Pink Kush and Gorilla Glue: nerolidol versus caryophyllene, unknown lineage versus three parents

• Profile. Pink Kush leads with nerolidol, Gorilla Glue leads with caryophyllene.
• Availability. No producer supplies both, so the availability of each depends on a different delivery.
• Origin. The lineage of one is established, the other is not, so we cannot compare them by origin.
• What this table does not say. It does not include the declared content as a single number or price. Which strain is suitable for whom is determined by the attending physician, not by the comparison of features.

What do these two strains really differ in?

Three things, none of which is a number. In descriptions, Pink Kush leads with nerolidol, in descriptions, Gorilla Glue leads with caryophyllene. The first strain has no established parents, the second derives from three named strains. Five producers stand behind the first, four behind the second, and none of them supplies both at the same time.

The leading terpene is the most visible of these three differences, as it repeats in every registration entry. In Gorilla Glue, caryophyllene is at the top of the list of shares in every collected description, regardless of who prepared the product. In Pink Kush, the top of the list jumps: in seven descriptions, it is nerolidol, and in two descriptions of the same entry from Aurora, it is sometimes myrcene and sometimes limonene that come before it. The order records nerolidol for this strain, as it comes out after reconciling both databases, but the reconciliation itself is not unanimous.

Origin separates them even more sharply. Gorilla Glue has three named parents in its graph: Chem’s Sister, Sour Dubb, and Chocolate Diesel. The entry from which this was taken, Leafly, is currently listed under the name Original Glue, because after a settlement with the glue manufacturer in 2017, growers lost the right to the commercial label and changed the names of their lines. For Pink Kush, the parent field remains empty and is to remain so: public descriptions place it with the OG Kush family, none provide a pair of parents, and adding them by intuition would create a connection in the graph that no one has confirmed.

The third difference is pharmaceutical. Pink Kush is prepared by Aurora, Polfarmex, S-LAB, Synoptis Pharma, and Tilray, while Gorilla Glue is available from CanPoland, Four 20 Pharma, PhytoPur Bio, and Suprobion. Both lists are mutually exclusive, so anyone who knows one of these strains from a specific package will not buy the other under the same brand.

What connects them?

Six names of terpenes and nothing in lineage. Bisabolol, humulene, caryophyllene, limonene, linalool, and myrcene appear in the descriptions of both strains; the profiles diverge only at the seventh name, as for Pink Kush it is nerolidol, and for Gorilla Glue it is pinene. The common ancestor graph shows none.

Six common names are a weaker coincidence than they appear. All belong to a set that Polish databases use to describe most pharmaceutical entries, so the repeatable skeleton of the profile speaks more about the way the raw material is described than about the kinship of the plants. All the information lies in the order, and both databases provide it differently.

They are also connected by the fact that each has a namesake in the cluster. Pink Certz shares the first word of the name and the leading terpene with Pink Kush. Balasa, also sold as Gorilla Girl, shares a word with Gorilla Glue and caryophyllene at the top of the shares. However, a repeated word in the trade name is not proof of kinship: none of these four names has a sibling recorded in the project.

There is nothing to look for in the other direction. The sibling field is empty in both entries, and for Pink Kush, the parent list is also empty, so the graph has nothing to connect these two names even indirectly. The last thing that connects them is the mode of issuance: both are raw materials from the pharmacy, not goods from the store.

Why do two sources provide different compositions for them?

Because they describe different registration entries and abbreviate them differently. For Pink Kush, limonene, linalool, and myrcene appear only in one of the two sources, while for Gorilla Glue, bisabolol and humulene behave the same way. Both profiles have the same status in the entry: the sources differ in composition.

This is most sharply visible in one entry from Four 20 Pharma. The budcare.pl database assigns it shares in which caryophyllene leaves the rest of the list far behind, while medweed.pl lists myrcene in the first place for the same entry, ahead of caryophyllene. The described product is one and the same, from the same pharmacy, and the order comes out reversed. Discrepancies even occur within one database: one entry from Aurora received two separate descriptions in budcare.pl, in which both the list of ingredients and the scent differ.

We do not provide percentage shares for terpenes, and these examples explain why. If the numbers from such a list were parts of a whole, each would sum to one hundred. Meanwhile, seven lists for Pink Kush sum to 14 in this database, two descriptions of the Aurora entry sum to 87 and 91, and five lists for Gorilla Glue range between 64 and 98. The denominator is therefore different in each entry and nowhere has it been provided, so the percentage placed next to the terpene name would pretend to be a measurement.

