Rare Dankness Seeds is closely associated with Colorado’s rise as a center of American cannabis breeding. Founded in 2010 by Scott “Moonshine” Reach, the company developed after years of private cultivation, clone preservation, seed collecting, and online exchange. Ghost Train Haze #1 became its most famous creation, while Moonshine Haze, LeeRoy, Scott’s OG, Star Killer OG, Rug Burn OG, Venom OG, Jenny Kush, and Commerce City Kush built a broader reputation for resin, potency, fuel, citrus, pine, and kush-influenced flower.
Rare Dankness emerged as American breeders were moving from basements and medical gardens into licensed cultivation and international seed distribution. Reach retained an older emphasis on preserving elite clones, growing test populations, and selecting males whose offspring could improve plant structure or expand a mother’s genetic possibilities. The company describes its objective not as duplicating a celebrated clone exactly, but as complementing that clone by breeding it with a superior male.
Scott Reach and the Road to Rare Dankness
Reach was active in online cannabis communities before Colorado developed a regulated marijuana market. Earlier profiles identify him as the breeder behind Moonshine Seeds, a label available through communities such as Overgrow and Seedbay from approximately 1999 to 2007. He later withdrew from public forums after arrests and personal losses affected people around him. That period nevertheless connected him with growers exchanging uncommon seeds, guarded clones, and breeding knowledge before American genetics were routinely marketed by licensed companies.
Reach also survived cancer, an experience connected to his support for medical cannabis. As Colorado’s medical market expanded, he moved into legal cultivation and formally launched Rare Dankness. The breeding operation eventually became closely associated with House of Dankness in Denver, allowing genetics to be selected, propagated, commercially cultivated, and evaluated within one connected operation rather than existing only as seed descriptions.
Elite Mothers and the Rare Dankness Males
Rare Dankness gained access to clone-only plants through Reach’s long-standing cultivation network. Its official history says the company’s genetic collection reaches across four decades and includes highly coveted indica and sativa material. The breeding program repeatedly worked with Ghost OG, Triangle Kush, Skywalker OG, Poison OG, Chem 4, Blue Dream, Tangerine Haze, Bubba Kush, Colorado Flo, and other recognizable selections. Rather than claiming that seeds could reproduce those clones perfectly, Reach used males to contribute vigor, branching, resin, flowering behavior, and new aromatic combinations.
Rare Dankness #1 and Rare Dankness #2 became the catalog’s most important pollen donors. RD#1 appears behind Scott’s OG, 501st, Rug Burn OG, Venom OG, Commerce City Kush, Night Terror, and Flo OG. RD#2 anchors LeeRoy, Star Killer OG, Jenny Kush, Cornbread, and Pamelina. Their complete construction has not been publicly documented, but their offspring reveal the intended direction: stronger frames, concentrated kush character, heavy resin, and sufficient variation for growers to identify distinctive keepers.
Moonshine Haze and the First Major Victory
Moonshine Haze delivered Rare Dankness its international breakthrough. The cultivar combines an Amnesia Haze mother from Soma’s mid-2000s seed work with Nevil’s Wreck. Rare Dankness describes the Amnesia selection as more Afghan-influenced than many later expressions while retaining recognizable Haze character. The resulting plants became associated with tropical fruit punch, pine-cleaner sharpness, bubblegum sweetness, creative effects, and flowering periods extending beyond 70 days.
At the 2011 High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, Moonshine Haze won the sativa seed-company category. Colorado reporting treated the result as a landmark for a locally founded breeder competing against established European companies. The victory introduced Rare Dankness to a much wider audience and validated its combination of American plant selections with Haze breeding. Moonshine Haze later contributed to Jenny Kush and other projects, preserving this side of the catalog even as OG-dominant releases became commercially larger.
Ghost Train Haze and a Potency Benchmark
Ghost Train Haze #1 joined the Original Ghost OG clone with Nevil’s Wreck. The hybrid retained Ghost OG’s sour lemon, fuel, resin, and kush qualities while the Haze side contributed height, vigor, flowering length, and a forceful cerebral experience. Rare Dankness lists a flowering range of approximately 65 to 80 days and identifies the cultivar as one of its most popular creations. A wider Ghost Train series used additional OG selections, including SFV OG and other collected cuts, to examine how related mothers performed with the same Haze-oriented father.
Ghost Train Haze #1 placed second in a medical sativa category in 2013 and won a U.S. Cannabis Cup sativa category in 2014. It also appeared repeatedly in High Times coverage of unusually strong laboratory-tested cannabis. Those results turned it into an international reference point for lemon-Haze aroma, abundant trichomes, long flowering, and intense effects. Its success showed that a demanding sativa-leaning cultivar could become commercially important during an era increasingly focused on fast indoor production.
