"Harlequin is one phenotype of a plant bred to produce hashish," explains Wade Laughter. "The genes are 75% sativa and 25 % indica. The Sativas include an early-1970s Columbian Gold, a Thai from the mountains near Laos, and a Swiss native land race that was bred for consumption of cattle. The Indica is from Nepal's Mustang state. These are all high-elevation plants....Harlequin is available as a clone at dispensaries in the Bay Area that are participants in Project CBD, including Sparc and the Vapor Room. The smell and taste are sweet with an almost syrupy heaviness that is pleasant on the inhale and the exhale. she needs about 60 to 70 days indoors to finish her full flowering. She sets flowers fairly quickly compared to other strains. I see fingertip-sized bud set at two weeks of flower —compared to pencil-eraser size in other plants at the same two weeks of flower. She really needs some way to support the colas the last few weeks because the trichomes and flowering tops get so heavy. Along those same lines, in a drying room where strains like Blueberry or Bubba Kush take seven to 10 days for drying before curing, the Harlequin can take as long as three weeks. She can be completely obscured by 'sugar' to where she looks 'frosted.'"


Cannabinoids in Harlequin Leaf?
Earlier this year Wilson Linker, a sales executive at Steep Hill Lab, tested leaves taken from a Harlequin plant about five weeks after it was started indoors from a clone. "Still completely in veg," he says of the plant. Linker took leaves from different various parts of the plant, ground them up, and tested them by GC/MS. To his surprise, the leaf tested at approximately 4% CBD and 2% THC (see illustration)

Linker repeated the test and confirmed the results with another Harlequin clone started the same day. Key questions will be answered by more testing: Do all Harlequin plants produce cannabinoids in the vegetative state? Do other CBD-rich strains have this trait?

"The true benefit," says Linker, "would be that you could extract the CBD in mid-summer, not wait for buds before harvesting. There's obvious implications for making edibles and tinctures. Imagine not having to deal with a harvest!"