The Real History Of Northern Lights

charlesufarley

charlesufarley

Well-known member
I've done similar posts to this in other cannabis fora but this is the most extensive and detailed version I've done yet. For those of you who aren't familiar with my nym, I have exclusively worked Sensi's Northern Lights for over 25 years now. Everything I've done with cannabis has come from 10 seeds I obtained in 2000.

Over these years, I've learned a _lot_ about NL, mostly from this forum. The two main developers on NL, NL Seattle Greg and Nevil, participated on this forum and gave their version of how it was developed. They contradict each other frequently, and in the case of NL Seattle Greg, he contradicts himself. With the aid of and AI, Anthropic's Claude, I have archived _every_ single post by Nevil and NLSG concerning NL, analyzed them and had the AI collate and categorize everything they posted about NL. The _only_ data the AI used was from the _exact_ postings of both guys. You'll see the word "corpus", that means the data that the AI used and it's _only_ from their words.

Not _my_ opinion, not the AI's opinion, but _only_ from what they actually took the time out to type into this forum about their experience with NL. Thank God NL is not subject to the vitriol that seems to _always_ permeate Haze discussions. 😉 But thanks to Shanti keeping this forum active for over 20 years, the actual history of NL has been farily well documented.


The tl;dr version is at https://southeastlights.org/journal.html

One thing that should be fucking _absolutely_ clear, and I mean no disrespect to Shanti or anyone else who think they have a definitive _number_ of NL... that the numbers of NL don't meant a fucking thing.

Most assuredly, NL5 does _not_ exist,... or any other specific number for that matter. It's all _marketing_... For Boomers, By Boomers, For _Money_.

So here is the extended version, that _proves_ my above statement:

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NORTHERN LIGHTS: THE COMPLETE COMPARATIVE RECORD
NL Seattle Greg and Nevil on NL1, NL2, NL5, and the Origin of Northern Lights
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An exhaustive, topic-by-topic reading of the full forum testimony of both men, confined strictly to Northern Lights. Every substantive NL-relevant passage from either man is quoted and analyzed in place. Haze, nutrients, politics, and all other participants are excluded except where a Northern Lights claim cannot be stated without them. All quotations are verbatim, reproduced exactly as each man typed them, including spelling and grammatical errors, with no corrections whatsoever and no [sic] markers. Each quotation carries its full thread name and date.

Sources: results_NL_Seattle_Greg.txt (183 posts by NL Seattle Greg) and results_Nevil.txt (1,110 posts by Nevil).


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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The two men have left behind two incompatible origin stories for one of the most influential varietals in modern cannabis. Read in full, the conflict is not what it appears, and resolves into one clean structural insight.

Greg tells a story of authorship: he was gifted Afghan seed, ran a selection program in Seattle for fifteen years, personally selected the NL5 mother, numbered the strains, and shipped a finished product to a Dutch distributor who made it famous and then betrayed him. Nevil tells a story of stewardship: he received eight American seed lines, found among them one freak non-reproducible female he named NL5, stabilized the lines himself in Holland, and improved NL5 until surpassed the American original.

That difference is the master key. The two men make claims of different evidentiary types about the same events. When Greg states NL5's parentage he states it as a recipe he executed; when Nevil states it, every single time, he flags it as an inference reconstructed after the fact ("my best bet was," "I guessed that"). The more famous, more credited man consistently claims less certain knowledge of what NL5 was than the less famous one does. That inversion runs through the whole record.

On the single question the folklore fights about most - were the great genetics American or Dutch - the two men actually agree, and Nevil agrees against his own interest. Of the Afghani he risked his life to collect in Pakistan, Nevil says it "couldn't compete with American Indicas and that's the truth." Greg's central claim, that the foundational NL genetics were American and superior, is corroborated by Nevil himself.

The relationship was also a two-way genetic exchange, not a one-way pipeline: Nevil mailed his Hungarian Ruderalis and Mazar material back to Seattle, where Greg's crew tried them and rejected them as inferior. That single fact dismantles the "Seattle made it / Holland stole the credit" framing and the "Nevil made everything" framing at the same time.

Where they genuinely and irrefutably disagree: the exact number of original strains (Nevil says eight, firmly and repeatedly; Greg says ten, then eleven, then "#2 through #12"), and the non-Afghan parent of NL5 (Greg says Hawaiian, Nevil says a US female he was told was part Thai, and each is relaying a single-source attribution he could not personally verify). Neither of those can be settled from the record.

On reliability, stated narrowly and without inflation: where the two men make claims of the same type about the same event, Nevil's are markedly more internally consistent across a span of daily posting, while Greg's countable facts drift over a decade. But Nevil's steadiness is partly bought by claiming less, they are frequently testifying about different ends of the same pipeline, and both are recalling events three to four decades old from memory, their records destroyed on legal advice. This is two old men's honest, drifting recollection, not a paper trail.

The deepest finding is that the popular framing - Holland versus Seattle, one true author - is false to what both men actually say. Strip away the forum feuding and the two accounts describe the same thing from two ends: an American crew that produced superior raw indica genetics, and a Dutch breeder who recognized, stabilized, and immortalized a mutation hiding inside them.


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PART A. PRELIMINARIES
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A1. Are these two men who they claim to be?
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Before weighing two accounts against each other, it is worth establishing that they describe a real shared history and not two unrelated fabrications. The evidence that they do is unusually strong, and it comes from a story that has nothing to do with Northern Lights - which is precisely why it is persuasive, since neither man had any incentive to coordinate it.

Both independently describe Nevil's own seed-collecting expedition to Afghanistan, with the same distinctive details. Greg heard it from Nevil directly:

"Nevil used to drink a bit in his younger days. He was about half way through a fifth of scotch when he told the tales about Clyde from LA and the trip he took to Afghanistan and the large seed and thieves he found in Turkey. It was before he bought Cannabis Castle where I helped him with his lighting recipe."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

"going to The Netherlands Nevil had Sams Skunk # 1, California Orange and Rob's Early Pearl along with the Afgani he collected with Clyde from LA on the trip to Kandahar when Clyde ODed on heroin."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

Nevil tells the identical story from the inside, naming the same photographer and the same border crossing, years earlier and on a different forum:

"I went with Clyde, my photographer. We crossed the border illegally in disguise wearing turbans at Pashawar in Pakistan. We were smuggled into the Afghani 'refugee camp'... The best Mazari hash would be brought there and cut prior to export... Two days later the seeds were brought to the hotel as promised."
-- Nevil, thread: Hey Nev, 2010-08-26

"Photo taken by my fearless photographer Clyde C. The man was willing to get smashed and go anywhere I would... A true unsung American hero who honed his skills in the Vietnam war."
-- Nevil, thread: 1985 seed bank catalog, 2010-12-26

Same photographer named Clyde, same Peshawar crossing, same Afghan camp, same seed pickup. Greg even independently corroborates Nevil's Turkey trip - "the large seed and thieves he found in Turkey" - and Nevil separately confirms he went to Turkey in 1984 and found only wild landraces (thread: Snows outdoor, 2010-09-02). Greg heard these stories from Nevil in person and repeated them accurately decades later. Nevil, from his side, names Greg directly:

"Greg, from the Northern Lights crew gave me the advice to wait until the resin starts to turn amber. It's a pretty good yardstick."
-- Nevil, thread: Freakland, 2011-01-12

"The advise I got from Greg was given to me probably before you were born."
-- Nevil, thread: Freakland, 2011-01-12

This closes the loop from both sides. Greg's own obsession with resin and oil-gland assessment (his male-selection method is built entirely on counting oil glands) matches exactly the harvest-timing advice Nevil credits to "Greg from the Northern Lights crew." The identification is as firm as the record permits.

