 3 main phenotypes, showing that Mr Soul had succeeded in creating a stable seedline. The taste and high were consistently superb between individual females and the plants were finished in 50-60 days with most preferring to harvest at 56 days. The yield proved to be as good as the breeder's description. C99 soon became known as one of the best all-round strains on the market. Mr Soul wrote a fitting description of his 'holy grail'
“I personally think the plants these Cinderella 99 seeds produce are every bit as good as a cutting from Princess herself (or better). I say better because the flavor of no two plants is "identical"; there's a personality to all living things. Like Princess herself, Cinderella is sweet & fruity to the palette and nose, and when you take a hit you're BLASTED...with the same "racy" high as Princess! The improvement comes in the yield department; 25% greater yield and a stronger branch structure, which I accomplished by starting with some ShivaSkunk genes in the original father in the cubing process. I knew I'd blend out the majority of the traits from ShivaSkunk in the cubing process, but I was hoping to incorporate the ShivaSkunk's stronger branches because Princess had a tendency to need supports in the final two weeks of flowering. As it turns out, I got lucky and it worked. The name suits the strain IMO - it's a true Cinderella Story."
By British Hempire
“I bought a 2 gram bag of Jack Herer buds (1996 Cannabis Cup winner) in Amsterdam at "Sensi Smile" coffee shop on Achterburghwal straat. The buds were supposed to be sinsemilla, but I was pleasantly surprised to find about a dozen seeds in the bud. I found the high to be cerebral and energetic, but not too long lasting; the buds appeared almost white due to resin coating. Of the 6 seeds I attempted to germinate, every one was successful and I got a 50% male/female ratio.”
One of those three females turned out to be very special and was given the name Princess:
"Princess was obtained from growing out seeds found in buds of Jack Herer that was purchased in Amsterdam at the "Sensi-Smile" coffee shop, an authorized outlet of Sensi Seed Bank. Thus, it is considered to be an f2 generation Jack Herer. The seeds were found only in the deepest part of the buds indicating that the father was an unusually early-maturing JH that the growers missed at first."
Mr Soul wrote a very vivid description of Princess:
Princess smells very much like pineapple both during flowering and when dried, but there's this "evil" scent in it too, like rotting meat, which has been linked with the most devastating weed (notably the Durban/Thai hybrid from SSSC, years ago). The taste is connoisseur quality when it's cured; VERY fruity. The high is almost too intense for a lot of people; Dr. Atomic actually refused to smoke any on our second meeting, after getting rather "hazed and confused" on the first sampling we did together a couple of weeks before, so he decided to try Shiva Skunk and found that more mellow and to his liking. Two hits of Princess will induce your body to tremble involuntarily and your heart to race and paranoid thoughts... very much like Haze, but not quite as intense. It also has a "creeper" quality that makes it easy to over-indulge...you get progressively higher during the first 10 minutes after smoking.
He sure does make it sound like a special plant! A plant with the power of a Haze is bound to be a worthwhile smoking experience, but what was really special about Princess was her vital statistics, as Mr Soul described:
“Princess grows vigorously, and is rapidly-maturing... 6 to 7 weeks of 12/12. It feeds heavily and requires about 50% stronger nutrient solution than an Indica does. It stays short, for a Sativa-dominant strain, and finishes at about 3 ft indoors. The yield from such a plant is about 20 grams.”
Highs of the order of Haze are usually only to be found in long flowering sativas, and such plants are difficult to grow indoors, rarely producing a worthwhile harvest. In Princess, Mr Soul had found a plant that had a sativa high of the highest order encapsulated in a plant with superb growth pattern for indoor growers. No wonder Mr Soul described her as a 'Holy Grail'. Canadian breeder Vic High was impressed by Princess and recognized her rare attributes:
“This strain is exactly what most people believe doesn't exist; a Sativa which grows VERY well indoors, stays short, and matures as rapidly as an Indica (faster than many), and has the great KILLER Sativa high/flavor. The yield is fine too. Mr Soul finds that the Indica strains are too leafy/stalky and much goes to waste with them, whereas Princess has an extremely high flower/leaf
ratio and therefore almost no waste.”
Being a breeder, Mr Soul decided to begin a breeding program to create a seedline that embodied the Princess qualities:
“Her characteristics were so fine I wanted to create seeds that would "replicate" this plant. She has the KILLER Haze-influenced high with the most DELICIOUS pineapple/evil scent, 50 day maturation in 12/12, and incredible resin production, doesn't stretch - yet clearly Sativa-dominant! Last but not least: Never a hint of hermaphrodism after 2 years of cloning & many different styles of grow.”
Princess ticked all the boxes, in Mr Soul's eyes she was worthy of replication. This was the genesis of one of the most famous breeding programs in cannabis history. Creating a stable seedline from a single F2 female of an unstable three-way polyhybrid was going to take some effort, I shall let Mr Soul explain:
“Jack Herer is an unstable strain bred from an unequal combination of Sk#1, NL#5, and Haze. Crossing a male and female Jack Herer creates an F2 generation which has a HUGE number of possible recombinations of the genes. I grew out some Jack Herer F2's and discovered a SPECIAL one, "Princess", which has many improvements on the original JH such as a shorter flowering time, denser bud structure and pineapple scent/flavour.”
