I've spoken with Ed Rosenthal at length about Ortega on a couple of occasions. Slightly less than a decade ago, Ed was providing clones for local dispensaries, allegedly approved by of the city of Oakland. I'll spare everyone the details of his subsequent bust & trial, as that information is readily available on the internet.
Ed was growing a significant number of plants-- several warehouses worth-- from his large stash of seeds given to him over the years by Neville, Wernard Bruining, the Dronkers (as well as from his own collections), and eventually distributed the clones around the area. While most of what came out of that warehouse were unique specimens (crosses usually-- though not always-- designated by a letter & a number; A-10 was one of the more popular examples in the area), some of them were introductions of older genetics, like Ortega.
I got very attached to Ortega and grew her for several seasons. In the years after she slipped from my grasp I've had a couple of chances to talk with Ed about the Ortega. He told me much of the same story as you see repeated elsewhere:
Ortega came from a local Oakland grower known as "Maple Leaf" Wilson, the nickname coming from the Afghani plants he was known to grow . "Maple Leaf" was a friend/associate of Mel Frank, and eventually Neville & others purchased a significant amount of Wilson's stock, perhaps through Ed (he never said it himself, but seemed to imply it... it's no stretch to think of Ed providing seeds for Nev-- see the "PEHT" listing in the Seed Bank '87 Revised catalog as proof of these sorts of exchanges). (One wonders if Sandy Weinstein is involved somewhere in here, but Ed never mentioned Sandy's name in our discussions and I never thought to prod him to make or deny the connection.)
Early references to Wilson's stock can be found in the Seed Bank 1990 catalog ("Original Afghan Mix: This seedline comes from the collection of the late 'Maple Leaf' Wilson, reputedly once of the first collectors of Afghan seeds...") and the Super Sativa Seed Club ('87?) catalog, where Ortega is known as the "Oakland Indica" (there is no reference in the catalog as such to Ortega = O.Indica, that clarification recently came from Ed himself, who explained it as a NL5 = "Basic 5" sort of thing). There may be other references to this 'collection' in early Dutch canna-seed catalogs, but my collection is incomplete. There's certainly no indication of these genetics in the '87 Revised catalog. Did the Seed Bank ever sell pure Ortega?
If you really want to pin down the Ortega Indica as being part of the "Maple Leaf Collection", a pretty simple connect-the-dots using some relatively recent Sensi Seeds introductions should do the trick.
Marley's Collie
From Sensi's website:
Quote:
After dozens of experimental crossings, the best Jamaican lady was pollinated with a pure Afghani cultivar from the syrup-sweet Maple Leaf Indica family, producing extraordinary results.
From Ed's 'Big Book of Buds':
Quote:
Jam[aican]2 (female) x Ort[ega]15t7 (male)
First Lady, Black Domina and Maple Leaf Indica are other Sensi varieties that make use of the Ortega. MLI is at least 25% Ortega (a female used in this one), as is BD (an Ortega male used here). If Ed's versions of the Sensi 'recipes' are to be believed (he swore up and down that they're correct, no matter what Sensi has said otherwise), Sensi Seeds has used at least three distinct Ortegas (two males, one female) in their breeding programs over the years.
