What is different between Male vs Female Plants in cannabis?
When you grow in a marijuana grow tent, you need to consider more. As with most plants, animals, and other life forms, marijuana plants have distinct genders. They can have either male or female reproductive parts. In rare cases, you will find hermaphrodite plants. These are plants with male and female traits. In cannabis, it relates to plants that develop male and female flowers.
The sex of a crop does not always matter, but with marijuana grows, knowing the gender and the sex of your plant is vital to both growers and breeders. The type of weed is crucial to the quality and value of the end product. Seedless buds are worth more than lower-quality cannabis, for example.
Why Sex Cannabis Plants? The Role of Male and Female Plants?
For the most part, the average home grower wants female cannabis plants. The ladies are the ones that produce the fattest, most resinous and most potent flowers – aka buds. Male cannabis plants are only desirable if someone wants to breed cannabis and save seeds (which is a whole other topic for another day). Even then, the grower will want to spot the difference between the male and female plants and separate them early on, unless they want free cross-breeding and pollination between many types of stains.
Not only are the males less desirable, but male cannabis plants interfere with the quality and production of your female plant. Males grow pollen sacks, and produce pollen. When a female cannabis plant becomes pollinated by a nearby male, her energy shifts into producing seeds.
Like most things in nature, female cannabis plants have a biological drive to reproduce. After the deed has been done, she will sit back and relax. While a pollinated female cannabis plant WILL still develop decent size buds, they are usually lower quality and contain less THC and other desirable cannabinoids. Not to mention, they’ll be full of seeds. When left un-pollinated, a female cannabis plant’s flowers (buds) will continue to swell, develop more trichomes and become increasingly resinous. She is trying to get as sticky and large as possible to catch pollen in the wind. That sweet sinsemilla – aka unfertilized, seed-free cannabis.
HOW TO SPOT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE CANNABIS PLANTS
Both male and female plants look nearly identical, but there are some obvious differences. During the preflowering stage, 4-8 weeks from a seed, the plant’s reproductive organs begin to reveal themselves.
Cannabis plant’s reproductive organs are located in the space where a branch or leaf meets the main bunch or stalk. This location is called the internode.
Even though the plant will start to develop reproductive organs at this stage, it may be hard to determine a plant’s sex with 100% accuracy. If you cannot determine what sex your plant is this early stage, you are not alone. Luckily, you have some time before these organs become active. Wait a few more weeks until you can decide what sex they are.
HOW TO IDENTIFY A MALE CANNABIS PLANT
In males, small round pollen sacs will form. These seed-like balls form in the internode and are where the plants pollen comes from. Since cannabis is pollinated through open air pollination, these sacs will eventually rupture. When they do, they send pollen sailing through the air, hopefully to land on a female plants pistils and start seed production. Male plants typically produce little to no flowers and have a lower content of THC on average.
HOW TO IDENTIFY A FEMALE CANNABIS PLANT
Within the female plants internodes, small bracts or pear shape nodes begin to form. These eventually will produce two hairlike strands called pistils.
Pistils are what catch the male plants pollen and where seed production will begin to form. Female plants produce flower and have higher CBD and THC content on average than males. Female plants are prefered over males in terms of bud and cannabinoid collection.
HOW TO AVOID HERMAPHRODITE PLANTS IN YOUR GROW ROOM?
Hermaphroditism stems from two major driving factors: stress and genetics. In regards to stress, hermaphroditism serves as a survival mechanism. If a plant experiences damage, heat, disease, or nutrient deficiencies, they start to freak out. Essentially, plants get the impression that their time is up. In a last-ditch attempt to reproduce, they decide to stop waiting around for a male and get the job done themselves.
To avoid this issue, try to maintain a stable environment in your grow room. Use a thermo-hygrometer to monitor temperature and humidity, keep your light schedule strict, and ensure your plants get all the nutrients they require.
Even if you have all of these bases covered, plants can still pollinate themselves due to poor genetics. Plants with a bad genetic history and too much genetic variation are prone to becoming hermaphrodites. For this reason, it’s important to shop with reputable companies that offer high-quality seeds with stable genetics.
WHAT TYPE OF CANNABIS SEEDS ARE USED FOR BREEDING?
If you want to try breeding, you’re going to need regular cannabis seeds, and Royal Queen Seeds offers a premium range. In contrast to feminized seeds that produce only female specimens, regular seeds offer a 50% chance of the plant being male or female.
These seeds provide breeders with an army of males and females to experiment with. Cross the very best specimens together to create your own unique strains that match your taste. However, if you’re growing for nothing but buds, you can still use them for their stable and trusty genetics. As you may know, regular seeds provide excellent mother plants to produce clones and amazing yields. You’ll have to spot male plants, but the payoff will be more than worth it.
