Female or male: how to tell the gender of cannabis

Bob Marley

    Cannabis is a dicot plant, so plants can be either female or male. Sometimes hermaphroditic plants are the case, but this is a completely different topic. Of course, the functions of male and female plants are different, and before we look at how to identify the sex of cannabis, it is worth regarding their functionality:

• Male plants are used if there is a need to create seeds. They are also used for breeding purposes and to produce hybrids.
• Female plants provide lots of psychoactive substances and therefore they are used for both therapeutic and recreational purposes.

    When we speak of female plants, the most valued bud is sensimilla, unpollinated female inflorescences. THC concentration is at its highest in such buds! To obtain sensimilla, the mother plant must be protected from pollination and all male plants must be removed. This is why it's necessary to distinguish their sex, otherwise there’s a risk of pollination.

Male cannabis plants – how to spot them

    Going to breed/crossbreed cannabis? A one-time harvest is not your goal? Then buy regular, non-feminized marijuana seeds. Low-quality feminized seeds (especially when stressed) may also grow into male plants. 

    So, sex is visible as early as 6-8 weeks into the plant's life. At this moment female bushes will have grown pre-flowers in their internodes. As for male plants, they will have sacks filled with pollen – they look like tiny bananas. To prevent pollination, male plants should be removed before the bags mature.

    In fact, cannabis can be identified as male even before the flowering period. Firstly, male plants are noticeably taller. Secondly, they have more branches. So if it’s past mid-vegetation and 3 plants out of 10 look bigger and branchier than their peers, you have reasons to suspect them to be male.

How do I tell a female marijuana plant?

    Firstly, to make sure that most of your plants are female, it’s better to buy feminised seeds from the start – 98 out of 100 will be female. During vegetation, it is necessary not to stress the plants: maintain a temperature of 24-28 degrees, use lights with the blue spectrum, fertilize with nitrogen fertilizers. In 4-8 weeks after germination, female plants will have grown white hairs in their nodes. It will be easy to differentiate them from male plants – the latter will have no such thing. It is the female plants that produce buds.

    So, the sex of cannabis is very easy to determine, and we've listed all the signs for you. But there is also hermaphrodite cannabis, which has traits of both sexes and can self-pollinate. It lags behind the female plants in terms of THC levels, and the flavor is not too good, so it cannot challenge the advantages of female plants. For that reason growers usually cut off male organs from their hermaphrodite plants, and if those appear again, then such plants are removed.

    Male plants are taller and slimmer, they have small bananas in which the pollen matures. 

    Female plants are lower and grow white hairs in their nodes. 

Related articles: How to accurately determine the sex of marijuana and Cannabis at home

15.08.2016

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