OG Kush

The Record

Origin: Florida to Los Angeles

Before it was OG, it was just Kush - a heavy, gassy cut grown quietly in Florida in the early-to-mid 1990s. It was unlike anything on the West Coast at the time: an aroma of fuel and pine that filled a room, and a potency that ended conversations.

In 1996, the year California passed Proposition 215, Matt Berger carried cuttings of the Florida Kush west to Los Angeles. The trip nearly killed the line. One cutting survived.

That surviving cutting landed with Josh D. He rooted it, grew it, cloned it, and refined the way it was cultivated - indoors, dialed in, batch after batch - until the plant out of his rooms became the standard the entire city measured against. From Los Angeles it moved north: in 1997 a Kush entry from Josh's rooms won a private cannabis cup in San Francisco, the cultivar's first documented recognition outside LA.

That is the provenance chain: Florida genetics, Berger's transport, Josh's preservation and cultivation. Cannabis history is collective - no single person invented OG Kush. But the surviving cut ran through a specific set of hands, and those hands are documented.

What Does "OG" Mean?

Thirty years of folklore have produced two popular theories: Ocean Grown and Original Gangster. Neither comes from the people who grew the plant.

The "OG" designation marked the original Kush - the true cut, grown by the original crew, as distinct from the copies, crosses and pretenders that multiplied as the plant's reputation exploded. The name was a provenance claim from the beginning. It still is.

Lineage & Descendants

The original OG Kush is a clone-only cultivar. It was never a seed line, which is why true OG has always moved from grower to grower as living cuttings - and why provenance matters more for OG than for almost any other cultivar.

You will find pages across the internet asserting a tidy parentage for OG Kush - most commonly Chemdawg crossed with Lemon Thai and Hindu Kush. That is a third-party theory, not the account of the people who grew the original. What is documented is where the cut came from (Florida), when it arrived in LA (1996), and who kept it alive. The genetics conversation the record supports is about descendants, not invented parents.

And the descendants are the point. Many of the best-known modern OG lines trace back through the original cut:

Josh's current breeding work carries the same vehicle forward - see Kustom Shop Genetics and The Smooch Collection.

Why OG Kush Is Hard to Grow

Part of why the original cut stayed rare is that OG Kush punishes casual growers. It stretches aggressively in flower. It is sensitive to feeding - quick to burn, quick to fade. Its yields are modest next to commercial cultivars, and its signature gas only fully expresses when environment, feed and timing are dialed.

That difficulty is inseparable from the history: the growers who could do it right were few, their rooms were known, and the plant's scarcity fed the legend. Josh spent three decades refining how this plant wants to be grown - and answers growers' questions directly at Ask Josh.

Josh D & the Science of Aroma

Josh Del Rosso is a named co-author of a 2021 peer-reviewed study in ACS Omega that identified a new family of prenylated volatile sulfur compounds contributing to cannabis's characteristic pungent aroma - the class of chemistry behind what growers call "gas."

The study was not an OG Kush-specific chemical analysis - it examined cannabis aroma broadly, across multiple cultivars. What it establishes is narrower and stronger: the cultivator who kept the gassiest plant in cannabis alive for three decades is inside the peer-reviewed scientific record on cannabis aroma.

• Oswald, I. W. H., et al. - Identification of a New Family of Prenylated Volatile Sulfur Compounds in Cannabis ACS Omega, 2021 · DOI 10.1021/acsomega.1c04196 · co-author: Josh Del Rosso

What People Get Wrong

• "OG stands for Ocean Grown."
  Folklore. Josh D, who grew the original cut, is on record: OG stands for Original. The Ocean Grown story appeared later and spread because it was a good line, not because it was true.
• "OG Kush is Chemdawg × Lemon Thai × Hindu Kush."
  A third-party breeding theory with no confirmation from the people who grew the original. The documented record is a clone-only Florida cut carried to LA in 1996 - its parentage was never disclosed by a breeder because it was never a bred seed line.
• "Kush means it comes from the Hindu Kush mountains."
  The name Kush traveled with the Florida cut as a street name for its class of aroma and effect. The original OG Kush lineage is not a documented Hindu Kush landrace import.
• "Josh D invented OG Kush single-handedly."
  Also wrong - and we say so on our own site. The cut came out of Florida, Matt Berger carried it west, and a small crew around Josh made LA happen. Josh's role was preservation, cultivation, refinement and distribution. That is the claim, because that is what the evidence supports.

The Evidence

This record is built from firsthand testimony and independently published accounts. The photographic archive - the grows, the rooms, the jars, the awards - is being published piece by piece in The Archive.

• Josh Del Rosso, Founder and Managing Director of Josh D Farms Forbes, 2018 - Josh on record: OG stands for Original
• OG Kush: A Quarter Century of Gas LA Weekly - the Berger transport, the surviving cutting, the LA start
• An Epoch of OG: The OG Kush family genealogy Leafly - independent genealogy crediting Josh's preservation of the lineage
• OG Kush Hiii Magazine, 2025 - the Florida-to-LA account and Josh's cultivation
• Prenylated Volatile Sulfur Compounds in Cannabis ACS Omega, 2021 - peer-reviewed; Josh Del Rosso co-author

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