Zkittlez: a lineage printed as complete is printing a guess

At a glance

Type

Indica-leaning hybrid (as usually given)

Parent strains

Grape Ape × Grapefruit (as usually given)

Where and when it appeared

Northern California, the mid-2010s (as usually given)

Credited to

3rd Gen Family, Terp Hogz

Flowering

8–9 weeks indoors, in the range growers usually report (as usually given)

Terpenes usually reported

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

Aroma

fruit candy, tropical fruit, grape, citrus peel

Aroma family

candy and fruit

How the character is usually described

a settled, unhurried body, usually described as an evening profile, sits in the middle, without a strong lean

Competition results

High Times Cannabis Cup 2015 (indica category), Emerald Cup 2016 (first place in flower)

Also sold under

Skittlez, Z

Compare it against

Runtz, Purple Punch, Granddaddy Purple

Two named parents and one withheld

Grape Ape and Grapefruit are the two on the record. Grape Ape carries the purple and the grape sweetness; Grapefruit contributes the citrus lift that keeps the whole thing from being merely sugary. Together they account for most of what the plant smells like — but not, by the breeders' own account, for all of it.

The third parent is why nobody has reproduced this plant exactly. That is unusual and it is honest: most withheld information in this trade is withheld silently, and here the gap itself has been declared.

The work is credited to 3rd Gen Family and Terp Hogz in Northern California in the mid-2010s. The catalogue entry on this site marks the lineage as commonly cited rather than documented, and the note explains precisely why.

The competition record is the part that can be checked

A Cannabis Cup in 2015 in the indica category, and first place in flower at the Emerald Cup in 2016. Both are outside records with a year and a category attached, and this cluster prints results of that kind and leaves the row empty when the only source is a breeder's own count.

Those wins are unusually informative here, because what was being judged was largely the aroma. In a family where sweetness is normally a marketing register, this is a case where the sugar is genuinely in the terpene load — competitions are one of the few places that gets tested by people with no stake in the sale.

It also marks the beginning of a family. Zkittlez is where the candy-fruit register starts; Runtz is its child, and most of what a menu now calls exotic fruit is downstream of one or the other.

What it should smell like

Fruit candy, tropical fruit, grape and citrus peel. It is sweet without the dairy of the dessert family and without the fuel floor of the Kush family — a clean, high, fruit-forward smell with very little underneath it.

That lightness is the identifier. Where a jar under this name has weight and gas beneath the sweetness, you are probably holding a Runtz-adjacent plant rather than this one; the child is the heavier of the two.

The reported terpenes are beta-caryophyllene, limonene and myrcene, which is the same trio that leads half this cluster. Once again the list is not what distinguishes plants — proportions and descriptors are, which is why both are printed above.

Reading it against the purple family

Granddaddy Purple, its third listed neighbour, shares the grape note and takes it in the opposite direction: floral and perfumed rather than candied. Purple Punch sits between them, with grape and vanilla.

Its own child Runtz adds cream and gas. So the sorting question across these four plants is how much weight you want under the fruit — none here, some in Purple Punch, more in Runtz, and a different kind of depth in Granddaddy Purple.

Character reports here point to a calm body and an evening profile, which is a slightly different picture from what the sweetness alone would suggest. Descriptions are collected from people, not measured, and this cluster prints them as such.

Zkittlez: common questions