A Comparative Analysis of NL Seattle Greg's and Nevil's Forum Testimony on NL1, NL2, and NL5.

Scope and Method

Part One: NL Seattle Greg's Account

1.1 The cast and the setting

Greg's Northern Lights origin story is anchored to Seattle-area retail and a small, tight, paranoid breeding crew. The hub was Steve Murphy's shop:

"Indoor Sun Shoppe - Plants This is where the original NL #1 seed was obtained and the original clone of NL #5 which was a hybrid of NL #1 crossed with a strain from Hawaii."

Northern Lights, 2011-03-27

"Steve Murphy owned The Indoor Sun Shoppe in Seattle. NL #5 was a F1 hybrid in 1982."

Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-10

The breeding group itself, per Greg, was small and regionally scattered out of necessity:

"The Northern Lights Crew was very small because of intense police pressure. It was all people from the Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, and Portland area. And we were real wary of anyone who was not known. Paranoia ruled for good reasons as Nevil and Marc Emory found out."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

A recurring secondary character is "the Indian," identified as Don Downes, framed as a grower supported by the crew rather than a genetic source:

"'The Indian' was Don Downes and he lived a little north of Olympia (no Island) he received 90% of the genetics he used (NL#5, NL #2, Hash Plant) form the friends of the Indoor Sun Shoppe group in the Seattle Area. Don was an older guy who we set up with a four light operation and the Indica crosses from Steve Murphy's original Afghani Indica strain."

Who is the top 10 Breeders in the world?, 2013-01-14

"Don (aka the Indian) was from the Queets Tribe in Washington State who got injured on the job and needed a way to supplement his income. We set him up with lights substrate and strains and he worked for several years until his Son got out of the Army."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

Greg's stated motive for the whole enterprise is explicitly medicinal and tied to his own biography as a combat veteran:

"We were Vietnam Combat Veterans needing ptsd meds (sleep matters) so the focus was NL 1 to 5 with a beat this breeding program."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

1.2 What NL#5 was made of, and how the story shifts

Greg's most detailed account of NL5's parentage credits a named associate, "Herbie," with the Hawaiian side of the cross:

"There has been a lot of misinformation about the origin of the Northern Lights Strains sent to The Netherlands in the 1980s. Seeds of ten strains were sent to Nevil at the Seed Bank and the famous NL# 5 was a strain that came from Seattle and is a cross of an Indica from Afghanistan and a short season Sativa that came from Hawaii bred by Herbie who worked at a well known grow shop in Seattle."

Growing Haze Tips?, 2013-02-21

He gives a fuller breeding narrative later, crediting himself directly with the female selection work:

"Here is the way I traded for the original NL #5. After I was gifted 4 wide leaved pure afghani seeds I went to seed and started the Luther Burbank selection process to get superior female cuttings. I traded with my friend Herbie my pure strains and was blessed with one very nice mama that I took to seed and named #5. Having bud,seed and cuttings of #5 was also nice! & then came Nevil and getting the seed for the medicine to my Vietnam Veteran Brothers and others who needed it. Herbie and i never went into detail and he said indica x hawaiian."

Northern Lights, 2014-09-06

Elsewhere, the same cross is stated with a percentage breakdown and a full surname for Herbie that appears nowhere else in the corpus:

"The 11 packets of seed Nevil received were graded the #1,2, 3, were 100% indica, #5 the clone I traded Herbie Nelson for was 50% Afghani & 50% Hawaiian sativa. The others #6-#11 were crosses with Columbian, Thai, and Mexican Sativas."

Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-09

And elsewhere again, with a different pairing of parents:

"I had clones and seed and NL #5 was Hawaiian x Steve Murphy's Afghani Strain that is what I sent to Nevil."

Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-11

Note the drift across these four passages: the Afghan parent is at one point simply "an Indica from Afghanistan," at another point Steve Murphy's strain by name, and, most strikingly, in a fifth passage the Afghan parent of NL1 (not NL5) is attributed to Nevil himself:

"Northern lights # 1 was Nevils Afghani crossed with the Seattle Afghan strain form Steve Murphy. The higher the number meant more sativa in the 11 packets of seed I mailed to Nevil."

Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-06

That is the only place in 62 posts where Greg concedes any Nevil-side genetic input into an NL number at all; everywhere else, the strains are wholly Seattle-authored and merely "sent to" or "traded" with Nevil.

1.3 The numbering scheme, and its inconsistencies

Greg offers at least four different accountings of how many strains existed and how they were numbered:

"Seeds of ten strains were sent to Nevil at the Seed Bank..."

2013-02-21

"The base plants for the entire Seattle Northern Lights strains 1 to 10 was a batch of seed sent from Afghanistan..."

2013-02-22

"The higher the number meant more sativa in the 11 packets of seed I mailed to Nevil."

2014-06-06

"The 11 strains were graded by height and flavor for indoor growing. The #1 was a short phenotype pure Indica from Afghaniatan as was #2,3, & 4. #5 to #11 was the Hybrids with the narrow leaved strains we worked with."

2014-09-13

Nine days earlier in the same thread, however, he had drawn the indica/hybrid line differently:

"NL 1-2-3 were short and high afgani smell & taste 4-11 were indica sativa hybrids"

2014-08-31

Compare: on 2014-08-31, #4 is already a hybrid; on 2014-09-13, #4 is still "100% indica" alongside #1-3. Same man, same thread, nine days apart, two different phenotype boundaries for the same strain number.

The count and the numbering shift again seven years later, in a 2021 thread, where Greg now excludes NL#1 from the shipment entirely and extends the range past 11:

"NL # 1 was not sent to The Netherlands we sent #2 through #12. #2 as the short wide leaf strain and as the numbers increased taller plants with more narrow leaves and a longer time to harvest."

Aloha, 2021-02-17

This directly contradicts his own first post on the subject a decade earlier, which stated flatly that Indoor Sun Shoppe was "where the original NL #1 seed was obtained," implying NL#1 was transmitted and was foundational, not withheld. It also does not reconcile with either the "ten strains" or "11 packets" figures from 2013 to 2014: "10," "11," and "#2 through #12" (which is 11 strains, but a different 11 than "#1 through #11") are three different accountings from the same author.

The 2021 thread adds yet a third description of what NL#1 and NL#2 actually were, differing again from the 2014 "Nevil's Afghani x Seattle Afghan" claim:

"NL #1 and #2 were in the bag before we got the Mazar from Nevil. #1 was Murphy's x Murphys and Don's #2 I think was Murphy's crossed with either hash plant or what he called his stinky Affie."

Aloha, 2021-02-18

Here NL#1 is "Murphy's x Murphy's," a purely Seattle-internal cross with no Nevil genetics at all, the opposite of the 2014 claim that NL1 was "Nevils Afghani crossed with the Seattle Afghan strain."

1.4 How the genetics physically got to the Netherlands

Greg gives two different transmission mechanisms. The first is a live-plant shipment:

"We sent Northern Lights #5 to Nevil in a terrarium full of plants with the serrated edges of the Cannabis leaf trimmed. It worked and the rest is history."

Mailing Clones, 2014-08-30

The second, four days later in a different thread, describes seed and a separately-sourced cutting:

"The NL #5 seed I sent to Nevil was a cross. The cutting he was sent was the original from Herbie."

Northern Lights, 2014-09-08

These are not flatly incompatible, a terrarium of live plants and a cutting "sent" by mail could describe the same event loosely, but Greg never reconciles them into one coherent chain of custody, and neither version matches Nevil's own account of how he obtained a cutting (Part Two, below).