The discrepancy cannot be resolved in favor of one of the databases. Neither publishes the method or date of designation, and both describe the trade name, not a specific batch. For Pink Kush, the difference concerns three names present on one side, for Gorilla Glue two, and that is all that can be said honestly about it.

What has been shown for nerolidol, the leading terpene in Pink Kush?

Two things, both in mice and none in humans. The first study concerns pain and inflammatory cytokines, the second the seizure threshold and markers of oxidative stress. Neither studied the dried flower, smoking, or vaporization, and the doses given refer to pure terpene administered to the animal.

The first was signed by Fonsêca DV, Salgado PR, de Carvalho FL, Salvadori MG, Penha AR, Leite FC, Borges CJ, Piuvezam MR, Pordeus LC, Sousa DP, Almeida RN, year 2016, Fundamental & Clinical Pharmacology, PMID:26791997, rodent model (mouse). Nerolidol (200-400 mg/kg) reduced the number of abdominal contractions induced by acetic acid in mice and lowered the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-alpha and IL-1beta; the authors suggested the involvement of the GABAergic system in the analgesic effect, as opposed to the opioid mechanism and potassium channels.

The second was signed by Hojjat SH, Rasouli F, Shakeri F, year 2026, Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, PMID:42447923, rodent model (mouse, oral administration). Oral nerolidol (25-100 mg/kg) prolonged the latency to seizures induced by pentylenetetrazole (MCS and GTCS phases) in mice and reduced markers of oxidative stress in the brain.

The boundary of both results is recorded directly in the entry. It has not been shown that nerolidol alleviates anxiety or insomnia in humans; both available studies concern rodents and describe analgesic, anticonvulsant, and antioxidant effects, not sleep or mood. None of this transfers to the strain as a whole: nerolidol stands in the Pink Kush profile alongside six other names, and the proportions from the pharmacy have not been reproduced in any of these experiments. The terpene has a separate discussion in the cluster of its own.

What has been shown for caryophyllene, the leading terpene in Gorilla Glue?

Also two studies and also in mice, but with a better-described mechanism. Caryophyllene binds to the CB2 receptor, and it is through this receptor that it acted in both experiments anti-inflammatory and analgesic. This is the most well-documented position from the entire profile of both strains, which does not mean that the documentation concerns dried flower.

The older one was signed by Gertsch J, Leonti M, Raduner S, Racz I, Chen JZ, Xie XQ, Altmann KH, Karsak M, Zimmer A, year 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), PMID:18574142, mouse model (in vivo) and test tube (receptor binding, human cells). (E)-caryophyllene selectively bound to the CB2 receptor (Ki = 155 nM) and inhibited paw swelling induced by carrageenan in wild-type mice, but not in mice lacking the CB2 receptor (Cnr2-/-), indicating a CB2-dependent mechanism; the study did not include any anxiety tests.

The newer one was signed by Klauke AL, Racz I, Pradier B, Markert A, Zimmer AM, Gertsch J, Zimmer A, year 2014, European Neuropsychopharmacology, PMID:24210682, rodent model (mouse). Oral caryophyllene reduced the late inflammatory phase of pain in the formalin test in a CB2 receptor-dependent manner, with no effect on the early phase; in a neuropathic pain model, it alleviated thermal hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia without developing tolerance with chronic administration.

The boundary of these two studies is recorded in the entry as follows. In neither of the two studies was caryophyllene tested on humans or in inhaled form from dried flower; both studies concern oral or systemic administration in mice in pain and inflammatory models, not sleep or mood. When comparing, it is easy to forget the simplest thing: caryophyllene is also present in the Pink Kush profile, just lower, so none of these results is the property of one of the two names. The terpene has its own page in the cluster.

How quickly does each one start to work?

Equally quickly or equally slowly, as the route of administration determines this, not the name on the package. None of the sources describing these strains provides a separate timeline for them, and the studies mentioned above on terpenes measured something other than the onset of effect.

The route of administration determines the course more than the strain itself. After vaporization, the substance passes from the lungs to the blood almost immediately, so the first sensations appear after a few minutes, the intensity increases for another ten to thirty minutes, and the whole effect lasts for two to four hours. After ingestion, the raw material first passes through the intestine and liver, so the first sensations are waited for from half an hour to two, and the episode lasts six, sometimes eight hours. Hence the most common mistake with oral administration: anyone who thinks nothing is happening after thirty minutes and takes another dose will receive both doses at once. The above ranges describe the route of administration, not the strain; pharmacokinetic studies for a single cultivar have not been published.