Confidence that NL Seattle Greg is the "Greg" Nevil references, and that the two men genuinely knew each other: high. The one residual caution is that Nevil's "Greg" is never given a surname, so absolute certainty is impossible; but the convergence of the Clyde story, the Turkey story, the NL-crew membership, and the resin-timing expertise makes any alternative reading strained.
 
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PART B. THE SEATTLE FOUNDATION (Greg's domain)
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This is the part of the history only Greg can speak to. Nevil was not in Seattle and says nothing about it; his silence here is not disagreement. It is also the part of the record where Greg is the sole witness, so his internal consistency (or lack of it) is the only test available.

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B1. The crew and the cast
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The hub was Steve Murphy's shop:

"Indoor Sun Shoppe - Plants This is where the original NL #1 seed was obtained and the original clone of NL #5 which was a hybrid of NL #1 crossed with a strain from Hawaii."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2011-03-27

"Steve Murphy owned The Indoor Sun Shoppe in Seattle. NL #5 was a F1 hybrid in 1982."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-10

The crew was small and regional, kept that way by fear of police:

"The Northern Lights Crew was very small because of intense police pressure. It was all people from the Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, and Portland area. And we were real wary of anyone who was not known. Paranoia ruled for good reasons as Nevil and Marc Emory found out."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

Its stated purpose was medical, tied to Greg's own biography as a Marine and Vietnam veteran:

"We were Vietnam Combat Veterans needing ptsd meds (sleep matters) so the focus was NL 1 to 5 with a beat this breeding program."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

"Herbie" is the associate Greg credits with the Hawaiian side of NL5 (see C4). "The Indian" is Don Downes, presented consistently as a grower the crew set up, not a genetic source. This is one of Greg's most stable sub-stories, told the same way across seven years:

"'The Indian' was Don Downes and he lived a little north of Olympia (no Island) he received 90% of the genetics he used (NL#5, NL #2, Hash Plant) form the friends of the Indoor Sun Shoppe group in the Seattle Area. Don was an older guy who we set up with a four light operation and the Indica crosses from Steve Murphy's original Afghani Indica strain."
-- Greg, thread: Who is the top 10 Breeders in the world?, 2013-01-14

"Don (aka the Indian) was from the Queets Tribe in Washington State who got injured on the job and needed a way to supplement his income. We set him up with lights substrate and strains and he worked for several years until his Son got out of the Army."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

"Don was interesting older guy when Rollo of the NL team brought him over too meet me. He was an injured worker looking to grow some smoke and supplement his income."
-- Greg, thread: NL#5 Mud Bay and the Mushroom Guru, 2021-02-19

"Don (RIP) worked hard growing so he could buy his son a home on the hill overlooking mud bay and the oyster shell piles."
-- Greg, thread: NL#5 Mud Bay and the Mushroom Guru, 2021-02-19

The importance of this thread is that "the Indian" is the one Seattle character Nevil also names, independently, as the person he met in America to collect the US NL5 cutting (see D2). The person is real and shared between both testimonies. Other named crew and contacts include "Rollo of the NL team," "George in Portland" (the Hash Plant source, see B3), and "John at Steubers":

"Don I think got some seeds from John at Steubers and his Native American brothers."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-18

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B2. The foundational Afghan seed - where it came from
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This is the first place Greg's account fails to hold steady, entirely within his own testimony. The four founding Afghan seeds are sourced three different ways across the years. Via Herbie's employer:

"The base plants for the entire Seattle Northern Lights strains 1 to 10 was a batch of seed sent from Afghanistan that ended up in Herbie's employers hands who just happened to be an old friend from High School so I was able to get four seeds."
-- Greg, thread: Growing Haze Tips?, 2013-02-22

Simply "gifted":

"After I was gifted 4 wide leaved pure afghani seeds I went to seed and started the Luther Burbank selection process to get superior female cuttings."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-06

And directly from Murphy:

"the Indian (Don Downes) was supplied with genetics by me including the NL#5 and the seed I propagated from the 4 seeds from Murphy."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2015-06-17

These are partly reconcilable - Murphy owned the shop, Herbie worked there, the Afghan seed arrived at the shop, Greg got four - but Greg never reconciles them, and the giver drifts from "Herbie's employer" to "gifted" to "Murphy." Where the Afghan seed originally came from, Greg finally concedes he does not know:

"Where in Afghanistan they came from I do not know."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

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B3. The pre-Nevil Seattle strains
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Greg is consistent and specific that a numbered NL series and its component indica lines existed in Seattle before contact with Nevil. He describes rejecting the local University of Washington sativa-hybrid material in favor of Indicas:

"During this time period in Seattle we had Northern Lights and the UW had a good production but lacked the medicinal quality we we looking for as Vietnam Veterans to be able to sleep. The indica's seemed to have far better results so we did very little with the UW strains and concentrated more on the Hashplant strain we got from George in Portland and Steve Murphy's pure Afghani."
-- Greg, thread: University of Washington, 2014-06-12

"We were using several Indica stains pre Nevil . Murphys, hybrids of #5 and #1 and Don's Affie strain. They all tended to reek like skunk."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-19

This "pre Nevil" claim - that #5 and #1 already existed as Seattle hybrids before Nevil - is the crux of Greg's authorship story and the point Nevil's stewardship story implicitly contests (see C5). Greg's crew also continued adding genetics over time from Marc Emery ("the Prince of Pot in Vancouver"), from Holland, and from others:

"Indoors in Seattle we continued to add and breed new genetics from the Prince of Pot in Vancouver and from The Netherlands from Harlyne, Arjan,and bag seed from Katsu Coffee was tested in Washington State indoor conditions."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-04
 
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PART C. THE STRAINS THEMSELVES
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C1. How many original strains, and the numbering
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This is the first hard, countable disagreement, and it is also Greg's single largest internal inconsistency. Nevil's figure is eight, stated twice, months apart, without variation:

"When I first got the NL varieties, there were 8 types, 1-8. They came with descriptions, which I published in my catalogue."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

"The NL 1-8 were seed lines and most were hybrids."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-10-01

Greg gives at least three different counts. Ten:

