Male vs. Female Cannabis Plant: How to Determine the sex of your Plants

We tend to think that male cannabis is completely useless, but this isn’t entirely true. As we have explained in a previous article, cannabis belongs to the group of plants known as dioicous. In other words, they are plants that produce eggs or sperm but never both in the gametophyte phase (the sexual phase of both plants and algae). Usually, cannabis growers isolate female plants to prevent male plants from pollinating female plants. The pollination process will cause female plants to produce seeds, which are important for cannabis growers. Nonetheless, female plants with seeds produce buds that are not rich in resins. Therefore, it is important to identify female and male plants to separate them. The female cannabis plants can produce top quality buds with resins rich in cannabinoids.

Female Plants

The female plants are the most appreciated ones because they are the ones producing cannabis buds. The male plants are separated from the female ones so the latter ones can produce seedless buds rich in cannabinoids. All resinous buds come from “ sinsemilla “ or seedless cannabis buds.

You can plant both normal and feminized seeds. Because male plants are also important for the development of plants with good genetics. For example, many experienced growers work with both male and female seeds.

If you prefer to work with both female and male plants, then it is important you learn how to sex them. The sexing process of cannabis plants is not difficult, and we give you here some tips to differentiate them.

Cannabis Male Plants

Even though they are usually discarded and labeled as “useless”, male cannabis plants can be important as they can carry important genes that can produce high-quality cannabis. Expert cannabis growers will use cannabis male plants to produce pollen. This pollen could be used to pollinate female plants. Experts cannabis growers will store and even freeze high-quality pollen. Consequently, male cannabis, although it doesn’t produce cannabis buds, could be important in the production of good quality buds.

Male vs Female Cannabis Plant: How to identify Them

You can identify whether a plant is female or male by looking at what grows between their nodes. A male cannabis plant will develop round balls at the nodes, while the female plants will produce pistils with some small white hairs that are female pre-flowers.

The round balls in male cannabis plants are pollen sacs that produce pollen to pollinate female plants. The stigma, which is the part of the pistils where pollen germinates, are designed to catch pollen produce by the cannabis male plants.

In short, you just need to check at their nodes. If you see ball sacs then it is a male cannabis plant and if you see pistils, then it is a female marijuana plant.

Moreover, there are also hermaphrodite plants. We explain in previous posts the process known as “ rodelization “ and how stressed unpollinated female cannabis plants produce their own pollen. This hermaphrodite plant can pollinate other female marijuana plants and ruin your entire cannabis crop.

Some cannabis growers use the rodelization process, because the stressed female plants produce only feminized seeds. Nonetheless, these seeds don’t have good genetics and they have more chances of becoming hermaphrodite plants.

Conclusion: Male vs Female Cannabis

Female marijuana plants produce buds rich in resins (cannabinoids). Nonetheless, this doesn’t necessarily mean that male cannabis is useless. For instance, male cannabis plants can produce high quality pollen that could be used to pollinate female plants and produce quality seeds.

It is very easy to determine whether a plant is male or female. Remember to check what grows between the nodes. If you see ball sacs then it is a male plant. On the other hand, if you see pistils, then it’s a female plant.

Originally published at https://www.getispire.com on August 28, 2020.