The OG, Kush, and Chem Families
Rare Dankness’ wider influence may be strongest in its OG Kush work. Scott’s OG crosses Triangle Kush with RD#1 and became known for pungent lemon-kush aroma, resin, and comparatively quick flowering. LeeRoy uses Triangle Kush with RD#2, producing dense multicolored flowers and deep kush-citrus character. Star Killer OG combines Skywalker OG with RD#2 and earned recognition at the High Times Cannabis Cup and Oregon Growers Cup. These lines show how Reach used different males to explore related elite mothers without presenting every release as the same OG under a new name.
Rug Burn OG, 501st, Venom OG, Commerce City Kush, Flo OG, and Night Terror expanded the model. Rug Burn pairs Ghost OG with RD#1 for sour fuel; 501st uses Skywalker OG with RD#1 for stockier, purple-tinged plants; Venom OG combines Poison OG and RD#1; Commerce City Kush connects Chem 4 with RD#1; and Night Terror joins Blue Dream with the same male. The catalog maintains a recognizable family resemblance while allowing each mother to contribute a different aroma, structure, flowering pattern, or effect.
Jenny Kush and the Company’s Medical Roots
Jenny Kush reflects the personal side of Reach’s breeding. It was created in memory of Colorado cannabis advocate Jenny Monson, known publicly as Jenny Kush, who died in 2013. Rare Dankness crossed the Amnesia Haze mother used in Moonshine Haze with RD#2, producing a sativa-leaning family associated with fruit, lime, lemon, OG funk, oily resin, and an upbeat character. Reach also directed seed-sale proceeds toward a trust for Monson’s children, making the cultivar both a memorial and a community-support project.
The company also explored balanced-cannabinoid breeding through CBD OX. Westword described it as The OX, a Bubba Kush and Stone Mountain family cultivar, crossed with a CBD-rich selection called Shak. The line became associated with approximately balanced THC and CBD expressions, although individual plants require laboratory testing when a precise cannabinoid ratio matters. Such projects reflected Rare Dankness’ medical-market origins even as potent OG and Haze hybrids remained the public face of the brand.
Awards and a Vertically Integrated Operation
Rare Dankness accumulated a substantial competition record during the 2010s. Moonshine Haze won in Amsterdam in 2011, Rug Burn OG placed in the 2012 hybrid category, Ghost Train Haze #1 received major U.S. sativa recognition, and Star Killer placed second in the 2014 Amsterdam seed-company hybrid category. Flo OG, Scott’s OG, concentrates, and cultivars grown by independent operators earned additional honors. Awards cannot isolate genetics from cultivation, curing, phenotype selection, or processing, but repeated results established the company before social media became the primary route for breeder promotion.
By 2016, Cannabis Business Times documented a 54,000-square-foot Denver facility connected to Rare Dankness and House of Dankness. This vertically integrated model allowed the team to maintain mother plants, conduct phenotype trials, produce commercial flower, test cultivation methods, and place selected cultivars directly in front of consumers. Rare Dankness later expanded into consulting and plant-nutrition products while continuing to place proprietary genetics at the center of its identity.
Rare Dankness Today
Rare Dankness remains active in 2026, although its distribution structure is deliberately divided. Its official website identifies Rare Dankness as the Colorado company breeding for Colorado dispensaries, while RD Global Genetics operates separately in Europe, with seed production in legal Spanish gardens and distribution through international retailers. The company does not sell or ship seeds directly from its website and instead maintains a list of authorized resellers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.
The catalog contains regular and feminized seeds, including Ghost Train Haze #1, Moonshine Haze, LeeRoy, Scott’s OG, Star Killer OG, Jenny Kush, Pamelina, Tangerine Kush, and Commerce City Kush. The 2026 releases include Trip Sauce, described as Scott’s OG and Lemon G work selected for lemon candy, sour OG gas, and concentrate production, along with feminized editions of 501st, Rug Burn OG, and Venom OG. A long retired-strains list records the breadth of earlier experiments and shows that Rare Dankness does not keep every project permanently available.
The Legacy of Rare Dankness Seeds
Rare Dankness helped establish Colorado as a serious breeding region when Amsterdam and California still dominated international perceptions of cannabis genetics. Moonshine Haze delivered the first major cup breakthrough, Ghost Train Haze became a potency-era landmark, and RD#1 and RD#2 supplied a repeatable framework for working with OG Kush, Chem, Blue Dream, Cookies, Bubba Kush, and other elite mothers. Reach’s achievement was not inventing every clone used in the catalog, but recognizing valuable plants, preserving them, and pairing them with males capable of producing useful seed populations.
The company also demonstrated how an underground forum breeder could become a licensed, vertically integrated, and internationally distributed genetics business. Rare Dankness retained the language of phenotype hunting, parent selection, education, and medical access while adapting to commercial cultivation and modern seed demand. More than fifteen years after its founding, its strongest cultivars remain identifiable because they belong to connected breeding families rather than a succession of unrelated trends. Ghost Train Haze is the famous name, but the enduring legacy is the breeding system behind it.