So how to go about stabilising a female? The obvious step would be to cross her to one of the three males that were grown from the same seeds, but Mr Soul wanted to improve one of the less desirable traits of Princess:
“I wanted to "cube" Princess but add a little beef to her branches because the buds were always too heavy at harvest and branches needed staking to keep from flopping over. I crossed my ShivaSkunk female with one of the males from the same group of seeds that Princess came from. THIS cross produced a male which was then crossed to Princess, creating "P.50" (using a shorthand notation I developed to indicate the fraction of Princess genes in the cross).”
Mr Soul now had a batch of seeds composed of 50% Princess genes, 25% Shiva Skunk genes and 25% Princess' brother. From here, the route to stabilisation lay through backcrossing a male from this seed generation to the Princess mother plant. Mr Soul then did three more backcrosses to Princess, each using male pollen from the latest seed generation. The progression Mr Soul went through was:
P.50 = Princess/(ShivaSkunk/Princess'Brother)
P.75 = Princess/P.50
Cinderella 88 = Princess/P.75
Cinderella 99 = Princess/Cinderella 88
Mr Soul described the breeding process:
“I have been continually back crossing Princess with her male offspring (generation after generation) which eventually creates a stabilized strain having her special characteristics found reliably in most females grown from those seeds. Each generation is composed of a 50% genetic contribution from Princess (since she's the seed parent) and a 50% contribution from the pollen parent (which also has an increasing percentage of Princess' genetics with each generation). The progression goes: P.50, P.75, P.88, P.94, and P.97...at that point it's considered stabilized (a male and female P.97 can be crossed and the offspring are essentially the same as the parents). I have been VERY pleased with the way this project is going; even the P.75 generation was rather stable in the sense that the individuals were all rather uniform and HIGH quality. “
He also described each of the filial generations, which gives much insight into the stabilization process:
“Each generation is the result of crossing a male from the previous generation to Princess herself
Blow-by-blow description of the generations:
P.50 = Heavy, single-cola type plants with mellow high (too much influence from the ShivaSkunk) Sweet fruity scent/flavor. Unstable in most traits - for example, 10 days difference in fastest/slowest maturation period in a group of 20 seedlings.
P.75 = Plants leaning MUCH more in the direction of Princess in floral cluster and bud structure, scent/flavor turned more "tropical" like pineapple. The stability was becoming better - two major phenotypes; short & dense (potent too) or tall/HUGE (Not so potent).
P.88 = Renamed Cinderella 88 when first released on the market. It grows fast and produces excellent yields of FROSTY buds in 7 weeks! Generally uniform seedlings with minor differences in floral formation and some height variance, but the smoke is quite consistent from all plants - Dense, heavy nuggets of fruity scented & flavored (like wild berries) and covered in resin glands, the dried buds have distinctly ORANGE pistils.
And now P.94 = Cinderella 99. This project has been a huge success. The strain has been embraced by the "net"work of growers with rave reviews. “
The seed from of the P88 generation were released onto the market as Cinderella 88 and received glowing praise from many growers. A year later, the P94 generations seeds were released as Cinderella 99 and a legend was born. Mr Soul wrote what has become a legendary description to accompany the Cinderella 99 release:
“Brothers Grimm Cinderella 99:
This strain may be the "Holy Grail". The result of painstakingly back crossing a VERY RARE female to her male progeny over 3 generations. This hybrid was specifically bred for indoor cultivation. Short statured & heavily branched, this plant grows LONG, dense colas with an EXTREMELY high flower/leaf ratio and OUTRAGEOUS resin production. The breeder has observed a "giant leap" in potency with each progressive generation and, as expected, Cinderella 99 has topped all previous results -her high is heavily influenced by Haze; clear, energetic & devastatingly psychoactive. A plant with all of the above is rare enough, but Cinderella 99 finishes flowering after a scant 50 days of 12/12! Above average yields of crystal covered buds reeking of tropical fruit aromas can be harvested every other month once a mother plant is selected and asexually propagated. One final accolade - preliminary results from the breeder indicate Cinderella 99 will breed true... IMAGINE!
Flowering: 50 days
Height: 100 cm
Yield: 1-2lbs per 1000W lamp “
Growers quickly discovered that Cinderella 99 was indeed a special strain, it grew well in all types of gardens and had only 3 main phenotypes, showing that Mr Soul had succeeded in creating a stable seedline. The taste and high were consistently superb between individual females and the plants were finished in 50-60 days with most preferring to harvest at 56 days. The yield proved to be as good as the breeder's description. C99 soon became known as one of the best all-round strains on the market. Mr Soul wrote a fitting description of his 'holy grail'
“I personally think the plants these Cinderella 99 seeds produce are every bit as good as a cutting from Princess herself (or better). I say better because the flavor of no two plants is "identical"; there's a personality to all living things. Like Princess herself, Cinderella is sweet & fruity to the palette and nose, and when you take a hit you're BLASTED...with the same "racy" high as Princess! The improvement comes in the yield department; 25% greater yield and a stronger branch structure, which I accomplished by starting with some ShivaSkunk genes in the original father in the cubing process. I knew I'd blend out the majority of the traits from ShivaSkunk in the cubing process, but I was hoping to incorporate the ShivaSkunk's stronger branches because Princess had a tendency to need supports in the final two weeks of flowering. As it turns out, I got lucky and it worked. The name suits the strain IMO - it's a true Cinderella Story."
By British Hempire
