Great weed doesn’t just spring out of the ground, though the name might imply otherwise. It’s built slowly with genetic building blocks and meticulous cultivation, intentionally, and by people who know how to make hard calls.
Behind every standout cultivar is a long trail of judgment. What to cross. What to keep. What to let go, even if it looked promising for a week or two. Breeding isn’t magic or luck. It’s repetition, memory, and restraint. The art of curation lives there—before the jar, before the test results, before anyone gives it a name.
Purple City Genetics has operated with that mindset since 2008. Based in Oakland, they’re a tight group of breeders and cultivators whose work sits quietly behind some of the most respected flower on the market. You’ve probably smoked their genetics without knowing it. That’s how it goes. Their cultivars aren’t always loud on the label, but they’re built to last in a grow room, in a grinder, and in your lungs.
Their process starts with seeds and quickly shifts into pattern recognition. Which plants stretch. Which washes. Which carry weight through flowering. Which fall apart under stress. The team runs selections in rounds, under different conditions, with other inputs. They look for consistency. For shape, color, texture, resin, and aroma. And then they smoke. Every step leads to that moment when you can feel whether it’s worth keeping.
“We’re rarely talking about flower like smoker-to-smoker,” says Auryn McCafferty, Purple City’s co-founder. “But internally? That’s all we do. Everyone’s growing, everyone’s smoking, we’re comparing notes constantly. We grow things one way, then another. We argue, we revisit. We get close to the plant before we ever share it.”
Most phenos don’t make it. Not because they fail outright, but because they fall short in subtle, specific ways. A flat nose. A high that hits too fast and vanishes. A plant that smells great on the vine but goes blank in the bag or, even worse, in the joint, while smoking. These are the details that matter.
“We think about everything through the parents,” McCafferty says. “If I know the mother was a good washer or the dad brings a specific expression forward, that gives me a way in. We’ve built those relationships over years—both with the plants and with each other.”
The cultivars in this Miss Grass drop came out of that process: selected not for novelty, but for how they hold up. In production. In the jar. On the exhale.
Bob Hope
Five years of refinement led to a high that balances clarity with ease. Uplifting without the edge. “Sativa for non-sativa smokers,” McCafferty calls it. The kind of cultivar you keep coming back to because it never overshoots the mark.
Mad Fruit
Loud and sticky with a flavor profile that lands somewhere between overripe berries and sour candy. A big terp, high-testing cultivar that delivers weight and movement at once. It hits fast, holds steady, and lingers in the best way.
Pineapple Breeze
Pineapple skin. Slight funk. A citrusy, tropical nose that doesn’t read as artificial or sweet. It finishes clean and keeps its hybrid balance without getting sleepy or overstimulating. A flexible, full-spectrum smoke.
Brr Berry OG
Structured like old-school gas, but layered with bright fruit and a creamy, cake-forward finish. Wedding Cake gives it thickness. Watermelon Skittles gives it lift—solid yield, strong bag appeal, and easy to grow, without compromising the experience.
Zushi
Bred by TenCo, selected by Purple City. Out of seven cuts, this one carried. Dense bud structure, deep color, high oil content, and a terp profile that holds from dry pull to exhale. Zkittles brings the classic sweetness and classic hard-to-miss Z-terps, and Kush Mints keeps it grounded.
Billy Ocean
A high-THC hybrid with a tropical nose and a clean, energetic finish. The lineage blends Purple Punch, Watermelon Zkittles, and Caribbean Cookies, resulting in a flavor profile that feels both bright and grounded, sweet, sour, and a little unexpected. Grows big, smokes clean, and leans uplifting without overstimulation.