"Seeds of ten strains were sent to Nevil at the Seed Bank..."
-- Greg, thread: Growing Haze Tips?, 2013-02-21

Eleven, repeatedly:

"The higher the number meant more sativa in the 11 packets of seed I mailed to Nevil."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-06

"The 11 strains were graded by height and flavor for indoor growing. The #1 was a short phenotype pure Indica from Afghaniatan as was #2,3, & 4. #5 to #11 was the Hybrids with the narrow leaved strains we worked with."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-13

And, seven years later, "#2 through #12" with NL1 withheld entirely:

"NL # 1 was not sent to The Netherlands we sent #2 through #12. #2 as the short wide leaf strain and as the numbers increased taller plants with more narrow leaves and a longer time to harvest."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-17

Within the numbering, Greg also moves the indica/hybrid boundary. On 2014-08-31 the pure Indicas are #1-3 and #4 up are hybrids; thirteen days later #4 is still pure indica:

"NL 1-2-3 were short and high afgani smell & taste 4-11 were indica sativa hybrids"
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

"The #1 was a short phenotype pure Indica from Afghaniatan as was #2,3, & 4. #5 to #11 was the Hybrids..."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-13

These cannot all be true. "Ten," "eleven," and "#2 through #12" are three different accountings of the same shipment; the pure/hybrid line moves within a two-week window. Nevil's "eight" holds across months.

The reconciling caveat that keeps this from being a simple Greg-was-wrong verdict: Greg may be counting what was sent from Seattle while Nevil counts what arrived and stabilized into distinct usable lines in Holland. Nevil himself says supply "dried up" and that he "kept the lines separate and inbred them" until "NL1 and NL2 stabilized into distinct types and NL5 only produced one unique individual" - implying attrition between what was shipped and what survived as a line. That mechanism could make both men honest about different numbers.

Confidence in the true count as received and stabilized in Holland: moderate, leaning to Nevil's eight, precisely because it is the one figure that never moves. Confidence in what was originally shipped from Seattle: low - Greg is the only witness and he does not agree with himself.

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C2. What NL1 was
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Here the two men largely agree, and Nevil's account is among the most detailed in the entire corpus. Both describe NL1 as a pure Afghan indica. Nevil:

"NL1 was a full blood Afghan indica. One thick main stem, dark green leaves, modest yield with nuggety buds, a little coarse with good resin production, which when ripe went golden. The high was narcotic. The seeds ranged from tiny to massive... NL1 was the only good pure Afghani male line I had.( there was Sams Afghani#1, but that was toxic in a bad way) The NL2 was a Kush."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

"The Northern Lights#1 was a pure strain from the pacific N.W. of America. It had nothing to do with Ortega lines initially, although I did cross them. NL 1 was pretty special, it was all Indica... I didn't hold it back, I sold it pure."
-- Nevil, thread: the best northern lights seeds, wich breeder?, 2010-10-10

"It was the forgotten NL1 male that started many an Indica line."
-- Nevil, thread: Fem seeds and there impact on the future of the species known as cannabis, 2010-09-19

Nevil's account of NL1's parentage, however, contradicts one of Greg's. Nevil calls NL1 simply "a full blood Afghan indica" and "a pure strain from the pacific N.W. of America" that he received and stabilised - with no suggestion that any of his own genetics were in it. Greg, in 2014, claimed NL1 contained Nevil's own Afghani:

"Northern lights # 1 was Nevils Afghani crossed with the Seattle Afghan strain form Steve Murphy."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-06

But in 2021 Greg gave a different NL1 parentage with no Nevil genetics at all:

"NL #1 and #2 were in the bag before we got the Mazar from Nevil. #1 was Murphy's x Murphys and Don's #2 I think was Murphy's crossed with either hash plant or what he called his stinky Affie."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-18

So on NL1, Greg contradicts himself (Nevil's-Afghani-cross versus Murphy-x-Murphy), and Nevil's account - a pure Afghan he received, no Nevil genetics in it - is the more consistent of the three versions and matches Greg's later telling better than Greg's earlier one.

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C3. What NL2 was
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Nevil is the detailed witness here; Greg says little about NL2 specifically beyond listing it among the pure Indicas and (2021) guessing it was "Murphy's crossed with either hash plant or what he called his stinky Affie." Nevil consistently identifies NL2 as a Kush:

"The NL2 was IMO a NL version of Kush. More weight and that puffed up indica type of bud that NL5 had. The taste was very similar to the Kush4 that I remember as coming from Ortega... It was the Kush4 that made me realise that the NL2 was primarily a Kush... All the NL lines were from seed not cuttings, as was the Kush4."
-- Nevil, thread: Breeding techniques, 2011-01-10

"Kush 4, I crossed with NL2(which had the same Kush smell) and this Kush Hybrid is the foundation of todays Kush lines."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-02

Nevil also uses NL2 as the male line behind NL5's likely composition (see C4) and as a G13 backcross father (see F). There is no real conflict between the two men on NL2, only an asymmetry of detail.
 
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C4. The parentage of NL5 - the irreducible disagreement
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This is the one dispute that no reading of the record dissolves. The two men give non-overlapping recipes for NL5's non-Afghan half, and each is relaying an attribution he could not personally verify.

Greg says Afghan x hawaiian, and claims to have made the selection himself:

"the famous NL# 5 was a strain that came from Seattle and is a cross of an Indica from Afghanistan and a short season Sativa that came from Hawaii bred by Herbie who worked at a well known grow shop in Seattle."
-- Greg, thread: Growing Haze Tips?, 2013-02-21

"#5 the clone I traded Herbie Nelson for was 50% Afghani & 50% Hawaiian sativa."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-09

"I traded with my friend Herbie my pure strains and was blessed with one very nice mama that I took to seed and named #5... Herbie and i never went into detail and he said indica x hawaiian."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-06

"I had clones and seed and NL #5 was Hawaiian x Steve Murphy's Afghani Strain that is what I sent to Nevil."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-11

Note what Greg himself concedes: even his direct knowledge of the Hawaiian half is hearsay from Herbie, who "never went into detail and he said indica x hawaiian." Greg selected the female and named it, but the Hawaiian attribution is a thing he was told, not a cross he witnessed.

Nevil says Afghan (the NL1 line) x a US female he was told was part Thai - and, crucially, he flags the whole thing as inference and openly worries he invented the Thai element:

"My best bet was that NL5 was a combination of NL1 male line and US NL5 female. I guessed that US5 was 50% NL2. Northern Lights 2x5 was the best that I could do staying within the line (pure NL)."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

"I did go to the States later and pick up the original U.S. NL5 mother and it was as it was described to me, part Thai. But my NL5 didn't seem to have any Thai influence."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

"I don't see much Thai in it. I probably perpetuated the Thai/NL5 myth. The U.S. NL5 had Thai in it and I repeated the description given to me. Although mine was from the same family, it never showed any Thai characteristics."
-- Nevil, thread: the best northern lights seeds, wich breeder?, 2010-10-10

The two claims do not corroborate each other and cannot both be the whole truth. They name two different countries for the same non-Afghan fraction of the same plant - Hawaii versus Thailand - and each attribution is single-source and second-hand: Greg's Hawaiian comes from Herbie, Nevil's Thai comes from "the description given to me," which Nevil then doubts. The only thing they share is the negative space: both place a real Afghan indica on one side of the cross.