1.5 The falling-out and the credit dispute

Greg frames the eventual rupture with Nevil as a betrayal, Nevil allegedly went around him to deal directly with the Seattle growers:

"Our relationship soured when Nevil tried the backdoor direct bypass me so all seeds to The Netherlands were halted for 30 years now. I sent bag-weed seed and kept the good strains in Seattle."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

Despite the falling-out, Greg is generous, even effusive, about the eventual custodians of the line, repeatedly naming Nevil among them:

"The NL Strains were saved by Ben, Nevil, Shantibaba, and Arjan. They have all done an excellent job and all are World Class Plant Breeders with the Dutch Research as the best on the planet."

Northern lights#1 vs. northern lights #5, 2014-06-09

"Due to intense police pressure the NL #5 was lost after it had been shipped to the Netherlands to Nevil. Thanks to Ben, Nevil, Arjan, and Shantibaba this genetic base will be around for a long time."

Northern Lights, 2014-09-06

And, notably, Greg concedes ignorance of what actually happened on Nevil's end with the rest of the material, a rare admission of uncertainty that sits oddly next to his otherwise confident percentage breakdowns:

"Nevil had the one he collected and the NL 1 & 2 from Seattle. Ask Nevil I have no clue what he did and it is real hard to speculate after all these years."

Northern Lights, 2014-09-04

"We all know Nevil made Northern Lights #5 world famous as to the rest of the 1-11 original strain seed he received in the mail only he has the answer??"

Northern Lights, 2014-09-19

Greg also disputes a third party's account (Sam the Skunkman) of California involvement, repeatedly and with some heat, though this is tangential to the Nevil comparison:

"Sam the Skunkman has claimed a few things that are not true or factual. I brought NL Strains to Ben and Nevil in the Netherlands and genetics from California were not involved as the strains from Hawaii were superior at the time."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-30

"NL strains did not come from California period they brought nothing of value to Seattle."

Northern Lights, 2014-08-31

One personal aside about Nevil is worth flagging as characterization rather than fact: Greg's claim that Nevil didn't retain breeding advice because of drinking,

"i told Nevil how i did it long ago but he was well into downing his evening bottle of scotch and he did not seem to retain the information."

Smoke Testing Males? Age?, 2014-09-01

which cannot be checked against anything in Nevil's own posts and should be treated as Greg's unverifiable personal characterization, not a fact about Nevil's habits.

Part Two: Nevil's Account

2.1 How many strains, and where they came from

Nevil's number is fixed and stated twice, identically, months apart:

"When I first got the NL varieties, there were 8 types, 1-8. They came with descriptions, which I published in my catalogue. These descriptions may not correlate with what later developed. The original intention was to purchase seeds from the US NL growers. It didn't work out and supply dried up. I kept the lines separate and inbred them. NL1 and NL2 stabilised into distinct types and NL5 only produced one unique individual."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

"The NL 1-8 were seed lines and most were hybrids. A couple of years after getting the seed, I went to the U.S. to get the U.S. NL5 cutting. It didn't turn out to be as good or even that similar to my NL5."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-10-01

Eight is Nevil's number, consistently, on both occasions he gives one. It matches none of Greg's figures (ten; eleven; "#2 through #12").

Nevil's broader statement on sourcing frames Northern Lights as one of several "primary building blocks" acquired from individual growers, without naming Seattle, Murphy, Herbie, or Don Downes anywhere in the corpus searched:

"Mostly, I got seeds or cuttings from individual growers. The primary building bolcks for modern lines today are Northern Lights, Haze, Ortega lines, hash plant, G13, SK1, EP, Big Bud."

