Bruce Banner: a name that describes nothing about the plant

At a glance

Type

Sativa-leaning hybrid (as usually given)

Parent strains

OG Kush × Strawberry Diesel (as usually given)

Where and when it appeared

the United States, the late 2000s (accounts differ)

Credited to

Delta 9 Labs

Flowering

8–10 weeks indoors, in the range growers usually report (as usually given)

Terpenes usually reported

myrcene, beta-caryophyllene, limonene (as usually given)

Aroma

sweet berry, fuel, damp earth, sour edge

Aroma family

kush and fuel

How the character is usually described

a clear-headed start, usually described as a daytime profile, noticeable weight in the body

Also sold under

Bruce Banner #3, Banner

Compare it against

Sour Diesel, OG Kush, GG4

Where the berry comes from

The cross is OG Kush with Strawberry Diesel. That pairing is the entire identity of the plant: OG Kush supplies the fuel and the earthy floor, Strawberry Diesel puts a berry note over the top of it, and the tension between the two is what people are describing when they describe this cultivar.

It is a useful thing to be able to check by nose. Fuel with a fruit lift is the shape; fuel with no fruit is more likely a straightforward Kush, and fruit with no fuel underneath is a dessert or candy plant that has picked up the wrong label.

Reports of the release date differ by several years across sources, so the catalogue entry treats the origin as disputed. What is not disputed is the parentage, and the parentage is the part that shows up in the jar.

The number does the work the name does not

Bruce Banner #3 is the selection that made the name. Other numbered phenotypes exist and they are not the same plant: they came from the same seed line but were chosen for different traits, and they do not smell identical.

So a jar labelled only Bruce Banner has told you which family it belongs to and nothing about which member. This is not unique to this cultivar — Gelato and Northern Lights have the same problem — but it is more acute here because the name itself contains no description to fall back on.

Where a shop can tell you which phenotype it is, that is a sign the batch was bought with attention. Where it cannot, judge the jar rather than the label, which is good practice regardless of what is written on the lid.

What people report, and what stays unknown

Descriptions collected around this plant point to a clear-headed daytime profile with noticeable weight arriving later — a combination that comes straight from having a Kush parent and a diesel-fruit parent. Growers usually report eight to ten weeks of bloom, which is a wide window and reflects the phenotype split.

None of that is a promise. How any flower reads depends on the person, the batch, how it was grown and cured, and what else the day held. This page describes a cultivar; it cannot describe your afternoon.

Myrcene leads the terpene reports here, with beta-caryophyllene and limonene behind it — the same three that lead in half this family. The difference between family members is in the proportions and in the aroma descriptors, not in the list.

Where to place it on a shelf

Its nearest neighbours here are Sour Diesel and OG Kush, and the sorting question is simple: do you want the berry on top or not. Sour Diesel is the sour, unfruited version of the same register; OG Kush is the lemon-and-earth version; this is the berry one.

Against GG4 the contrast is sharper still, because GG4's extra layer is roasted rather than fruity. Someone who likes Banner often does not like Glue, and the reason is usually that one layer over the fuel is sweet and the other is bitter.

If a name means nothing, describe the shape instead: gas underneath, berry on top. That sentence works at any counter in this city, and it does not depend on anyone agreeing about a comic book.

Bruce Banner: questions worth asking