Confidence in any specific NL5 parentage: low. The most precise-sounding figures ("50% Afghani & 50% Hawaiian") are the least trustworthy in the record precisely because they are the most precise - false precision about an undocumented 1980s cross recalled decades later. This is the single most important point for a biographer to hold loosely.

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C5. NL5 as a true female, and where the elite phenotype was born
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Both men agree NL5 became the world-famous one and that it was elite and extraordinarily resinous. Nevil:

"Have you ever seen a photo of NL5 see if you can find the one by Ed Rosenthal. It was very strong (ask Ed) and super resinous, good yield but somewhat neutral smell and taste... IMO most of the truly resinous plants found today are descended from it. Yes it was elite."
-- Nevil, thread: Hermaphroditic Varieties, 2010-08-25

"Northern Lights changed the face of cannabis genetics (and many a smoker), but it was mostly through NL5. You've got to marvel at fate for dropping that one extreme plant into the lap of a budding seed breeder."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

Nevil also documents NL5's most famous technical trait: it was a true female that could not be reversed to make pollen.

"NL5 was not sterile, the world is awash with it's progeny. It could be induced to produce male flowers, but the pollen sacks were empty. A true female."
-- Nevil, thread: Fem seeds and there impact on the future of the species known as cannabis, 2010-08-20

But underneath the shared praise sits the deepest disagreement of the whole record, subtler than the parentage clash: where was the famous NL5 individual born? Greg's account has it selected in Seattle - he traded Herbie for the elite mother, took it to seed, and named it #5, a finished elite clone that he then sent. Nevil's account has the famous NL5 individual appearing in his hands in Holland, as a one-off anomaly thrown by the American seed line that no sibling could reproduce:

"NL5 was a sport. The brothers couldn't deliver."
-- Nevil, thread: Backcrossing vs. sibling mating, 2010-11-06

"I kept the lines separate and inbred them... NL5 only produced one unique individual."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

"I was interested in reversing NL5, because none of her brothers/ relatives would reinforce the 5 characteristics. Sometimes it happens in cannabis, a throwback to a past ancestor."
-- Nevil, thread: Fem seeds and there impact on the future of the species known as cannabis, 2010-09-19

This is the fault line. Greg says the elite NL5 was a Seattle selection he shipped. Nevil says the elite NL5 was a freak individual that emerged in Holland from the seed, propagated as a clone thereafter. They cannot both be describing the same origin for the specific plant that conquered the world.

The partial resolution the record does offer: Nevil went to America and physically collected the original US NL5 mother (Greg's selected plant, presumably), and found it inferior to what he had grown in Holland (see D2). So a US NL5 mother did exist - which supports Greg's claim that an elite #5 was selected in Seattle - but Nevil claims his Dutch-grown line surpassed it, and Greg does not really contest that Nevil improved it. The dispute narrows to whether the specific propagated NL5 clone that became world-famous descended from Greg's selected Seattle mother or from Nevil's NL5 clone. That, the record cannot settle.
 
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PART D. THE TRANSATLANTIC TRANSFER
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D1. How the material went to Holland
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Greg gives at least three transfer mechanisms, never reconciled. Mailed seed packets:

"The higher the number meant more sativa in the 11 packets of seed I mailed to Nevil."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-06

A terrarium of live, trimmed plants:

"We sent Northern Lights #5 to Nevil in a terrarium full of plants with the serrated edges of the Cannabis leaf trimmed. It worked and the rest is history."
-- Greg, thread: Mailing Clones, 2014-08-30

Seed plus a separately-sent cutting from Herbie:

"The NL #5 seed I sent to Nevil was a cross. The cutting he was sent was the original from Herbie."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-08

And, separately, Greg claims he personally hand-carried strains to Holland:

"I brought NL Strains to Ben and Nevil in the Netherlands and genetics from California were not involved as the strains from Hawaii were superior at the time."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

"In Seattle indoors I bred for short crop cycle time for 15 years before going to see Nevil."
-- Greg, thread: Smoke Testing Males? Age?, 2014-09-01

Nevil's account of receiving the material is much simpler: seed first, by an intended purchase arrangement that broke down, and then exactly one cutting that he fetched himself (see D2).

"The original intention was to purchase seeds from the US NL growers. It didn't work out and supply dried up."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

The sharp conflict: Greg claims a Herbie cutting was "sent" to Nevil and that a terrarium of live NL5 plants was shipped. Nevil says the only NL cutting he ever received he collected himself in America from "the Indian" (see D2 quote: "This was the only NL cutting that I ever got"). If Nevil is right that he only ever got one NL cutting and got it himself, Greg's sent-cutting and terrarium-of-plants claims are contradicted. Seed-by-mail is the one mechanism both accounts can accommodate.

Confidence: moderate that seed moved Seattle-to-Holland by mail. The live-plant terrarium and the sent-Herbie-cutting are uncorroborated and sit against Nevil's explicit "only NL cutting that I ever got" statement.

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D2. Nevil's trip to America to collect the cutting from "the Indian"
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This is the hinge of the timeline, and it produces the record's hardest cross-corroboration of cast alongside its sharpest divergence of framing. Nevil's account is specific and stable:

"I met the Indian to obtain the US NL5 cutting two years after getting the seeds. This was the only NL cutting that I ever got. If I ever sold seeds from this US cut, it wasn't for long. It was already superseded before it got it."
-- Nevil, thread: Northern Lights, 2010-11-30

"I went to the US to pick up the original US NL5. It wasn't in the same league as mine. The NL boys from the US came to me for my NL5 offspring. It was much better than the original."
-- Nevil, thread: Northern Lights, 2010-11-06

"Mine were from that plant (US NL5) and all of the brothers and sisters seemed typical of the line, except one. I expect it was a throwback... My NL5 seemed to have characteristics of NL2 and NL1, but had completely dropped any Thai influence from the mother."
-- Nevil, thread: Northern Lights, 2010-11-06

Both men independently call the Olympia-area grower "the Indian." Greg names him as Don Downes of the Queets Tribe (Part B1); Nevil, who never gives a name, uses the same epithet and describes obtaining "the US NL5 cutting" from him. The person is real and shared. But Greg's account has the material flowing outward from Seattle by mail, and has no room for Nevil flying to America two years later to collect a cutting - an event Greg never mentions. This is the same event that Greg experiences and describes as the "backdoor bypass" that ended the relationship (Part G1): Nevil going directly to the US source. Seen that way, the two accounts describe one event from two sides - Nevil calls it collecting a cutting, Greg calls it being cut out.