Where in the world did you get your seed, 2010-09-10

2.2 What NL1, NL2, and NL5 actually were, phenotypically

Nevil's descriptions are detailed and consistent across multiple threads. NL1:

"The Northern Lights#1 was a pure strain from the pacific N.W. of America. It had nothing to do with Ortega lines initially, although I did cross them. NL 1 was pretty special, it was all Indica. Good pure Indica strains were pretty hard to find in those days. I didn't hold it back, I sold it pure."

the best northern lights seeds, wich breeder?, 2010-10-10

"NL1 was a full blood Afghan indica. One thick main stem, dark green leaves, modest yield with nuggety buds, a little coarse with good resin production, which when ripe went golden. The high was narcotic. The seeds ranged from tiny to massive. I used to love the big ones... The best line of NL1 actually came from the smaller seeded types, better high and bud structure... There weren't many pure indica lines around in those days. Big Bud, Hash Plant and G13 were pure indicas in my estimation, but were cuttings. NL1 was the only good pure Afghani male line I had."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-20

"NL1 had coarser dark green leaves, was more inclined to grow one main bud with little branching, the stem was very sturdy. It had a more narcotic high. The buds were more nugget like, The resin went yellow more quickly and the stalked glands were not as pronounced as with the NL5. It was a more Indica dominant plant."

Wonderful to be here, 2011-01-19

NL2:

"The NL2 was IMO a NL version of Kush. More weight and that puffed up indica type of bud that NL5 had. The taste was very similar to the Kush4 that I remember as coming from Ortega."

Breeding techniques, 2011-01-10

"Kush 4, I crossed with NL2 (which had the same Kush smell) and this Kush Hybrid is the foundation of todays Kush lines."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-02

NL5, the strain both men agree became the famous one, but describe very differently in substance:

"NL5 only produced one unique individual."

2010-09-20

"Northern Lights changed the face of cannabis genetics (and many a smoker), but it was mostly through NL5. You've got to marvel at fate for dropping that one extreme plant into the lap of a budding seed breeder."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

"Have you ever seen a photo of NL5 see if you can find the one by Ed Rosenthal. It was very strong (ask Ed) and super resinous, good yield but somewhat neutral smell and taste... IMO most of the truly resinous plants found today are descended from it. Yes it was elite."

Hermaphroditic Varieties, 2010-08-25

"NL5 was not sterile, the world is awash with it's progeny. It could be induced to produce male flowers, but the pollen sacks were empty. A true female."

Fem seeds, 2010-08-20

Nevil's most direct statement of NL5's parentage, a mixture of NL1 and a US female, without the "Hawaiian sativa" that anchors every one of Greg's versions:

"I only saw evidence of two indica male lines in the NL series and that was NL1 and NL2. My best bet was that NL5 was a combination of NL1 male line and US NL5 female. I guessed that US5 was 50% NL2. Northern Lights 2x5 was the best that I could do staying within the line (pure NL)."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

Nowhere in the 100 matching Nevil passages does he describe NL5 as an Afghan-times-Hawaiian cross, name Herbie, or name a Hawaiian sativa parent at all. His one comment on the "Thai" question, a different exotic-sativa claim than Greg's Hawaiian one, actually concedes a sativa element to the original American mother plant, but not the Hawaiian one Greg describes:

"That's right OS. I did go to the States later and pick up the original U.S. NL5 mother and it was as it was described to me, part Thai. But my NL5 didn't seem to have any Thai influence. I spent a lot of time analysing the NL lines, in particular NL5."

questions for Nevil on afghani and kush lines, 2010-09-21

So, to be precise about where the two accounts actually diverge: Greg says NL5 was Afghan x Hawaiian, full stop, no Thai. Nevil says the original American NL5 mother he personally collected was described to him as "part Thai," but that his own subsequent line, grown out from that mother's line in Holland, never displayed Thai traits itself. Neither man's account corroborates the other's exotic-parent claim; they name two different countries of origin (Hawaii vs. Thailand) for the same non-Afghan fraction of the same plant.

2.3 The trip to America and "the Indian"

This is the passage that intersects most directly with Greg's Don Downes narrative, and it is worth reading closely against Greg's version:

"I went to the US to pick up the original US NL5. It wasn't in the same league as mine. The NL boys from the US came to me for my NL5 offspring. It was much better than the original."

Northern Lights, 2010-11-06

"Mine were from that plant (US NL5) and all of the brothers and sisters seemed typical of the line, except one. I expect it was a throwback. It's hard to glean information about breeding from underground sources, but I can assure you that I've spent a lot of time analysing the results of the original NL lines."

