What Does Freakshow Mean?
Freakshow, as its name suggests, is something of a cannabis oddity. While it is, technically speaking, a 90% sativa hybrid, its proponents boast that it is, in fact, a completely new morphology of weed: Cannabis Lusus Monstra. One look at the plant gives credence to this claim. A fully developed Freakshow plant can leave even experienced cannabis connoisseurs doing a double take as they struggle to determine whether the plant is sativa- or indica-leaning, or even whether it’s male or female!
Freakshow plants are impressive producers. It is those huge, knotty flower sites that make it more difficult to distinguish male from female plants during development. Due to a preponderance of small leaves, one bud site quickly expands into its neighbors as the plant nears harvest time, resulting in some of the gnarliest bud sites of any strain. The massive harvests from said buds will average around 18% THC with good growing conditions and competent care.
Maximum Yield Explains Freakshow
Freakshow’s backstory is, appropriately, a bit mysterious. A shadowy private breeder, alternately referred to as “Shapeshifter” or “Jordan” in various sources, had apparently been growing quality weed for a solid 40 years before developing Freakshow. The impetus for this project was apparently a concern that weed was becoming too predictable and mainstream, and no longer enjoyed the trappings of the “weird” subculture status it had 40 years ago when Jordan first started teaching himself cannabis cultivation. Freakshow—something of a “shapeshifter” in its own right, being unidentifiable as either indica or sativa visually—was his answer.
The original goal was not to develop a new morphology of cannabis, or even to grow gnarly, wicked-looking flowers. “Shapeshifter” initially set out to nail a particular
terpene profile. Do do so, he first developed a mother strain from Big Bud and Skunk #1 and cross bred it with a male plant derived from Banana Kush and Big Sur Holy Bud. It was, at first, a fairly routine attempt at developing a new hybridized strain. The plants, however, had ideas of their own.
The resulting mutation surprised even “Shapeshifter”, who had seen many odd and unexpected
phenotypes in his decades of growing weed. Freakshow’s leaves not only featured extremely deep serrations, they also produced a ton of extra
leaflets beyond the seven produced by a typical cannabis plant. These small leaves curling in on themselves are the distinguishing factor in Cannabis Lusus Monstra’s thick and fuzzy appearance. Encouraged where other breeders might be unsettled, “Shapeshifter” continued crossbreeding the weirdest of the weird until something consistently freaky emerged.
