Spark up! The genesis of Cannabis culture in the 1970s is where all legendary tales begin. These were the OG times, when humanity first started writing our most beautiful love story, the tale that begins with tending to a flower.
In the ’70s, we embarked on our greatest adventure: an Odyssean journey that involved transporting Cannabis seeds over land and sea. Fifty years ago marked the moment we began hybridizing this plant to create new kinds. Before that, Cannabis grew indigenously all over the world. Partaking in those original expressions — the landrace strains — is a way to preserve the heritage of Cannabis culture and get high. Smoking crosses of landrace sativas feels like following a stoney trajectory we’ve traveled many times before.
With so many different types of Cannabis in the world today, getting a hold of specialty types — like sativa crosses only one step away from landrace cultivars — is challenging.
First available in California’s adult-use commercial market in early 2025, Budularo is a brand that cultivates crosses of long-flowering equatorial sativas, which originate from areas around the equator that receive 12 hours of sunshine every day. Equatorial sativas grow tall and lanky, and they spend longer in the flowering stage before the buds are ripe.
“Some things are timeless,” Dave Perkins, Budularo CEO and operator, said.
Perkins has cultivated the strain he loves the most, Sour Diesel, for over 20 years. Working alongside his brother-in-law, Isaac Grech, at Budularo, Perkins is now growing the genetics his father-in-law, Tony Grech, aka Tony Budularo, first fell in love with.
Grech has collected Cannabis seeds since the ’70s. Starting with his genetics, Budularo releases selections that are harvested twice a year in the company’s mixed-light greenhouses in Mendocino County. The selections are a variety of long-flowering inbred lines and landrace cultivars. One selection the team is currently excited about is Malawi crossed with Durban Poison, both of which originate from Africa. In a world that’s frequently focused on making things faster — autoflowering varieties spend only four to six weeks in the flowering stage — Budularo is betting on the value that comes with time.
“We’re growing strains that take anywhere from 14 to 20 weeks,” Perkins said of the flowering time for Budularo’s sativas.
See the Light
Budulero’s buds might not look as dense as some modern day cultivars but they absolutely shine in their aromatic qualities. A Band Aid x Durban cross smells like sweet anise, while a Band Aid Haze x Original Haze takes on a deeper fennel aroma. For most of these cultivars, a lot of light penetrates the plants due to the spacing between each bud site and the naturally skinnier fan leaves resulting in buds that are more lightweight.
Some sativas can be racy, but for me, Budularo’s selections evoke a more introspective mood. They deliver a stoney quality that is on the milder side, making them great for a midday smoke.
Perkins said he’s attracted to the effects he discovers by smoking sativa-leaning cultivars for a long time, but that it was a connection with his father-in-law that led him to grow longer-flowering varieties, starting with an African Haze #11.
“I’ve been growing Sour Diesel since 2003. We just finished trimming the last batch,” Perkins said via a phone call in late September. “When I met my father-in-law, I had just finished a light dep in Grass Valley, and I was really excited to show him the herb I’d just grown because he’s been growing for a long time. He’s kind of a legendary dude, so I was like, ‘Man, I get to show him my herb.’ And he basically looked at me and was like, ‘Boy, let me show you what I’ve got to smoke,’ in a very polite way.”
After Perkins took a trip to Hawaii and smoked exclusively sativa strains, he familiarized himself with the experience and effect of smoking sativas. A basic budtender knows the spiel: Sativas offer a more uplifting, energizing high as opposed to the sedative high that can come with indicas.
“One of the main things I noticed was that I wasn’t getting tired, and there wasn’t a crash at the end of the high,” Perkins said of his experience smoking long-flowering sativas. “I’ve been smoking a lot of Sour Diesel, which I thought was a sativa-dominant type of plant, but there was always this crash at the end of the high with the Diesel. It had this intense — sort of up — kind of long high, and then I would crash. With this stuff, there was no crash. And the high wasn’t as intense right off the bat, but it built over time.”
Perkins said the high he gets from smoking sativas offers him focused mental clarity.
Travel Through Time
Like Marty McFly’s first spin in Doc’s DeLorean, Budularo is a brand that lets smokers travel back in time. The jars feature a drawing of Grech and text written in the style of an adventure story. Cue the soaring orchestral soundtrack.
“Budularo’s Cannabis experience began in the 60’s, when most herb was imported from faraway lands,” the jar reads. “The best exotic varieties from the past were not an easy thing to procure then and are still very hard to find now. Today Budularo brings you the chance to experience for yourself long flowering varieties from all over the world, so you can feel the soaring euphoria that Budularo has been enjoying for the last 50 years.”
In the ’70s, Grech’s nickname originated from his quest to get high. Following the core path of a mythological motif known as “the hero’s journey” in literature, trying new types of Cannabis brought him out of his ordinary world and ended with an elixir, in this case, a “soaring euphoria.”
“They used to call him ‘Budularo’ because back in the day, when he was buying herb, we wanted pounds that were ‘budguler,’ that weren’t like compressed bricks of weed,” Perkins said. “He wanted the stuff that actually had buds, and there were some guys that called him ‘Budularo,’ and that nickname kind of just stuck.”
The weed that Grech likes best, the Pearls, looks like a plant filled with calyxes — the outer layer of flowers that protects the flower when it first starts to form — that never grew out.
“The Bandaid Haze is nice I really like it, but this is my Grail, nothing I’ve tried comes close,” Grech wrote on Instagram. “Pearls rule, she is the Queen of Weed to me after searching since experiencing the best Thai Sticks and Gold Colombian back in the 70’s.”
A Familiar Flavor
Perkins said people interested in trying Budularo’s offerings come in two main groups: those looking to return to something from their pasts, and those guided by the more unique effects of these hard-to-procure flower types.
“No. 1, the people that are within the (Cannabis) industry are excited to see it because it’s something that they’re familiar with,” Perkins said. “I’ve had people say: ‘Oh, my uncle used to grow Big Sur Holy Weed back in the day,’ or ‘This takes me back to Amsterdam in the 1980s,’ or ‘My dad used to grow this in the backyard.’”
For consumers who aren’t interested in Cannabis for its nostalgia factor, the appeal lies in the high.
“It’s not giving them that couch lock,” Perkins said. “They like the idea of something that’s going to keep them motivated and going throughout the day.”
