I couldn't tell if I was about to walk in the front door and be offered weed, or the Jeep on the stand out front with high miles and a dented bumper.
See also: "Family Friendly" DIA Plans to Ban Marijuana-Related Souvenirs
Green Tree Medicinals in NorthglennInside, the dispensary has built what feels like a building within a building to section off the bud bar from the lobby. While it should make the space feel smaller, it actually accents how large the former showroom actually is, as the twenty-foot walls forming the bud bar don't even reach the metal-girded ceiling above.10575 Melody Drive Unit 102 Northglenn, CO 80234 720-596-4153 GreenTreeMedicinals.com
Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Raw marijuana price range: $28-$35/eighth-ounce, $160-$225/ounce. Raw marijuana price range (members): $25-$31.50/eighth-ounce, $144-$200/ounce. Other types of medicine: Icewater hash, shatter oil, wax, edbiles Online menu? Yes. Handicap-accessible? Yes. Recreational sales? No.
Before I could head back into the bud bar, I had to hand my paperwork over to the woman at the receptionist desk in the corner of the room and take a seat on one of the black leather couches set up in the narrow waiting room while the staff handled the customer ahead of me.
Like I expected, the space inside the bud bar is cavernously huge. The bud bar runs from one wall to the other for about forty feet of total space that is mostly unused. All of the medical cannabis products are centered around the cash registers in the middle, with pipes and other paraphernalia for sale near the edges of the bar. Bud is kept a mile behind the bud bar, on a tall, boxy wooden shelf. The bud is somewhat broken down by price range, with discount strains taking up one shelf, indicas lining another, and sativas on a third. There are three price tiers, though, and other than the lowest ones being set aside, I had to keep referring back to the color-coded dry-erase board that listed each strain and its price level. The jars themselves weren't labeled with anything other than a handwritten strain name and some inventory codes.My budtender was a friendly woman in jeans and a T-shirt who escorted me back along with Bentley, a West Highland white terrier with a Mohawk that was roaming around the lobby. He zipped back through a door to the secured area of the shop and left me with the budtender, who gave me a quick tour of what the shop had to offer. She knew her strains and lineages well, and went through her favorites without me feeling like she was pushing anything, like so many used-car salesmen had likely done in the space before her.
Concentrates were well stocked and well priced. Bubble hash made in-house sold for $14 and $16 a gram and would have made a great bowl-topper. The strain-specific hash I checked out looked like a chunk of milk-chocolate fudge and smelled outstanding. It will get better, too. My budtender said Green Tree Medicinals has hired a new hash maker to produce ice-water extraction so that it's "dabbable." For now, if you want to dab, the shop was stocked with half-grams of wax and shatter (and some flaky wax called "pie crust") from Infuzions for $30 to $35 a gram. The shop is also one of the only places I've seen that sells Phoenix Tears -- but at $50 a gram, your best move would be to grow and make the stuff yourself if that's the avenue of treatment best for you. I went back and forth between bringing anything home, but couldn't justify the extra THC (and cash) this week, when I haven't really had the need for extra-strength dosing.
Continue for more of the review and photos. Instead, I focused on the buds, which was easy enough, considering that each jar seemed to get better and better. Everything is grown in organic soil, and the majority of strains I looked at would have been welcome in my bowls this week. We started out with the Romberry Kush, a cross of Romberry (Romulan x Blueberry) and an undisclosed OG Kush. The trichome-coated pine-cone buds had a strong sweetness to their soil-rich smell. Same was true of the Wally OG (Ghost's OG and Phantom OG), which looked huge and chunky. Another standout (and one I regret not bringing home) was the chunky, silver buds of the XXX Diesel, which perfectly nailed the smell of fresh, wet spring soil mixed with light diesel fuel that this strain should have. I also would have done well bringing home the Peaches N' Diesel. I can't remember the exact cross (Sour D and Peach Fuzz?), but it didn't matter: This stuff smelled like someone threw a ripe peach in a jar of stinky Sour Diesel.
The Cinema Kush didn't have much of the traditional, rubbery kush smell. Instead, it lent a musky, rotting-apple sweetness to the aroma on top of a piney, soil funk. Broken up, the kush traits came out more, but it wasn't until puffing a green hit through a clean glass pipe that the earthy richness came through. This hybrid strain was much more sedative than I expected, leaving me sleepy and dull after too many bowl packs in the morning. But for evening use, and to get rid of stabbing stomach pains, it worked like a charm. At $35 an eighth, the pricing isn't bad, considering the several-hour potency from just a few hits. I probably wouldn't have snagged this strain given another opportunity, if only for the somewhat lackluster flavor. Plus, the wide selection at Green Tree allows you to be picky.The Buddha Tahoe OG, though, was stinky and flavorful all the way around. The buds themselves were picture-perfect, squatty cone flowers. They were dried to a crisp but still kept their sweet, turpentine-diesel-skunk odors, and my 3.5 gram bag of herb looked huge compared to places that serve up buds with slightly more water weight to them. The dryness did cause it to burn with a slight harshness, but out of a bubbler, that wasn't a problem -- and I found this hybrid bud to give a great balance of mental uplift and body relaxation. Appetite increase wasn't huge for me, but it did help quell some minor morning nausea with just two tokes. What I brought home was great, and the growers have done a solid job bringing out the THC. Still, more time spent curing the buds would put them on the next level for flavor.
But whatever, the most you're paying for an eighth of herb is $35 if you're a non-member, and what you're bringing home will put a smile on your face in more ways than one. Ounces go for $160 to $225, less if you're a member. The dispensary will do half-eighths and grams for you as well, but the price-per-gram increases if you step down any lower. First-time patients don't get a discount, but you do receive a one-gram cone joint, which burned smoky and leafy (like most every other pre-rolled joint of leavings for sale at any dispensary, ever). The bud quality you're bringing home is more than enough to compensate for that, though.While the bud was well worth the visit and drive up to Northglenn from Denver, if you're not planning to head that way soon, I'd give Green Tree a few months to get back up to speed. According to my budtender, the main grow in Longmont had to be demolished due to the city annexing the previously unincorporated section of land Green Tree called home. That also means the dispensary in Longmont is now gone. My budtender said the city has been gunning for the shop for a long time now and finally won. Now, Green Tree will have to rebuild and start again.
But if you're up in the area now, stop by if you need some bud.
Or a used car.
Read more reviews from Westword's medical marijuana dispensary critic, William Breathes, in our Mile Highs and Lows blog.
