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The strain library

Purple
Haze.

A colourful name with more than one botanical story. Explore its connection to the Haze family, the meaning of purple pigmentation and the distinction between a strain name and an individual variety.

Explore the story Read the names
Purple Haze flower photographed by HansRoht, showing purple flower clusters and green leaves
Purple Haze · flower detailHansRoht at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0
Via Wikimedia Commons. Display crop under the same licence.
White Label’s reported parentagePurple Thai × Haze
Wider familyHaze
Botanical focusColour & variation

Parentage refers to White Label’s description. It is not a universal pedigree for every plant called Purple Haze.

Behind the name

More than
a shade of purple.

Follow the name from a breeder’s description to the broader Haze family, then take a closer look at what colour can tell us.

01 / Background

One name, different contexts

White Label describes its Purple Haze as a hybrid of Purple Thai and a Haze variety, and says its name refers to the Jimi Hendrix song. This gives that particular variety a documented account of both its parentage and its name.

A cultural reference is not the same thing as a botanical family tree. When reading about Purple Haze, it helps to ask whether the writer means this named hybrid, a purple expression within a Haze population, or another breeder’s variety. Those accounts can describe different plants without necessarily contradicting one another.

02 / Family

The wider Haze connection

ACE Seeds traces Haze to California in the 1960s and 1970s and to crosses involving tropical sativas. Its account of Oldtimer’s Haze describes a preserved population with purple, green and intermediate expressions.

Here, Purple Haze appears as a phenotype within that population. A phenotype is the observable expression of a plant’s traits. The term is useful because a family of related plants need not look identical. It also explains why a discussion of historic Purple Haze expressions should not automatically be treated as the specification of a modern same-named hybrid.

03 / Colour

What makes foliage look purple?

Anthocyanins are plant pigments responsible for much of the red, burgundy and purple colouring seen in leaves. A horticultural review from the University of Minnesota describes their role in leaf colour and how their accumulation varies with biological and environmental factors.

Colour is therefore a botanical trait, not a strain-identification test. A photograph lets you observe the colour of a particular specimen, but a purple leaf alone does not establish its name or ancestry. Lighting and the way a photograph is displayed also matter when comparing pictures. The image on this page retains the original photograph’s colours.

04 / Identity

Read the whole name

Keep the source, the full variety name and any additional label together. “Purple Haze” identifies the subject of this profile. “Feminized” describes a separate seed characteristic. A name containing “Purple Haze × …” identifies a cross, rather than simply another spelling of Purple Haze.

This distinction is especially useful in a strain library: related entries can be connected without merging their descriptions. For a second example of how a named strain is documented, explore our White Widow profile, which follows a different breeder-attributed history.

A photograph, not a colour filter

The photograph is identified as Purple Haze by its contributor. Look at the mixture of green and darker tones, the shape of the flower clusters and the small leaves around them. A strain named Purple Haze does not need to appear uniformly violet in every picture.

This is a reference image, not a photograph of a product supplied by this website. Its credit and reuse licence appear directly below it.

Three layers of a name

Related terms.
Different meanings.

A family name, a variety name and a seed label each answer a different question. Keeping them separate makes a strain description easier to understand.

01 / Family

Haze

The broader background discussed in the historical account.

02 / Name

Purple Haze

The name whose source and context we explore here.

03 / Seed label

Feminized

A separate characteristic, explained in our category guide.

Purple Haze FAQ

A familiar name.
A clearer picture.

What is Purple Haze?

It is a cannabis strain name used in more than one context. White Label describes a Purple Thai–Haze hybrid, while ACE Seeds also uses Purple Haze for purple phenotypes within its Oldtimer’s Haze population. The source tells you which meaning is intended.

Is every purple cannabis flower Purple Haze?

No. Colour alone cannot identify a strain. Purple pigmentation occurs in many plants, and a photograph is not a genetic record. Use the full name and its documented source, not colour alone.

Is Purple Haze named after the song?

White Label explicitly connects the name of its variety to the Jimi Hendrix song. That explains its naming account; it does not establish that every Purple Haze plant has the same botanical ancestry.

Is this a real Purple Haze photograph?

It is a real photograph, identified as Purple Haze by its contributor on Wikimedia Commons. It has been resized for the page and is cropped by the display frame, without a purple colour filter. The source does not establish a particular breeder or independently verified genetic identity.

How does Purple Haze differ from White Widow?

They are separate strain names with different documented background accounts. Our Purple Haze profile examines Haze-related naming and colour, while our White Widow profile covers its attributed lineage and history. A shared appearance or label should not be taken to mean they are the same variety.

Back to the strain index

The knowledge library

Names, traits and identity.

Our genetics and strains guide explains how to read names, reported ancestry and source records.