The Botanist – Flower, “Candy Margy” strain

14 g / $50

Packaged 6/4/2025

Purchased 7/3/2025

Tasting/Testing Episode 21: This one could win a beauty contest.

Tasting/Testing is on a bit of a streak with flower products: we’ve had some good ones lately. This week, we tried out a bag from The Botanist, a brand owned by Acreage Holdings that retails across a swath of the northeastern US. Their website attests commitments against remediation and in favor of pest management by beneficial insects; these are the first such unambiguous statements I’ve noticed from a big brand. We definitely did not create this series to salute the efforts of MSOs, and this column is an honest reaction to the product.

$50 is not a lot to pay for half an ounce of weed, and  competitive with internet “THCA Flower” and my local guys. I like the simplicity of the packaging; the dark green is understated but not boring, the use of color is eye-catching, but not busy. One thing I noticed, though, was that the bag wasn’t heat-sealed. Heat-sealing the bag makes it thousands, maybe millions of times more resistant to drying out and losing terps than a zipper closure. Pack up your product before you ship it, boys and girls.

The smell reminded me of medicine or an ointment, with notes of eucalyptus or tea tree. It struck me as interesting, herbal and not fruity or “candy.” My perception might have been influenced by observing the unsealed bag, but the smell felt a little spent, diminished. I would expect to fill a room with odor from opening a bag with half an ounce of weed. The flower was well-cured, though, flexible and a little sticky. Cutting it up made a lot of scissor-hash.

To my eye, this flower was just beautiful. These buds were great examples to view through a microscope as I learned some cannabis flower anatomy. I like these large, individualized bracts (the florets) with the stigmas (orange hairs) coming out of the tips. I’ve always preferred this sort of uncrowded, organized structure to the overdense “PGR weed” (look up plant growth regulators the next time you want to be upset).

The smoke from this flower was clean and light, pleasant but not terribly flavorful. I got an inspired and cheerful high out of it, though that might have been my underlying attitude shining through.

We tested the “Candy Margy” strain using the LightLab3 HS cannabis analyzer from Orange Photonics. We observed some of the familiar variance from bud to bud, but we generally found that this bag was labeled accurately. Our top test result (out of three) nearly matched perfectly the numbers on the bag.

Undoubtedly, we were lucky to get this flower only a month after packaging, and we can’t say from this experience how well The Botanist delivers on every batch. They had a good outing with this Candy Margy, and I’ll try more of their products in the future.