Coconut Flavored Cannabis: A Tropical Fantasy or Real?
Coconut Kush is a Google-able astrain born from the mind of Rik Sharaj, master grower, but does it taste anything like actual coconuts? Coconut Kush isn’t alone, Leafly and Seedfinder clock many strains with coconut in the nomenclature, but there isn’t much out there noting such strains tasting anything like the real deal.
Coconut Cream, Coconut Milk, Coconut OG and even Coconut Oil are registered cultivars around the web, but they’re as rare as coconuts used to be before they became a trendy food favorite. Tropical fruit flavors are prevalent in cannabis, but not quite ‘coconut’ flavor, which has a buttery, oily, and sweet signature.
More obvious fruit profiles like pineapple have been popular for decades, and you can even taste sultry passion fruit in some indicas, but the backbone of paradise—coconut— is really only pulled out to describe a feeling of ‘creaminess’ in a cannabis strain, not notes of the drupe fruit itself.
Fruity cultivars can sometimes have this nearly rotten quality that can read to some people as fuel and to others as cheesy. You can find strains like Pina Colada and Coconut OG online, but they’re not as prevalent in dispensaries—yet!
For now, creamy, or dare we say almost coconutty, flavors are not identified in cannabis specifically, not yet, but we do know that like coconuts, cannabis contains lactones—molecules that create creamy, earthy, and herbaceous flavors in plants.
Lactones are a complicated but essential part of many compounds, like vitamin C, some hormones, and even antibiotics and anti cancer drugs. They are responsible for some of the aromatic complexity in plants, like another popular cannabis puzzle piece, terpenes.
Yet another part of the still unlocked entourage effect, lactones could be partially in charge of how whole plant cannabis creates effects in the body, with other molecules like phenols, ketones, esters, and aldehydes.
Soon we could be raving about the scent of specific lactones with just as much scientific proficiency as the terpenes, but it likely won’t for some time.
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