ABSTRACT
When plants grow exclusively in nature, the term “wild” accurately describes them. However, many plants have been removed from their natural area and changed genetically to suit the needs or whims of humans, and sometimes, such genetically changed plants escape from cultivation and reestablish in nature. Sometimes, hybridization between genetically changed plants and their wild ancestors occurs, changing the latter. In either of these latter two circumstances, the term “wild” can be misleading because humans have in fact removed some of the genes that contributed to the wildness of the plant. The word “wild” has been used in a broad sense to include all populations growing outside of cultivation and, in a narrow sense, to refer to populations of a species that are uninfluenced genetically by domestication. As discussed in Chapter 18, wild-growing plants of Cannabis sativa, insofar as has been determined, are either escapes from domesticated forms or the results of thousands of years of widespread genetic exchange with domesticated plants, making it virtually impossible to determine if unaltered primeval or ancestral populations still exist. Moreover, because the species has been spread and modified by humans for millennia, there does not seem to be a reliable means of accurately determining its original geographical range or even whether a plant collected in nature represents a primeval wild type or has been influenced by domestication.
