What Does OG Stand For?

OG stands for Original. That is the answer from Josh D, the man who grew the original OG Kush cut in Los Angeles from 1996 - and he has given it on the record.

Where the other theories came from

Thirty years of retellings produced two popular alternatives: Ocean Grown and Original Gangster. Both spread because they were good stories, not because they came from the people who grew the plant. The Ocean Grown legend in particular - a grower supposedly correcting someone who guessed "Original Gangster" by saying the plant was "ocean grown" - appeared years after the cut was already established in Los Angeles, and no one from the original circle tells it.

Why the name mattered

The "OG" designation was a provenance claim from the beginning. As the plant's reputation exploded across Southern California, copies, crosses and pretenders multiplied - everything gassy started getting called Kush. Marking the true cut as the original Kush was how the people holding it distinguished the real plant from everything trading on its name. The abbreviation stuck, and eventually the provenance marker became part of the cultivar's name itself.

The full documented history - Florida origins, the 1996 arrival, the surviving cutting - lives on the OG Kush record.