Made possible by so-called terpenes, aromatic hydrocarbons (C5H8) produced by cannabis and lots of other plants.  But terpenes are not only strongly involved in defining the odour of cannabis flowers, they also serve as important building blocks for e.g. hormones, vitamins, essential oils and even cannabinoids. In cannabis, more than 120 different terpenes have been found so far. The one most responsible for the emergence of fruity cannabis flavours is limonene. As the name already suggests, limonene produces a citrus smell which, in combination with other terpenes, can yield most different fruit aromas.

So Lemon Skunk (60:40 sativa/indica) from DNA Genetics is obviously expected to have an especially high limonene content. Which was to be proven, not every strain on the market with a fruit name lives up to its promise. DNA Genetics describes Lemon Skunk as “a cross between two Skunks, the chosen phenotype selected for its lemon characteristics. The Lemon mother has been kept for over 20 years in Las Vegas and the father was chosen here in Holland. The male was donated by Eddie, formally the owner of one of the oldest and most prestigious seed banks in the Netherlands. This original prize male was selected and used in many breeding projects throughout the years. The Lemon Skunk will grow tall and is a good yielder.  She has great smelling buds. Her buds are light green with thick orange hairs. She has a high calyx to leaf ratio. This strain is the tastiest and sweetest if she is cut down between 50 and 56 days.”

The official flowering time is 7-8 weeks. According to DNA Genetics, yields of 400-500 g/m2 can be expected. Lemon Skunk has won several awards, taking first place at the Indoor Hydro Spannabis Cup 2008 and the Outdoor Highlife Cup 2007, plus second place at the IC420 Breederscup 2008. It was also chosen by High Times Magazine to be one of the top ten strains of the year 2009. German grower Raztazotti happily took care of Lemon Skunk, and of course he hoped for a super refreshing lemon taste experience. He tried Lemon Skunk at at time when it was still available as regular seeds also, while it’s currently only offered in its feminised form by DNA. Raztazotti sowed eight out of thirteen regular seeds contained in the package. In single Jiffy pots, they germinated quickly and, together with plants of two other strains, were grown under a couple of fluorescent lights in the beginning. One week after germination, the plants were transplanted into 11 litre containers filled with Plagron Standard soil mix and moved to the actual grow room equipped with a 600 W ‘Green Bud’ HPS lamp. Given 18 hours of light per day, the young Lemon Skunk plants did exhibit vigorous growth right from the start, growing compact and with lush green leaves. Growth was very uniform, with almost all the plants having had the same height two weeks after germination. And there was an early onset of lateral growth also, with every new node, two side branch tips were emerging on the plants and quickly elongating. Raztazotti left the plants in the vegetative stage for four weeks, then he induced flowering by reducing the light cycle from 18/6 to 12/12 hours of light, at the same time replacing the vegetativ growth version of the 600 W HPS bulb with a one suitable for flowering. At that point of time, the Lemon Skunk plants had achieved heights of 58-66 cm and produced lots of well-built side branches. Within eight days, all of the plants revealed their gender, with four of them turning out to be female and four male – mother nature did provide an equitable 50:50 gender ratio.

With the beginning of the flowering stage, Raztazotti also installed a fully automatic ‘Gardena’ drip irrigation system, because his grow room was so small that he couldn’t enter it and water the plants by hand any longer. The four female Lemon Skunk plants did exhibit an instantly high willingness to bloom and quickly started to produce those first little bud “roses” along and on top of the main stems and branches. Four weeks into flowering, they had built top buds of very respectable sizes already, with a flowering pattern that was going to develop quite a high calyx-to-leaf ratio, and most promising early resin production. Raztazotti detected a still subtle fruity citrus smell which raised his hope for getting a true lemon smell and flavour in the end. The Lemon Skunk plants showed a strong stretching effect in the course of flowering, after seven weeks of flowering they had increased their height to about 90-100 cm. Flower formation proved to be very copious, the plants had developed big and tight top colas with swollen calyxes and similarly gorgeous side branch buds so that Raztazotti was looking forward to a great harvest. On the calyxes and flower leaves, resin was around in rich abundance, thick layers of tons of super sticky, silvery white resin glands, he hadn’t expected Lemon Skunk to become THAT resinous! But what made him almost even happier was the fact that the plants really gave off an intense, absolutely yummy lemon odour, totally living up to their name, yippee! That kind of smell wasn’t very penetrative though, ideal for stealth growers. 50-60 per cent of the flower hairs had withered after seven weeks into flowering, and Raztazotti expected the Lemon Skunk plants to reach maturity (with about 70-80 per cent of withered hairs) in more or less one week.

There was a big surprise in the course of flowering by the way, as all of the four plants did exhibit most beautifully looking, partly purple coloured buds and flower leaves, although that special colour potential wasn’t mentioned by DNA Genetics and although they weren’t grown in a cold climate. Lots of yellowed shade and flower leaves further contributed to a most colourful appearance. Just as expected, Raztazotti could harvest terrific four fully ripe Lemon Skunk plants on flowering day 56, fully in line with the description of DNA Genetics. The plants had arrived at heights of 91, 94, 94 and 98 cm in the end, so they were amazingly homogeneous, too. In any case, Raztazotti wanted to make sure that delicious lemon smell would be fully preserved in the dried end product, so he dried the buds very slowly and carefully, over almost three weeks, having to suppress his strong impatience though to finally test smoke that super resinous lemon wonder. When the drying process had been finished, Raztazotti weighed the Lemon Skunk buds and the outcome was a total of 187 grams (39/45/49/54), a very satisfying result fulfilling his expectations, as Raztazotti could have easily placed ten of these plants on one square metre.

The dried Lemon Skunk buds had wonderfully preserved their intense lemon aroma and were almost smelling like real lemon fruits. And also the flavour was impressively just like this, Raztazotti deeply enjoyed that very refreshing sweet kind of citrus taste, his beautiful Lemon Skunk nuggets were super-packed with limonene, indeed! The high effected by Lemon Skunk was a mixed sativa/indica experience, with an approximately even percentage of sativa head to indica body effects. At first an uplifting sativa turn came about, providing a great deal of euphoric freshness which matched that intense fresh lemon flavour very well, but after about 45 minutes changed into a calming indica stone that lasted for approx. another 45 minutes. So Lemon Skunk proved to be some pretty potent stuff also, and altogether, Raztazotti was quite ravished by this lovely connoisseur fruit strain.

Lemon Skunk is solely available in the form of feminised seeds at the moment, at the very competitive price of 40 Euros for six seeds.

Green Born Identity – G.B.I.

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