Northern Lights, 2010-11-06

"I met the Indian to obtain the US NL5 cutting two years after getting the seeds. This was the only NL cutting that I ever got. If I ever sold seeds from this US cut, it wasn't for long. It was already superseded before it got it."

Northern Lights, 2010-11-30

This is a direct claim of personal travel and a face-to-face meeting with "the Indian" (Greg's Don Downes), two years after the original seed shipment, not simultaneous with it, and yielding exactly one cutting, which Nevil says was inferior to what he had already produced in Holland from seed. Greg never describes Nevil traveling to America or meeting Don Downes in person anywhere in the 62 posts reviewed; his account has the material moving outward from Seattle by mail (bag-weed seed, a terrarium of plants, a cutting "sent"), with the "backdoor bypass" he complains about left unexplained as to mechanism. The two accounts are not so much contradictory as non-intersecting: each man describes a transfer, but not the same transfer, and neither corroborates the specific mechanism the other describes.

2.4 Superiority and credit

Nevil is unambiguous, twice, that his Dutch-grown NL5 line surpassed the original American plant:

"I went to the US to pick up the original US NL5. It wasn't in the same league as mine."

2010-11-06

"A couple of years after getting the seed, I went to the U.S. to get the U.S. NL5 cutting. It didn't turn out to be as good or even that similar to my NL5."

2010-10-01

Greg never directly rebuts this claim of superiority; his closest approach is the conceding, uncertain tone of "Ask Nevil I have no clue what he did" (2014-09-04) and the grudging credit of "The NL Strains were saved by Ben, Nevil, Shantibaba, and Arjan" (2014-06-09), praise for stewardship, not a concession that the Dutch material was genetically better than the Seattle original.

2.5 The two "Greg" mentions

For completeness, here are both instances in the corpus where Nevil appears to refer to Greg by name. Neither touches genetics, numbering, or parentage:

"Greg, from the Northern Lights crew gave me the advice to wait until the resin starts to turn amber. It's a pretty good yardstick."

Freakland, 2011-01-12

"The advise I got from Greg was given to me probably before you were born."

Freakland, 2011-01-12, later same day

This is the only point of direct, named contact between the two testimonies in the material reviewed, and it corroborates only that a "Greg" existed within "the Northern Lights crew" and gave Nevil harvest-timing advice, nothing about strain composition, numbering, or the transfer of genetic material.

Part Three: Point-by-Point Comparison

Question	NL Seattle Greg	Nevil	Agreement?
How many original NL strains/packets?	"ten" (2013) / "11 packets" (2014) / "#2 through #12" (2021), three different counts from Greg himself	"8 types, 1-8," stated twice, unchanged	No overlap with any of Greg's figures
What is NL5's non-Afghan parent?	Hawaiian sativa, via "Herbie"	Unspecified US female with possible "Thai" influence (per description given to Nevil, though not observed in his own line)	Contradictory, Hawaii vs. Thailand
Was NL#1 sent to Nevil?	Yes (2011: "original NL #1 seed was obtained" implying transmission) / No (2021: "NL # 1 was not sent to The Netherlands")	Describes receiving "8 types, 1-8" without singling out #1 as excluded	Greg contradicts himself; Nevil's account doesn't resolve it either way
How did NL5 genetic material reach the Netherlands?	Live plants in a terrarium (2014) / seed plus a separately "sent" cutting from Herbie (2014)	Seed by mail, then a personal trip to the US two years later to obtain the one and only cutting from "the Indian"	Different mechanisms; not reconciled
Was the Dutch-grown NL5 as good as the American original?	Not addressed directly; Greg professes not to know what Nevil did with the material	Explicitly inferior: "It wasn't in the same league as mine" / "much better than the original"	Nevil claims superiority; Greg does not engage this claim
Who bred NL5's female selection?	Greg, personally, via a Luther Burbank-style selection process, from seed gifted to him	Not addressed, Nevil discusses only what he did with the line after acquiring it	No overlap; Nevil is silent on Greg's specific breeding claim
Was California involved?	Emphatically no, repeatedly and heatedly (directed at Sam the Skunkman, not Nevil)	Not addressed in the NL-specific material reviewed	Not in dispute between these two specifically