The difference between these two strains does not affect any of the above numbers. It is affected by the form in which the raw material reaches the patient, and whether the dried flower goes to an inhaler or to a product prepared in the pharmacy. This is determined by the attending physician and the content of the prescription, not the description of the strain online.

What adverse effects have been reported for each of these two strains?

Separately for neither has anything been reported that could be distinguished. Reports go to the registry under the batch number of a specific package, and the name of the cultivar does not appear in it, so comparing the safety of these two names has no basis, and the difference in the number of reports would speak of availability, not risk.

Reports of adverse effects are collected for a medicinal product with a batch number, not for the name of the strain, so the following concerns cannabis flower as a group of raw materials. The most commonly reported are dry mouth, red eyes, and increased heart rate. Less frequently described are dizziness upon rapid standing, daytime drowsiness, and temporary worsening of short-term memory, as well as anxiety that increases with dosage. A separate issue is medications taken concurrently, especially sedatives and those affecting coagulation: their assessment requires knowledge of the entire list of preparations, not the description of the plant. We do not provide the frequency of these symptoms numerically, as public compilations for cannabis flower in Poland do not separate them by individual products.

The scale of availability diverges here twice. Pink Kush has eight pharmaceutical entries, Gorilla Glue four, so even if someone counted reports by trade names, they would primarily measure how many packages were on the shelf. To compare the safety profile of two cultivars, a study would be needed, which no one has conducted.

How many registration entries stand behind each of these names?

Eight for Pink Kush and four for Gorilla Glue, if counted according to the pharmaceutical listing on which this cluster stands. Hence the range of declared potency: for the first strain, the THC content ranges from 16.2-24.2%. For the second, the same measure reaches from 18.0 to 26.4%.

The range is not the margins of a single producer and thus differs from the number on the package. It consists of several separate registration entries, each declaring its own nominal value, around which a deviation of one-tenth is then given up and down. The ends therefore come from two different products, not from one package, and that is why they cannot be read as a spread within a single batch.

These two ranges become interesting only against the backdrop of the rest of the cluster. The range for Pink Kush repeats in fourteen other names and is the most common in this set, while the range for Gorilla Glue does not repeat at all and has the widest ends of all eighty-five cultivars. A complete listing of positions available in pharmacies is maintained on a separate summary page.

The registered name carries a number within it, for example, the position Cannabis flos Synoptis Pharma has the content written in the label. We provide such a name without this element, and the content separately as a range, because the number from the label is the declared value, the same to which the deviation applies. Taken out of context, it looks like a measurement result from a specific package, but it is not.

Frequently asked questions

Are Pink Kush and Gorilla Glue related?

No. Gorilla Glue has three named parents in its lineage graph, while Pink Kush has an empty parent field, so there is nothing to connect. No name is repeated in the lineages of both sides.

Which of them has a better-established terpene profile?

Gorilla Glue, although both have the same status of inconsistency between sources in the entry. In Gorilla Glue, caryophyllene leads in every description, while in Pink Kush, the top of the list depends on which registration entry is being read.

Why do you not provide terpene shares in percentages?

Because the denominator is unknown and different in each entry. The lists of shares for Pink Kush alone sum to 14 once and to 91 another time, so the percentage placed next to the terpene name would pretend to be a measurement that no one has performed.

Where do the different potency ranges for both strains come from?

From the number of registration entries. Each producer declares its own value and its own deviation, and the range given in the text is the sum of those declarations, not the margins of a single package.

Is either of these two strains stronger?

The ranges 16.2-24.2% and 18.0-26.4% overlap for a larger part of their length, so the question of which name is stronger is poorly posed. The specific entry from the pharmacy matters, not the name of the cultivar.

Does a different leading terpene change the behavior of the flower in a vaporizer?

The boiling point database records one entry for nerolidol, 275-277 °C, and for caryophyllene 256 °C at atmospheric pressure and 130 °C when reduced to 14 mmHg. The device setting is not the same as the temperature of the flower, so no setting can be derived from these numbers, and the route of administration is determined by the attending physician.

Can I buy this flower in a store without a prescription?

No. Both strains are pharmaceutical raw materials in the Rpw category and are dispensed by pharmacies based on a prescription. Hemp flower sold in stores without a prescription is a different product from a different shelf, with no common entry with this comparison.

Cannabis flower is a pharmaceutical raw material dispensed by a doctor’s prescription in the Rpw category, and advertising such products directed to the public remains prohibited.

The material is for informational purposes and does not replace the advice of a doctor or pharmacist.

Editorial text: ubucha.