------------------------------------------------------------
D3. The reverse shipment - Nevil to Greg
------------------------------------------------------------

The single most reframing detail in the entire record, and one only Greg supplies: material flowed both ways. Nevil mailed his own Mazar and Ruderalis back to Seattle, and Greg's crew rejected them:

"Nevil sent it in the mail to me in Seattle in 1985 or 1986 with the Ruderalis he collected in Eastern Europe. We did side by sides with Steve Murphy's indica strain and it was slower growing and the seeds were smaller. We had limited growing space at that time and the Mazer and the Ruderalis were just not what we were looking for."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

Nevil independently confirms he possessed exactly these two things to send. On the Ruderalis, he pins the origin precisely:

"I found my Ruderalis in Northern Hungary. I only kept the early flowering gene going and got rid of every other trait."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil, 2010-09-15

Neither man mentions the specific detail the other emphasizes - Nevil never says he mailed these to Greg; Greg never says "Hungary" - but the halves lock together: Nevil had a Hungarian Ruderalis and Mazar to send, and Greg received a Ruderalis and Mazar from Nevil and found them wanting. This was a two-way exchange between peers, each unimpressed by parts of what the other sent, which is a materially different picture from either "Seattle made it and Holland took the credit" or "Nevil made everything."

Confidence: MODERATE-to-HIGH that a two-way exchange occurred, because each man independently supplies the half the other omits.


============================================================
PART E. NEVIL'S OWN GENETICS (context for the credit question)
============================================================

------------------------------------------------------------
E1. Nevil's Afghan collection, and his concession that it was inferior
------------------------------------------------------------

Nevil's celebrated Pakistan/Afghanistan expedition (Part A1) produced seed that, by his own account, failed. This is the concession that settles the "whose genetics" question in Greg's favor, and Nevil makes it against his own interest:

"I wish I could tell you that these seeds changed the world, but they didn't. They couldn't compete with American indica's and that's the truth."
-- Nevil, thread: Hey Nev, 2010-08-26

Greg says the same thing from his side - the American material was superior, which is why California and others came looking:

"genetics from California were not involved as the strains from Hawaii were superior at the time. At that point and time the Californians were coming to Seattle looking for the wonder weed coming out of The Emerald City and the Pacific Northwest."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

On this - the core of the folklore - the two men agree.

------------------------------------------------------------
E2. Nevil's American non-NL genetics
------------------------------------------------------------

Greg lists what Nevil had besides the NL material: Skunk #1 and California Orange from Sam the Skunkman, Early Pearl from Rob Clarke (Part A1 quote). Nevil independently confirms each source, which further corroborates that Greg knew Nevil's actual holdings rather than guessing:

"Early Pearl came from Rob Clark. He would be the best person to tell about its ancestry."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil, 2010-08-18

"There is still HP genetics around, but California Orange isn't as good as it sounds. I got from Sam and suspect that it was a hybrid."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil, 2010-08-18

"I remember when I first met Rob and Sam in '84, these guys were legends and helped me enormously... Rob... sold me Early Pearl and Sam sold me various Skunk lines, which was the industry standard at the time."
-- Nevil, thread: Gmo terminator cannabis, 2010-12-10

The agreement here is near-total and matters because it shows Greg's knowledge of Nevil's genetics was accurate on the checkable points, which lends some weight to his testimony on the uncheckable ones.
 
============================================================
PART F. WHAT NEVIL DID WITH THE LINES IN HOLLAND
============================================================

This is Nevil's domain, the mirror of Part B. Greg says almost nothing about it beyond conceding that Nevil "made Northern Lights #5 world famous." Nevil's breeding record with the NL lines is extensive, specific, and internally consistent - and it is the strongest evidence for his stewardship claim.

NL1 became his universal indica sire:

"NL1 was the only good pure Afghani male line I had... I expect that a lot of people holding what they believe to be pure Indicas today, would find, if the truth be known, that the sire line traces back to NL1."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

The flagship indica hybrids came off NL1 crossed to the two pure-indica cuttings he held, Hash Plant and G13:

"Hash plant X NL1 was one of the strongest indica's I have smoked. That crossed real well with G13."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-08-27

"I crossed HP to NL1, which was the strongest indica I've ener smoked and I put males from this to G13. It was labeled HP1.G13. People have assumed that this was a straight HPxG13 cross, but this was not the case. Their was NO sativa in this hybrid which was sent far and wide."
-- Nevil, thread: HP-13, 2010-10-07

"Gravity was a 4 way indica I made for Sensi using an extremely potent Hash Plant x NL1 as the mother. There were a couple of versions. The effect was seriously heavy. Gravity!"
-- Nevil, thread: Gravity, 2010-09-05

NL2, the Kush, seeded the modern Kush lines through the Kush4 cross:

"Kush 4, I crossed with NL2(which had the same Kush smell) and this Kush Hybrid is the foundation of todays Kush lines."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-02

NL5 was the mother of the great NL5 x Haze hybrids and the resin engine behind them (the Haze detail itself is out of scope here, but the NL5 role is central):

"NL5 was somewhat neutral in smell and when crossed with the Haze, it expressed the various genotypes behind the Haze very well."
-- Nevil, thread: Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-08-25

And NL5 anchored his Ruderalis auto-flower program - the same Hungarian Ruderalis he had mailed to Greg:

"I did a series of back crosses with NL5, HP and G13... NL5 was a sport. The brothers couldn't deliver. I used a Ruderalis for the NL5, picking the male carrying the R factor, which gave pollen at the fourth internode. Four generations a year... I went to 8 backcrosses."
-- Nevil, thread: Backcrossing vs. sibling mating, 2010-11-06

"I made 3 lines of Ruderalis. NL5, SK1 and Haze. I never finished the project. I suspect that what everyone is calling auto-flowers is double factor Ruderalis."
-- Nevil, thread: Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-09-05

This is the substance behind Nevil's stewardship claim. Whatever the truth about who selected the original NL5, the documented transformation of the NL lines into the indica and Kush and autoflower foundations of the modern market happened in Nevil's hands, and he describes it with a mechanistic specificity that Greg never attempts for the Dutch period - because he was not there for it.

One note on an apparent Nevil contradiction that dissolves on a full reading: "NL5 only produced one unique individual" (C5) seems to clash with running an eight-generation backcross program off NL5. It does not. NL5 was a genetic anomaly propagated as a clone; "unique individual" (no sibling could reproduce it) and "backcrossed 8 times" (the clone bred repeatedly) are both true of a plant kept as a cutting. This is the rare case where reading everything resolves an apparent contradiction rather than creating one.


