Some lines are kept alive by a single family.
Vault XI is an archive of heirloom and traditional cannabis: lines that families have grown, saved and replanted for generations, and that are now disappearing.
What is being lost
Like most crops, cannabis was long grown from seed saved by the farmers who grew it. Over generations, families who kept their own seed ended up with lines of their own, shaped by their soil, their climate and their uses.
Commercial growing works differently. It favours a small number of high-yielding hybrids, often grown as clones: identical copies of a single mother plant. As those spread, the local lines that do not yield as much are abandoned, and once a line is no longer grown, its seed is gone.
Agricultural scientists and seed banks have a name for this: genetic erosion, the loss of diversity in a crop as local varieties are replaced by a few commercial ones. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that about three-quarters of crop diversity was lost between 1900 and 2000 (FAO, 2010). Vault XI exists so that the same does not quietly happen here.
Why diversity is worth keeping
A crop grown as one plant repeated thousands of times shares all of its weaknesses. A single disease or a change in climate can reach every plant at once. Lines kept by families may carry traits that commercial breeding has not looked for: different chemistry, different aromas, different resilience. When a line is no longer grown and its seed is lost, the particular combination it carried is lost with it.
How we record a line
- The keepers speak for themselves. Every account of a line's history and traditional use is attributed to the family who gave it, and recorded as history, not medical advice.
- Laboratory figures name their source. Every figure comes from a named laboratory certificate with its test date, and is not shown without them.
- Stability is shown, not claimed. Where a line is called stable, the record shows how: family grow-outs, chemistry or DNA compared across generations.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where something has not yet been recorded, the page says so. Nothing is filled in to look complete.
- Where tradition and the lab disagree, we say so. Both accounts are shown, side by side.
What we will not claim
This archive does not say any line treats, cures or prevents anything. It does not call a line a landrace unless both its local origin and its continuous local keeping are documented. It avoids superlatives it cannot prove. An archive is trusted for its precision, and we intend to earn that trust one record at a time.
Draft copy for Monica's review.