Featured Flower
Featured Flower: Wedding Cake
Learn more about your favourite cannabis flower or dive into something new as we explore the history, growing methods and unique properties of our most popular strains. In this feature, we’re spotlighting Wedding Cake — an indica-dominant strain that’s sweet and strong.
At a Glance
Aroma and Taste: Sweet, lemony, peppery, earthy
Common Dominant Terpenes: Myrcene, Beta-Caryophyllene, Limonene, Humulene
Average THC: High Average CBD: Low
What Is Wedding Cake?
To answer this question and more, we turned to the experts at Bullrider (grown by cultivation partner MJardin), Msiku (grown by Atlanticann), and Weed Me — each of whom have their very own take on this popular strain.
Interestingly, Wedding Cake is the moniker for two different indica-dominant hybrid strains — both heavy hitters when it comes to potency and aroma.
History
One name, two strains.
Bullrider’s Wedding Cake is a cross between Triangle Kush, an indica, and Animal Mints, a hybrid cross of Animal Cookies and SinMint Cookies. The cultivar has legacy roots and is an original phenotype from California, grown by Seed Junky Genetics. “We decided to bring this to the market because of its popularity and familiarity as a high-THC cultivar,” the Bullrider team says. “We were confident we could do its reputation justice with our growing practices.”
Wedding Cake is also another name for Pink Cookies, a strain that crosses indica-dominant hybrids GSC and Cherry Pie. Weed Me decided to grow this version after coming across it in 2018 and quickly becoming fans themselves. “We are consumers of our products and if we like it, we hope you do, too,” says Terry Kulaga, the company’s founder. Over at Msiku, they take that same Wedding Cake lineage and cross it again with GSC to produce their potent White Wedding strain, which brand manager James MacLean says is their bestseller.
Characteristics
While the lineages may be different, both iterations of Wedding Cake share many of the same characteristics — high THC levels, a rich cannabinoid profile and a sweet, citrusy aroma that’s reminiscent of cake batter, balanced with earthy, herbal notes. “It is quite pungent and may give a nostalgic sense of fall,” says the Bullrider team. The aroma is so powerful that when Weed Me’s plants are in full bloom, Kulaga says “the smell of the room makes it hard for us to leave work at the end of the day!”
Visually, both types of Wedding Cake are a feast for the eyes. Msiku’s White Wedding serves up “deep green and purple flowers, and fiery orange pistils coated in a dense layer of trichomes resembling a true Atlantic frost,” says MacLean. Purple colours are also expressed by Weed Me’s Wedding Cake plants, while at Bullrider, they boast “multiple shades of green and unique light orange pistils.”
Growing
Even when growing the same (or similar) strain, Producers adopt their own unique growing techniques; such is the case for Wedding Cake.
Msiku’s White Wedding comes from Nova Scotia, where it’s grown hydroponically in rockwool, a lightweight material made from spinning molten basaltic rock into fine fibres which are then formed into solid shapes. “This strain is difficult to grow,” says MacLean. “It is extremely particular when it comes to lighting intensity, temperature, humidity and irrigation.” After trial and error, the team now knows the strain’s unique needs, such as its positive response to cool nights later in the flowering cycle.
Weed Me also grows Wedding Cake hydroponically in rockwool. The key to their success is focusing on the flush, which uses plain water to remove any nutrients in the soil, forcing the plant to use up any of its self-contained nutrients. “With less nutrients in the plant, the smoking experience is enhanced. You approach a pure smoke of only the cannabis plant, cannabinoids and terpenes,” says Kulaga.
Bullrider Wedding Cake is grown indoors by cultivation partner MJardin, at their facility in Brampton, Ontario. It’s an “aggressive cultivar that requires precisely timed pruning throughout the growth period,” says the Bullrider team. “It must be properly topped and shaped with the use of trellis netting to open up the canopy.”
What Is a Strain?
To understand what a cannabis strain is, think of it like a breed of dog. While all dogs share similar traits, there are distinct differences among breeds (you wouldn’t confuse a Great Dane with a dachshund, for example). When it comes to different cannabis strains, this means one may have a sweet, lemony aroma, while another may boast a pungent, sour, diesel-like scent.
These differences have been fine-tuned by cannabis growers over many generations. Growers will choose two plants with desirable traits and then cross (or breed) those plants together, creating an offspring with a stronger expression of those desirable characteristics. When breeding cannabis plants, growers are often focused on the unique aroma and taste, and the potential THC and CBD content. Just like no two Great Danes are identical, strains can vary from lot to lot and grower to grower.