Part Four: Internal Contradictions, Isolated by Author

Greg, within his own testimony:

Greg's testimony contradicts itself on at least five points. His strain count moves from ten (2013-02-21) to eleven packets (2014-06-06, 2014-06-09, 2014-09-13) to "#2 through #12" (2021-02-17). NL#1's parentage shifts from "Nevils Afghani crossed with the Seattle Afghan strain form Steve Murphy" (2014-06-06) to "Murphy's x Murphys," with no Nevil genetics (2021-02-18). Whether NL#1 was sent to the Netherlands at all flips from an implied yes in his first post on the subject (2011-03-27) to an explicit no a decade later (2021-02-17). The indica/hybrid boundary in the numbering falls at #1-3 pure, #4-11 hybrid on 2014-08-31, but at #1-4 pure, #5-11 hybrid on 2014-09-13, a nine-day gap in the same thread. And the mechanism of transfer is live terrarium plants (2014-08-30) in one telling, seed plus a separately sent cutting (2014-09-08) in another.

Nevil, within his own testimony:

Nevil's account is comparatively stable, the "8 types, 1-8" figure, the NL1/NL2/NL5 phenotype descriptions, and the personal-trip narrative recur without contradicting each other across a span of months. The one soft tension worth noting is between "NL5 only produced one unique individual" (2010-09-20), implying NL5 was a singular, non-reproducible sport, and his later statement that he crossed "the R.1x1 to NL5 about 8 times" and ran an eight-generation backcross program using NL5 as a recurring mother (Grail: The Ultimate Haze Hybrid, 2010-09-04; Backcrossing vs. sibling mating, 2010-11-06). This is not a true contradiction, a genetically unique individual can still be vegetatively propagated and repeatedly bred from as a clone, but it is worth flagging that "unique individual" and "bred from eight times over multiple years" sit in some tension if read as describing a seed-line rather than a clone.

Part Five: Assessment

Verified fact, high confidence: Both men made all of the statements quoted above, in the threads and on the dates cited. That is the only category of claim in this report that can be verified from the source material itself.

Speculation, confidence unknown: Every substantive genetic claim, NL5's true parentage, the real number of original strains, who actually selected the elite NL5 mother, how the material physically crossed the Atlantic, is speculation or personal recollection by a participant, decades after the fact, with no independent documentary corroboration available in either corpus. Neither man's account can be verified against the other's, because they describe non-overlapping chains of custody rather than corroborating or directly rebutting the same chain.

Inference: The pattern of internal contradiction is heavier and more frequent in Greg's testimony (five distinct self-contradictions identified above, spanning a strain count that moves from 10 to 11 to "#2-12," and a parentage claim for NL#1 that reverses itself) than in Nevil's (one soft tension, arguably resolvable). This does not establish which man's underlying account of 1980s events is more accurate, genuine fading memory over 30-40 years could produce exactly this pattern regardless of which story is "true," but it does mean that Greg's testimony is the less internally reliable of the two as a documentary source, on its own terms, independent of any comparison to Nevil.

Opinion: If the goal is a single sentence characterizing the two accounts side by side, Nevil describes NL5 as a singular, fortunate genetic accident he received, personally verified, and then improved upon in Holland to the point of surpassing its American original; Greg describes NL5 as a deliberately selected product of a Seattle-based breeding program that he shipped abroad and then largely lost control of. These are not just different emphases; they are different stories about where the credit for the world's most famous indica cultivar actually belongs, and the surviving forum record does not settle the question, it only documents that both men, independently and inconsistently, believed they knew the answer.