How to Identify and Prevent Hermaphrodite Cannabis Plants

What are hermaphrodite cannabis plants?

Were you aware that cannabis plants come in a variety of sexual orientations? Hermaphrodite cannabis is an unusual phenomenon that combines both male and female characteristics. It’s essential to have an easy time while growing cannabis plants. If you don’t mind receiving an inferior crop of over-seeded hermaphrodites, then hermaphrodites aren’t necessarily bad.

What is a Hermaphrodite?

Hermaphrodites are plants that generate both male and female reproductive parts, making them a kind of cannabis plant. In the horticultural community, a hermaphrodite is referred to as a ‘hermie.’

Hermaphrodites in cannabis plants may take one of two forms. In the first case, both male and female flowers are present on the same plant, resulting in a genuine hermaphrodite. Due to its genetics, a grower cannot control this sort of instability. It doesn’t matter the circumstances; a real hermaphrodite will ultimately come out of the woodwork.

Stress might cause hermaphroditism to arise during full bloom. The ‘banana’ is a new reproductive organ in cannabis plants that both sexes have pollinated. Bananas, or “nanners,” result from a male flower producing a male fruit. As a last-ditch effort to live, it tries to mate with itself.

The long, golden finger of a hermaphrodite banana bloom resembles, you guessed it, a banana. Bananas distribute pollen as soon as the female flowers open; therefore, seeds may be forming in the female flowers when dispersing pollen.

What causes hermaphroditism?

You can attribute hermaphroditism to human and environmental factors for the most part. As soon as a cannabis plant experiences stress, it goes into survival mode.

You can attribute this behavior to several distinct factors. Among the most prevalent causes of hermaphrodite cannabis plants are the following:

Unsuitable training methods

To put a strain on a cannabis plant, many producers use various training and pruning methods, some of which involve high or low-stress levels. It promotes firmer, more productive growth and more excellent harvests when done correctly. It’s possible to get a hermaphrodite cannabis plant if it is done wrong or inadequately.

Flowering for a long time

It would help if you had patience and kindness to grow cannabis. As you gain experience, you’ll better understand how and when to harvest your crop.

When the plant has finished blooming and become darker, you may harvest it. If you leave it to blossom for too long, it will transform into a hermie cannabis plant. Before it dies, it will go into survival mode and pollinate itself.

Genetics

Cannabis plants can acquire hermaphroditic genes from their parents. Hermaphroditism may be bred into a strain spontaneously or due to breeding stress.

Seed manipulation

Hermaphroditic traits may develop in plants subjected to careless seed handling and manipulation. Seed banks and breeders utilize feminization, an artificial procedure, to ensure that their seeds include a high proportion of female plants. Feminization, when done correctly, produces exclusively female plants. However, if done wrong then it may result in hermaphrodites.

Using incorrect nutrients or growing medium

Cannabis plants need precise conditions to grow to their most excellent capacity and produce tasty nugs in large yields. If you plant it in suitable soil, your seed will thrive and give it the proper nutrients. Poor soil, a weak growing medium, or too few/too many nutrients may all result in the growth of a hermaphrodite cannabis plant.

Stressors associated with the environment

If you’re going to cultivate cannabis, you need to ensure it has the right conditions. There must be enough light and water and proper temperature and air circulation to grow.

When there is an excess of moisture, air, or light, the plant switches to hermaphrodite growth, and cannabis heat stress may also create significant issues for your plant.

What does a hermaphrodite cannabis plant look like?

Hermaphrodite cannabis is a curious cross between cannabis and something else.

You may see male and female bulbs at the base of the branches. It would help if you spent some time looking for hermaphrodite plant examples to understand better what they look like. Identifying a hermie is easy if you know the difference between male and female.

In addition, you’ll need to know what to search for:

Signs of cannabis hermaphroditism

It’s straightforward to identify hermaphrodite cannabis plants. Ensure you look for the following cannabis hermaphrodite signs:

• You will observe male and female reproductive sites on certain plants as they begin to bloom. Pollen sacs and pistils are found on the male and female reproductive organs, respectively.
• The pollen sac is a naked bulb in the male, but with the female, the pollen sac is covered in long, thin hairs.
• Some plants may only show hermaphrodite features near the conclusion of their flowering season. When a plant is dying and attempting to self-pollinate, this occurs.

Stress or a nutritional shortfall that goes undiscovered might cause your plant to switch to survival mode. If you want to perfect hermaphrodite cannabis plants identification, keep a close watch on your plant and attend to its demands.

How to deal with hermaphrodite cannabis plants

If you want to prevent cross-pollination among your female plants, it is necessary to remove true hermaphrodites, such as male plants, as soon as they appear. On the other side, you can harvest plants with mixed-sex buds.

Consider plucking a plant that has produced “bananas” toward the conclusion of its bloom period and retaining the buds, which should still be seedless.

How to prevent hermaphrodite cannabis in the future

Unfortunately, there’s no way to detect whether a plant possesses hermaphroditic genes. Hermaphroditism can only be prevented by providing your plants with optimal development circumstances and avoiding stress at all costs. Ensure you know what you’re doing if you employ both low-stress training and high-stress training methods.

Always get your seeds from a well-known seed bank that strives to minimizehermaphroditism while producing new strains.