============================================================
PART G. THE RUPTURE AND THE AFTERMATH
============================================================

------------------------------------------------------------
G1. The falling-out
------------------------------------------------------------

Both men confirm the relationship broke and never recovered; they frame the blame differently, but the underlying event is the same. Greg's version - betrayal by bypass:

"Our relationship soured when Nevil tried the backdoor direct bypass me so all seeds to The Netherlands were halted for 30 years now. I sent bag-weed seed and kept the good strains in Seattle."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

Nevil's version - the purchase arrangement simply collapsed:

"The original intention was to purchase seeds from the US NL growers. It didn't work out and supply dried up."
-- Nevil, thread: questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

These are two framings of one collapse. Greg's "backdoor bypass" is Nevil going directly to the US source - which is exactly the America trip Nevil describes in D2, where he collected the cutting from "the Indian" himself. Nevil's "supply dried up" is what that bypass produced from Greg's end: Greg says he then "sent bag-weed seed and kept the good strains in Seattle." Both accounts, read together, describe a middleman cut out and a supply line that died as a result.

------------------------------------------------------------
G2. Credit, the crown, and the commercial transformation
------------------------------------------------------------

Greg frames Nevil's rise as built on the American genetics - a small operation before, a major one after:

"before Nevil received the seed from Rob, Sam, and the NL crew he had a tiny ad in High Times. After getting the American made genetics he went with a full page ad and it may have been a mutual agreement with the folks in NYC to call him the King."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

Nevil corroborates the small-ad starting point himself:

"My ad got placed. I was a very small ad, Columbian and Nigerian seeds 4 for $1. You might have missed it, if you weren't paying attention."
-- Nevil, thread: the best northern lights seeds, wich breeder ?, 2010-10-11

Despite the feud, Greg is repeatedly and genuinely generous about Nevil's role and the Dutch custodians of the line - a stance that sits oddly beside the betrayal narrative and speaks to Greg's mixed feelings rather than pure grievance:

"The NL Strains were saved by Ben, Nevil, Shantibaba, and Arjan. They have all done an excellent job and all are World Class Plant Breeders with the Dutch Research as the best on the planet."
-- Greg, thread: Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-09

"We all know Nevil made Northern Lights #5 world famous as to the rest of the 1-11 original strain seed he received in the mail only he has the answer??"
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-19

"Nevil had the one he collected and the NL 1 & 2 from Seattle. Ask Nevil I have no clue what he did and it is real hard to speculate after all these years."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-04

That last quote is important for the biographer: Greg, the authorship claimant, openly concedes he does not know what Nevil actually did with the material in Holland - which is exactly the domain where Nevil is the sole detailed witness (Part F). Each man defers to the other on the half he did not witness.

------------------------------------------------------------
G3. Police pressure, lost records, the bust, and who holds it now
------------------------------------------------------------

Both men frame the era as defined by police pressure that destroyed the documentary record - which is the ultimate reason neither account can be checked against paper. Greg:

"Due to heavy police pressure our breeding records were used against us so we discontinued photos and record keeping for many years."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-09

"Our lawyers told us to keep no records or photographs as it was evidence the police did use against us."
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

Nevil's end came with his 1990 arrest; the NL5 project he never finished and the line passed to the Dutch industry. He references the jailing directly in the context of his NL5 Ruderalis work:

"I never did NL5r X NL5r like I was planning to, ended up in jail instead."
-- Nevil, thread: Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-09-04

Greg says Nevil sold Cannabis Castle to Ben Dronkers under duress, and both men agree the surviving custody of the line runs through Ben, Shantibaba, and Arjan:

"Nevil sold Cannabis Castle to Ben when he needed bail money"
-- Greg, thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16

"Due to intense police pressure the NL #5 was lost after it had been shipped to the Netherlands to Nevil. Thanks to Ben, Nevil, Arjan, and Shantibaba this genetic base will be around for a long time."
-- Greg, thread: Northern Lights, 2014-09-06
 
============================================================
PART H. WEIGHING THE WITNESSES
============================================================

------------------------------------------------------------
H1. Greg's internal contradictions, catalogued
------------------------------------------------------------

Confined to Northern Lights, Greg's testimony contains at least five distinct internal contradictions, every one of them going to a core fact of his own claimed authorship:

1. The foundational Afghan seed source: "Herbie's employers hands" (2013) vs "gifted" (2014) vs "the 4 seeds from Murphy" (2015).

2. The strain count: "ten" (2013) vs "11 packets" (2014, repeatedly) vs "#2 through #12" (2021).

3. Whether NL1 was even shipped: implied yes in his first post on the subject (2011, "where the original NL #1 seed was obtained") vs explicit no a decade later (2021, "NL # 1 was not sent to The Netherlands").

4. NL1's parentage: "Nevils Afghani crossed with the Seattle Afghan strain form Steve Murphy" (2014) vs "Murphy's x Murphys" with no Nevil genetics (2021).

5. The transfer mechanism: mailed seed packets vs a terrarium of live trimmed plants vs a sent Herbie cutting vs strains he hand-carried himself - four versions, never reconciled.

------------------------------------------------------------
H2. Nevil's internal consistency, and its caveats
------------------------------------------------------------

Nevil's NL testimony, read across roughly six months of near-daily posting, is strikingly stable: the count of eight, the NL1/NL2/NL5 descriptions, the US-trip narrative, and the breeding record all hold without internal contradiction. The one apparent exception (the "unique individual" versus "backcrossed 8 times" tension) fully dissolves once he explains NL5 was a propagated clone.

But three caveats prevent converting his consistency into a verdict that he is simply right and Greg wrong:

First, they often testify about different things. Greg describes the Seattle program from the inside; Nevil describes what arrived and what he did with it. Greg counts what was sent; Nevil counts what stabilized. A reliable witness to one end of a pipeline need not match the reliable witness at the other, without either lying.

Second, Nevil's consistency is partly bought by claiming less. It is easier to stay consistent when your position is "I received eight lines and I'm guessing about the parentage" than "I personally bred this specific cross from these specific parents." Nevil rigorously labels his inferences as inferences; that is genuine epistemic virtue, but it also means his stability costs him nothing because he commits to less.

Third, both men are recalling events three to four decades old and both say so. Greg: "memories of what happened 35 + years ago can be a bit hazy when one is stoned" (thread: Aloha, 2021-02-18). Nevil elsewhere calls himself "terrible with dates." Neither is a documentary source; both sides' records were destroyed under legal pressure.

------------------------------------------------------------
H3. The verdict, claim-type by claim-type
------------------------------------------------------------

Where the two men make claims of the same type about the same event, Nevil's are more internally consistent and more carefully hedged, and deserve more weight - most clearly on the strain count and on the nature of NL5 as a unique individual..

Where Greg makes first-hand claims about the Seattle program that Nevil cannot speak to, Greg is the only witness, and his account - internal wobble notwithstanding - is the only evidence there is. Nevil himself defers to this ("Ask Nevil I have no clue what he did" is matched by Greg's own deferral in the other direction).

Where they flatly contradict on NL5's exotic parent, neither can be believed over the other, because both are relaying single-source, unverifiable attributions, and Nevil openly doubts his own.

