Can a Female Plant Turn Male?
If you don’t know anything about growing weed, you better make sure you pay close attention to the information in this article. A female weed plant is the best growing marijuana. The reason being that female weed plants produce colas (buds or flowers) and that’s where all the good stuff comes from. The THC resides primarily in the buds (I’ll call them buds for the remainder of this article) on your plant.
A female marijuana plant cannot turn into a male plant. A female marijuana plant can turn into a hermaphrodite plant. A hermaphrodite (Hermi) weed plant is both parts male and female. This happens when a female plant is exposed to pollen from a male plant or if the female plant becomes overly stressed. The flowers or buds on the female plant will produce seeds when pollinated.
Some growers really panic when they identify a male weed plant in their crop. Personally, I don’t get too excited about it and I will explain why in this article. What’s important to know, is your female plants will not turn into male plants. I tell you this so the next time you are reading a comment on a Facebook marijuana forum or another site, you don’t get panicked if you see a male in your weed plants. Let’s talk about what happens when a male plant is found amongst your female weed plants.
What’s Wrong with a Hermaphrodite Weed Plant?
If you are growing more than one weed plant and one of them happens to be a male, it can potentially pollinate the female plants turning them into hermaphrodite plants. So, is that a bad thing and why?
I guess I’m not as much of a perfectionist as some other growers because I don’t lose my mind if I see a male plant appearing before my eyes. Sure, it’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing ever. The worst thing ever for marijuana growers is only having male plants and no females.
Back to the issue with a hermi weed plant. The problem is the buds will have seeds in them. The other issues reported is the smoke is not as smooth and the THC level is not as high as when the bud comes from a 100% female plant. That’s about as bad as it gets in this situation.
Ideally you want your females to stay female. The awesome thing about growing weed plants is even if your plant(s) turn out terrible, you can just grow more. The turnaround in an indoor grow tent or room is much shorter than growing outdoors so definitely consider doing that. I have an article on grow tents vs grow rooms check it out here.
Keep reading if you want to know how to prevent this from happening. First, though, let me answer some other questions around female and male plants to educate you and put your mind at ease a bit.
When Can You Tell if Your Plant is Male or Female?
After you have flipped your lighting from an 18/6 to a 12/12 schedule or whatever timing you feel is best, you should start noticing some buds or balls growing on the ends of the plant stems. This is where the buds will form assuming you have a female plant. It shouldn’t take more than 2 to 3 weeks of going into the flowering/bud stage.
Early Signs of a Female Weed Plant
You will start to notice something growing where the stem and branches meet. It’ll either start forming pistols which might remind you of spider legs. This is what you want to see. They’re typically a whitish color.
Early Signs of a Male Weed Plant
If you see something growing and it doesn’t have long white (what I call) spider legs, you might be witnessing the start of seed sacs. This means it’s a male marijuana plant and is really no use to you, unless you want to make something out of it instead of getting high from it.
How do You Tell if Your Female Plant Has Been Pollinated?
To identify if your female plant has been pollinated, you will need to do a bit of inspection around the areas where the buds are developing. A visual inspection in this are might be enough to identify if seeds have started to develop. If you see seeds you have a pollinated female.
Another method is to poke around in the bracts (area where the buds are growing) and see if you can feel anything lumpy about the size of a marijuana seed.
How to Prevent a Female Plant from Going Hermaphrodite?
Just to make growing weed even more challenging, now I’m going to tell you that your plants can go hermi not just from being pollinated from a male plant, but stress can cause this as well.
As tough a plant as marijuana is, you need to keep it’s growing conditions fairly stable or you risk stressing the plant out and potentially have seeds growing in your buds.
The temperatures of your grow area should stay stable during the day and then at night. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fluctuation, because you can. At nighttime, the temperature can drop a bit as it will automatically outdoors, so that would be okay in a grow tent as well.
What I’d be careful with is keeping it completely dark when the lights are out. This means no more peaking into a grow room when your plants are trying to sleep. If you do this, as tempting as it may be, you again risk having your plants turn hermaphrodite.
Aside from environmental issues causing stress, of course, the number one cause of your weed plants going hermi is if they become pollinated. This means keeping male and female plants separated.
In forums, I am always reading other grower’s comments about throwing out male plants immediately to save the female plants. If you are interested in why you might want to keep male plants. I encourage you to go read my article on the topic HERE when you are done with this article.
Can Female Clones Turn Male?
I found this question online and thought it would be good to answer it in this article. Female clones, just like female plants growing from seeds, will not turn male but they can be pollinated and turn into a hermaphrodite plant. Again, I don’t feel that this is the end of the world if it happens. You can still use the buds. They will just be a bit harsher, than if they weren’t pollinated.
Conclusion
To wrap this up, I thought a quick conclusion was warranted. Can a female marijuana plant turn male? No, a female marijuana plant cannot turn male. It can turn into a hermaphrodite marijuana plant if it gets pollinated or is stressed too much. Hermi plants are just as useful to keep growing as 100% female marijuana plants. So, don’t throw yours away. Make the best of it.
I mentioned how a pollinated bud might be a bit harsher to smoke than non pollinated. The harshness can also vary depending on the time you take to cure the bud. You might be able to smooth out the harshness a bit by slowing down the curing time. It’ll be worth it when it comes time to smoke your bud. Good luck!
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