Purple Urkle: did I do that?

Word on the street#

Purple Urkle is, so the story goes, named after Steve Urkel, the squeaky-voiced neighbour from the sitcom Family Matters. Why? Because the strain is supposed to leave you bumping into furniture, knocking things over and asking the room, "Did I do that?" One Denver paper calls the Urkel link the "prevailing theory" and cheerfully admits the strain's history is "cloudy" [1]. Another guide describes a California purple that may be a select pick of Mendocino Purps [2].

Notice what the street story doesn't have: a breeder, a year or a bag with a date on it. Remember that for later.

What the record says#

The record has one very dated moment, and it's a good one. In April 2021 the actor who played Urkel, Jaleel White, told Forbes and then theGrio about a cannabis line made with 710 Labs, with variants of Purple Urkle, set to launch in California on 20 April (yes, that 20 April) [3][4]. Reports describe a line called ItsPurpl [4].

The interesting part is the quest. 710 Labs' founder said White "was on a journey to find the real Purple Urkel from back in the early 2000's" and had been collecting seeds with a friend for that purpose [3]. White's own reason was commercial: there was "no clear brand leader for fire purple weed" [3]. In other words, even the man with the most famous claim to the name was hunting for the original plant, which says something about how well-documented it is.

For the record, our sources describe the 20 April launch as planned; we have not found a post-launch report that confirms the day, so we say "set to launch" and not "launched".

Is it really that strong?#

Seller claims for Purple Urkle run 23-25% THC. Across 707 flower lab tests, the median is 17.6%. (The median is the middle result: line up every test from weakest to strongest and it's the one in the centre.) The claims sit above the whole lab range, which is a bit like a restaurant menu photo that no plate in the kitchen can match.

What the plant says#

In a public genotype panel [5], the three samples sold as Purple Urkle measure as one plant. That's rare: most famous names turn out to be a jumble. (Quick refresher: kinship is a family-resemblance meter from 0, total strangers, to about 0.5, the same plant twice. Above 0.354 counts as the same plant.)

Here's the twist, and it's an episode-title twist. That one plant is also sold under 13 other names: Grand Daddy Purple, Purple Kush, Mendocino Purple, Lavender, God's Gift, Cadillac Purple and Grape Ape among them. Yes, a cartoon gorilla as well. Fourteen names, one plant. It's the witness-protection programme of weed.

The cross that wasn't a cross#

This is where the family tree gets funny. Granddaddy Purple is widely described as Big Bud × Purple Urkle [6][7]. Its breeder, Ken Estes, tells it differently: he says he found the original plant through a contact in Humboldt and the name came from his own reaction to the bud ("the grandpa of all weed... the Granddaddy") [7]. Leafly's description lists Mendo Purps, Skunk and Afghani and notes that "other people claim it is Big Bud x Purple Urkle" [7].

The DNA doesn't settle the breeder's story, but it does answer one question. A parent and child score about 0.25. Grand Daddy Purple and Purple Urkle score 0.50, the level of the same plant twice. That looks like a renamed cut, not a cross: like saying someone is their own father.

So what is Purple Urkle?#

Put the record next to the measurements and the quest for the "real" Purple Urkle may end at a plant most people know as Grand Daddy Purple. We can't tell from DNA which name came first, and the sample is one panel's. What we can say is that the names are not two plants.

Did we do that? Well, the market did. When a name gets famous, the plant gets lost in the credits. For more on how one plant collects dozens of names, see One plant, fifty names, and for how often claims beat the lab, The number on the pack. This is episode 3 of Lineage Under the Limelight. You can look up the strain pages and lab data on CannaLib.