And on the one question the folklore cares about most - were the great genetics American - they agree, with Nevil conceding it against interest.
 
============================================================
PART I. RECONSTRUCTED CONCLUSION: WHAT MOST LIKELY HAPPENED
============================================================

Assembling only what the two men's own words support, the most probable history is this.

A real Seattle-area crew, Greg among them, was breeding Afghan indica lines indoors from the mid-1970s, motivated substantially by Vietnam veterans seeking sleep, working out of and around Steve Murphy's Indoor Sun Shoppe, with a numbered NL series and its component Indicas (including a #5 and a #1) in existence in Seattle in the early 1980s. The foundational Afghan seed reached the crew through the shop; Greg cannot keep the exact chain straight, but the shop-centered origin is stable.

Nevil, launching The Seed Bank in Holland around 1984-85, obtained Northern Lights seed lines from these American growers - material he himself concedes was better than the Afghani he had risked his life to collect in Pakistan. He received eight lines by his count (Greg says ten or eleven; the discrepancy is plausibly the gap between what was shipped and what survived as usable lines). Among them, a single freak female surfaced that no sibling could reproduce; Nevil called it NL5, propagated it as a clone, and built from it and from NL1 and NL2 the indica, Kush, and auto-flower foundations of the modern market - work he documents with a specificity Greg never attempts for the Dutch period because he was not there for it.

Roughly two years after the seed arrived, Nevil flew to America and collected a cutting of the original US NL5 from the Olympia grower both men call "the Indian" (Greg's Don Downes), and found it inferior to what he had already grown from seed. This direct-sourcing trip is the event Greg experienced as the "backdoor bypass," and the supply relationship collapsed, each man blaming the other. Genetics had by then also flowed the other way: Nevil mailed his Hungarian Ruderalis and Mazar back to Seattle in 1985-86, where Greg's crew tried them and found them wanting. Nevil was arrested in 1990, sold Cannabis Castle to Ben Dronkers, and the line passed to the Dutch seed industry, where both men agree it survives.

Two things in that reconstruction are genuinely irreducible. The non-Afghan parent of NL5 - Greg's Hawaiian versus Nevil's doubted Thai - cannot be resolved, because both are single-source attributions neither man could personally verify, and Nevil openly suspects he "perpetuated the Thai/NL5 myth." And whether the specific world-famous NL5 clone descended from Greg's selected Seattle mother or from Nevil's NL5 seed cannot be resolved either, because it turns on exactly the seam where one man's first-hand knowledge ends and the other's begins.

The deepest thing the record shows is not a contradiction at all. The popular framing - Holland versus Seattle, Nevil versus the American growers, one true author - is false to what both men actually say. Strip away the decades of forum feuding and the two accounts describe the same thing from two ends: a collaboration and two-way exchange between an American breeding crew that produced superior raw indica genetics and a Dutch breeder who recognized, stabilized, and immortalized a mutation hiding inside them. Greg supplied the seed; Nevil supplied the NL5's future. Each was, in the part he witnessed, largely telling the truth. And on the one question the folklore cares about most, the Dutchman quietly agrees with the American.


============================================================
APPENDIX. EXTERNALLY CHECKABLE CLAIMS (for a verification pass)
============================================================

The following are claims in the record that could be checked against sources outside these two men's forum posts (the 1987 High Times article, the 1990 indictments, seed-bank catalogues, published photographs). They are flagged, not resolved.

1. NL5 dated to 1982 in Seattle (Greg) versus 1984 in Holland in Nevil's own pedigree diagram (thread: Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-08-21). A two-year gap that is consistent with a Seattle selection preceding a Dutch arrival, but worth checking against catalogue dates.

2. The "Herbie Nelson" surname and the Hawaiian parentage of NL5 rest entirely on Greg relaying Herbie, who Greg says "never went into detail." Uncheckable from these corpora; would require an external source on Herbie.

3. Nevil's "part Thai" NL5 mother is the one attribution Nevil himself flags as possibly invented ("I probably perpetuated the Thai/NL5 myth"). Worth a live-forum spot-check if the biography leans on it.

4. The existence and identity of "the Indian" / Don Downes of the Queets Tribe, Mud Bay, Thurston County - named by Greg, corroborated only as "the Indian" by Nevil. Externally checkable via the obituary/genealogical record if it matters.

5. Nevil's 1990 arrest, extradition exposure, and sale of Cannabis Castle to Ben Dronkers - checkable against the indictment (US v. Schoenmakers) and the historical record.

6. Steven Hager / High Times authorship of "The Man Who Would Be King of Cannabis" - Greg quotes an email from Hager on the origin of the title (thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16). Checkable against the 1987 article itself.

============================================================
END OF REPORT
============================================================
 
PennyP said:
Is there a Download Version of the compled Version.

I find it very interessting...but have to translate it in German
One Love Penny ❤️ 💛 💚
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, no. Just cutting and pasting it up on this forum was quite time consuming, due to the length of it. I had the same problem with the SEL website, the original was a massive Wall 'o Words that most people would never read, so I put the edited version up.

I figured MNS participants would be a bit more interested in this subject matter, so that's why I posted the long, original analysis up.
 
PennyP said:
One Love @charlesufarley

Thank you, and much love to you for doing this work. I know it takes a lot of time and effort, and I really appreciate it.

Thanks again so much.

Peace,
Penny
Click to expand...
Indeed.

Thank you for posting @charlesufarley.
I enjoyed reading this and nice to see the two sides.(y)
You are very passionated about Northern Lights and very dedicated in revealing its history.

Great work.:)
 
charlesufarley said:
============================================================
PART I. RECONSTRUCTED CONCLUSION: WHAT MOST LIKELY HAPPENED
============================================================

Assembling only what the two men's own words support, the most probable history is this.

A real Seattle-area crew, Greg among them, was breeding Afghan indica lines indoors from the mid-1970s, motivated substantially by Vietnam veterans seeking sleep, working out of and around Steve Murphy's Indoor Sun Shoppe, with a numbered NL series and its component Indicas (including a #5 and a #1) in existence in Seattle in the early 1980s. The foundational Afghan seed reached the crew through the shop; Greg cannot keep the exact chain straight, but the shop-centered origin is stable.

Nevil, launching The Seed Bank in Holland around 1984-85, obtained Northern Lights seed lines from these American growers - material he himself concedes was better than the Afghani he had risked his life to collect in Pakistan. He received eight lines by his count (Greg says ten or eleven; the discrepancy is plausibly the gap between what was shipped and what survived as usable lines). Among them, a single freak female surfaced that no sibling could reproduce; Nevil called it NL5, propagated it as a clone, and built from it and from NL1 and NL2 the indica, Kush, and auto-flower foundations of the modern market - work he documents with a specificity Greg never attempts for the Dutch period because he was not there for it.

