Granddaddy Purple: the plant that made colour a selling point

At a glance

Type

Indica (as usually given)

Parent strains

Purple Urkle × Big Bud (accounts differ)

Where and when it appeared

Northern California, the early 2000s (as usually given)

Credited to

Ken Estes

Flowering

8–11 weeks indoors, in the range growers usually report (as usually given)

Terpenes usually reported

myrcene, beta-caryophyllene, alpha-pinene (as usually given)

Aroma

grape, sweet berry, floral note, damp earth

Aroma family

grape and berry

How the character is usually described

usually described as an evening profile, noticeable weight in the body, a settled, unhurried body

Also sold under

GDP, Grand Daddy Purp

Compare it against

Purple Punch, Northern Lights, Zkittlez

Two versions, both in circulation

Purple Urkle crossed with Big Bud is the version catalogues repeat, and it is what most readers will encounter. The breeder himself has described the cross differently, naming Mendo Purps, Skunk and Afghani material. Both accounts are in circulation and neither has been withdrawn.

The facts table above marks the lineage as disputed for that reason. It would be easy to print the catalogue version alone and easier still to print the breeder's, and either choice would present a contested question as a settled one.

This matters more than it looks. A pedigree is the main thing a reader uses to predict how a plant will smell; two incompatible pedigrees mean the prediction is worth less, and saying so is the only honest option.

How the colour actually works

Purple in cannabis comes from anthocyanins, the same class of pigment that colours red cabbage and blueberries. Expression depends on genetics and on temperature: cool nights during flowering bring the colour out, warm ones do not.

Grown warm, the same genetics can finish entirely green. That is the whole mechanism, and it has two consequences worth carrying to a counter. First, colour is not a grade — a green plant of this cultivar is not a failed one. Second, in a tropical grow room, purple is harder to produce, so a very purple jar in this climate says something about the room rather than about the plant.

Photographs of purple flower sell extremely well, which is exactly why this deserves stating plainly. What can actually be judged with the jar open is aroma, structure and the state of the resin.

Grape that is floral rather than candied

The descriptors here are grape, sweet berry, a floral note and damp earth. The grape reads as perfumed — closer to a flower shop than a sweet shop — and that is the distinction from Purple Punch, which took the same note in a candied direction.

Myrcene leads the reported terpenes, with beta-caryophyllene and alpha-pinene behind it. That is the same trio Northern Lights and White Widow lead with, which is worth noticing: the grape here sits over a fairly classical earthy structure rather than replacing it.

Eight to eleven weeks is the reported flowering range, which is wide. Twenty years of re-selection and two competing accounts of the parentage will do that to a number.

What it is a reference point for

Its listed neighbours are Purple Punch, which is its child and the faster, sweeter one; Northern Lights, which shares the earthy skeleton without any of the fruit; and Zkittlez, which took grape into candy territory entirely.

Between those four you can map most of what a shelf means by fruit. Ask yourself whether you want the fruit perfumed, candied or absent, and the answer sorts the group without any reliance on labels.

Character reports describe an evening profile with weight and a settled body, and they have been stable for two decades. As with every plant on this site, that is a summary of how people talk, not a forecast, and a specific jar remains its own thing regardless of what its ancestors were called.

Granddaddy Purple: common questions