Purple Punch: the grape family's fast one

At a glance

Type

Indica-leaning hybrid (as usually given)

Parent strains

Larry OG × Granddaddy Purple (as usually given)

Where and when it appeared

Hawaii, the early 2010s (as usually given)

Credited to

Supernova Gardens, Symbiotic Genetics

Flowering

7–8 weeks indoors, in the range growers usually report (as usually given)

Terpenes usually reported

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

Aroma

grape, sweet berry, fruit candy, vanilla

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

PP

Compare it against

Granddaddy Purple, Zkittlez, Do-Si-Dos

Made in Hawaii, released as seed in 2017

Supernova Gardens made the cross. Symbiotic Genetics released F2 seed in 2017, and that release is the moment the name went from a regional plant to something on menus worldwide. Before seed exists, a cultivar can only travel as cuttings; after it, anybody can grow it.

Hawaii is an unusual origin on this list. Almost everything else here comes from the Netherlands, California or the American East Coast, and the one other Hawaiian connection in this cluster is the landrace parent behind Pineapple Express.

The lineage is marked as commonly cited rather than documented, which is the normal state of affairs for a plant made outside a seed bank's own programme. Nothing about it is contested, but there is no breeder release describing the work.

Seven to eight weeks, and why that spread it

Granddaddy Purple is usually reported at eight to eleven weeks. Its child comes in at seven to eight, which is a full cycle's worth of difference over a year for anyone growing commercially.

That is the practical reason the name overtook its parent on menus. It is the same mechanism as Northern Lights shortening the Haze lines in the 1990s, run at a smaller scale: aroma the market wants, on a schedule a grower can afford.

It also means the name is worth less as a guarantee than the parent's is. A fast, fashionable, seed-available plant gets grown by everyone, well and badly, and the distribution of what turns up under the label is correspondingly wide.

Grape and vanilla rather than grape and perfume

The descriptors are grape, sweet berry, fruit candy and vanilla. Set that beside its parent, whose grape is floral and perfumed, and the difference is that this one is candied — the sweetness sits forward, and there is a confectionery quality the older plant does not have.

That is the sorting question between the two, and it is answerable by nose in a second. If the grape smells like a sweet shop, you are in Punch territory; if it smells like a flower shop, you are in Granddaddy Purple territory.

Beta-caryophyllene, limonene and myrcene lead the reports here. Character descriptions point to an evening profile with weight and a settled body — the same territory as the parent, which is what a half-share of its genetics ought to produce.

About the colour

Purple in this plant comes from pigments expressed when nights are cool. In a tropical grow room it may not appear at all, and its absence says nothing about how the plant was grown or how it will smell.

The mechanism is set out on the Granddaddy Purple page in this cluster, because that is the plant that made colour a selling point in the first place. It is worth reading before paying attention to a photograph of anything purple.

What is worth attention here instead is the aroma and the state of the trichomes. Both are things you can assess with the jar open in front of you, which colour, at the point of purchase, mostly is not.

Purple Punch: common questions