Roughly two years after the seed arrived, Nevil flew to America and collected a cutting of the original US NL5 from the Olympia grower both men call "the Indian" (Greg's Don Downes), and found it inferior to what he had already grown from seed. This direct-sourcing trip is the event Greg experienced as the "backdoor bypass," and the supply relationship collapsed, each man blaming the other. Genetics had by then also flowed the other way: Nevil mailed his Hungarian Ruderalis and Mazar back to Seattle in 1985-86, where Greg's crew tried them and found them wanting. Nevil was arrested in 1990, sold Cannabis Castle to Ben Dronkers, and the line passed to the Dutch seed industry, where both men agree it survives.

Two things in that reconstruction are genuinely irreducible. The non-Afghan parent of NL5 - Greg's Hawaiian versus Nevil's doubted Thai - cannot be resolved, because both are single-source attributions neither man could personally verify, and Nevil openly suspects he "perpetuated the Thai/NL5 myth." And whether the specific world-famous NL5 clone descended from Greg's selected Seattle mother or from Nevil's NL5 seed cannot be resolved either, because it turns on exactly the seam where one man's first-hand knowledge ends and the other's begins.

The deepest thing the record shows is not a contradiction at all. The popular framing - Holland versus Seattle, Nevil versus the American growers, one true author - is false to what both men actually say. Strip away the decades of forum feuding and the two accounts describe the same thing from two ends: a collaboration and two-way exchange between an American breeding crew that produced superior raw indica genetics and a Dutch breeder who recognized, stabilized, and immortalized a mutation hiding inside them. Greg supplied the seed; Nevil supplied the NL5's future. Each was, in the part he witnessed, largely telling the truth. And on the one question the folklore cares about most, the Dutchman quietly agrees with the American.


============================================================
APPENDIX. EXTERNALLY CHECKABLE CLAIMS (for a verification pass)
============================================================

The following are claims in the record that could be checked against sources outside these two men's forum posts (the 1987 High Times article, the 1990 indictments, seed-bank catalogues, published photographs). They are flagged, not resolved.

1. NL5 dated to 1982 in Seattle (Greg) versus 1984 in Holland in Nevil's own pedigree diagram (thread: Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-08-21). A two-year gap that is consistent with a Seattle selection preceding a Dutch arrival, but worth checking against catalogue dates.

2. The "Herbie Nelson" surname and the Hawaiian parentage of NL5 rest entirely on Greg relaying Herbie, who Greg says "never went into detail." Uncheckable from these corpora; would require an external source on Herbie.

3. Nevil's "part Thai" NL5 mother is the one attribution Nevil himself flags as possibly invented ("I probably perpetuated the Thai/NL5 myth"). Worth a live-forum spot-check if the biography leans on it.

4. The existence and identity of "the Indian" / Don Downes of the Queets Tribe, Mud Bay, Thurston County - named by Greg, corroborated only as "the Indian" by Nevil. Externally checkable via the obituary/genealogical record if it matters.

5. Nevil's 1990 arrest, extradition exposure, and sale of Cannabis Castle to Ben Dronkers - checkable against the indictment (US v. Schoenmakers) and the historical record.

6. Steven Hager / High Times authorship of "The Man Who Would Be King of Cannabis" - Greg quotes an email from Hager on the origin of the title (thread: Aloha, 2021-02-16). Checkable against the 1987 article itself.

============================================================
END OF REPORT
============================================================
Click to expand...
Northern lites was made from Nevils mazar x Murphys afghan. The folow ups to these wasthat strain outcrossed to various sativas then backcrossed back to that nl. Purest Indica was originaly the murphy afghan not nl, the nl started with nevils mazar x murphys afghan. Its Nevils mazar that puts all the power into the line and the internodal stretch .
 
Nightmare. said:
Northern lites was made from Nevils mazar x Murphys afghan. The folow ups to these wasthat strain outcrossed to various sativas then backcrossed back to that nl. Purest Indica was originaly the murphy afghan not nl, the nl started with nevils mazar x murphys afghan. Its Nevils mazar that puts all the power into the line and the internodal stretch .
Click to expand...
By no means am I an authority and not stirring the pot but…
Did NL exist before Neville started his business or did the NL crew buy the Mazar from Neville?
My loose understanding of the timeline doesn’t click?
 
Nightmare. said:
Northern lites was made from Nevils mazar x Murphys afghan. The folow ups to these wasthat strain outcrossed to various sativas then backcrossed back to that nl. Purest Indica was originaly the murphy afghan not nl, the nl started with nevils mazar x murphys afghan. Its Nevils mazar that puts all the power into the line and the internodal stretch .
Click to expand...
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion / interpretation but one thing is abundantly clear to anyone who has read through the statements by both Nevil and NL Seattle Greg, there is absolutely _no_ such thing as "Purest Indica".

That is a 100%, pure marketing term that is used by McCormick for his fictitious story about seeds NL Seattle Greg somehow "discovered" in a freezer decades later. For Boomers, by Boomers, for Money.

The various Northern Lights versions were under development for 10 years before Nevil even heard of them, that's a fact.
 
I think he's 1 cool dude, Looks to be in his element :) @charlesufarley What are the other plants?


IMG_3033.jpeg
I made this from some cuttings I collected. It's my new favourite smoke.

I seeded it up collected the seed and have now got it over 1m wide and 1m tall and cuttings of it and the sisters about to flower again. I've got some of the F2's also.

I'm gonna grow a load more of these F1's in October and over the winter and try get them a lot lot bigger. I'd like to try get some sample to smoke with him. I've been chatting to him on and off this year about various NL things.

I've been looking for some Pics of his plants to see what invisible traits are possibly from the Skunk and what are from the NL. I'm very happy with the effects and the taste smell and how it has some of the flower morphology. Looks way closer to the original than say this thing below.

I have some with some that can put out way bigger bracts than this, not quite as tight prhapos but I could with some serious Watts and HID it would be like the above pic's morphology .


1784337143329.jpeg

This one has too much Skunk or big skunk or something in it IMHO and looks very Dutch & generic. My cross above was with a famous Skunk/cheese NL plant.

This is the breakdown I can get to with what I think is in NL and the heirloom cuttings I used.

  • 25.00% Jamaican Landrace:
  • 22.92% Afghani: base, the Mother’s Highland Thai cross, and the Father’s 4-way mix.
  • 18.75% Highland Juicy fruit Thai: Present in both the Maternal and Paternal lines.
  • 12.50% Chocolate Thai: Strictly from the Paternal side.
  • 12.50% Oaxacan Highland: Strictly from the Paternal side.
  • 4.17% Colombian Gold: From the Mother's base hybrid.
  • 4.17% Acapulco Gold: From the Mother's base hybrid.

The cheese NL looks a lot like this plant above in shape/ form but a lot lot more resinous.
1784338089267.jpeg

The cross seems to have brought some of the phenotypic traits through from the NL and not just the structure, a lot more than I was expecting and more than I had hoped for with very good effects.
 
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