Benefits of the male plant
Males are an essential component in the continuity of the cannabis plant. They provide pollen for pollination and can be used to create new strains.
Disadvantages of the male plant
It can corrupt an entire crop by pollinating all the females. Once a female is fertilized it doesn’t produce THC.
They also don’t produce flowers, only seeds, which accounts for their low THC levels.
Benefits of the female plant
It provides some of the best medical and recreational marijuana because of its high THC levels. This compound is concentrated in the flowers.
Disadvantages of the female plant
They typically come as one feminized strain which makes them susceptible to disease and bugs with time.
Various Growing Stages of the Marijuana Crop
Marijuana has two primary growing stages; the vegetative stage and the flowering stage. The vegetative stage begins when the cannabis seed starts to sprout and grow. It lasts around six weeks. At that point, the plant displays signs of pre-flowering and will enter into the second (flowering) life stage.
Some individuals call the vegetative stage the “childhood” of the plant because the primary purpose of the crop during this time is to grow taller and stronger. It is not yet necessary for the crop to focus on yielding or flowering.
During the vegetative stage, it is incredibly challenging (if not impossible) to determine the gender of each plant. Therefore, a grower needs to wait until the signs of pre-flowering are visible, a sweet spot between the vegetative and flowering stages. Catching the males during this short period and separating them from the female crops could minimize many future problems.
Once the plant has gone through its childhood, it will then enter “adulthood,” otherwise known as the flowering stage. Now, the crop no longer focuses on getting any taller or thicker. Instead, its sole focus is to produce pistils and calyxes, otherwise known as buds. Male plants produce something called pollen sacs, which look like little peas and are easy to identify if you know what to look for. ECO Farm 2ft*2ft Grow Tent Kit can be your great choice.
How Can You Determine a Cannabis Plant’s Gender?
After the first six weeks, you will begin noticing little pre-flowers near the growth tips. They will either appear slightly pointed at the ends or more rounded. With some strains, it is more challenging to see a difference right away. A female plant will have a calyx – which is the slightly more pointed option. A male will have the aforementioned mini pollen sacs that are round or roughly oval.
If you cannot tell the difference yet, wait a few more days. If the green pre-flower grows a white hair, known as a pistil, it is female. Pistils are never green in color, so look for something light-colored and fuzzy.
Females typically take a bit longer to express their gender than the male cannabis plant does. As a result, be patient with your crops and regularly check them so you can manage any males in the bunch accordingly.
The male plant’s “little green balls” will continue to grow larger, filling up with more pollen until they eventually burst and leak pollen everywhere. You need to catch the male before this happens, as the spread of pollen will fertilize the females. At this point, their buds will stop developing.
Male vs. Female Marijuana Plants – A Quick Rundown
Female crops have pointed green calyxes that sprout a white and wispy pistil – a hair-like part of the plant that grows from the calyx.
Male crops have round, green pollen sacs that enlarge and don’t sprout a white, wispy pistil. Catch these sacs before they overfill with pollen, burst, and contaminate your crop!
In adverse situations (i.e., if the plants are stressed or hungry), portions of a crop can become hermaphroditic. This means they develop both male and female characteristics to self-pollinate and reproduce. It is not the end of the world for those that are growing for personal use because you can still produce buds. The downside is that you receive a far lower concentration of resin.
It is a potentially catastrophic situation for commercial growers, however, as hermaphrodites (or “herms,” as some people call them), are full of seeds and not sellable or desired. Just keep in mind that the male cannabis crop is not entirely useless; a fact we discuss in the next section.
What Can You Do with a Male Cannabis Plant?
Despite their reputation, a male crop is not as hopeless as many may think. Sure, these crops are not as potent as female crops in terms of their THC production, but they contain their fair share of cannabinoids. As some of the sugar leaves are slightly resinous, you can potentially enjoy a mild high too.
If you want an all-female crop, remove the male plants from the females once identified. Then, separate them to reduce the risk of contamination.
While some growers want to dump these plants, there are some non-bud related uses for the male cannabis plant. You can use the stems and water leaves for juicing and teas. It is also possible to process male plant parts into material for therapeutic creams and lotions.
If you do not feel inclined to produce anything with the male plants, the easiest option is to compost the remains. This reduces waste production, is more environmentally friendly, and potentially provides nutrition for your future crops.
Conclusion
Cannabis plants reveal their gender in six weeks. The period before those six weeks they all look the same. However, depending on the environment where they are growing, whether indoors in a eco farm grow tent or outdoors, they may show their gender sooner or later.
For more tips on how to grow, cure, and harvest weed visit A Pot for Pot! Looking to grow your own small marijuana plant? Check out our complete marijuana grow tent kits!