Dangit, alright somebody tickled my tism so now you all get this brain dump wall of text:

Here goes.

I feel somewhat validated, at least annecdotally, by the fact that THCA cannabis available on the market, regardless of strain is always extremely zippy.

This would, in my opinion, be due to the fact that THCA cannabis is merely immature plants/trichomes harvested well before optimal ripeness.

And while yes, there ARE other factors as to what causes specific effect, terpenes, genetics and so on, I believe the main factor in the type of effect is the ripeness of the trichomes.

As you stated, most plants grown for flower are, in fact, hybrids since growing a true sativa would be difficult given space and daylight length availability in North America.

Let me see if i can articulate this concept well enough:

If you are growing a "true" sativa, your space and light requirements dictate how long you can grow when trying to reach optimal trichome development. At a certain point (a) you run out of space or (b) you’re growing outdoor and encounter environmental complications such as hitting 12/12 too early, the weather gets cold earlier than a subtropic sativa would like, etc etc. So, you have to chop early (for the plant), thus giving you less ripe and very heady effects.

On the other hand, if you were to grow an indica plant you are less constrained by space as they are a squatty form and they develop quicker due to where they historically come from. While not quite as rapidly developing as a ruderalis, they would certainly need to get to maturity much faster in their historical climate than a sativa where the days are long and frosts are extremely rare.

Following that logic, if some grower from before the legal cannabis boom were growing indica in the basement or out back, they would more apt to let the trichomes develop longer (either out of ignorance or by accident). Simply put, an indica would have more variability for the outcome as far as trichome maturity at harvest.

The state of the art of growing cannabis has been completely upended over the last ~20 years and I truly believe that as time goes we are going to see how wrong we all were specifically regarding sativa vs indica.

I really think those two subspecies are really more indicative of the physical form (developed over time in response to their respective ecosystems) of the plant itself and the rate at which they mature. There are certainly terpenes and other factors hitching a ride along in there (and each strain or varietal has specific effects brought forward by those factors) but overall I think sativa/indica are poor descriptors of what these plants are doing.