importance of fan leaves

louisc said:

brick top, dont the stalks have straw like tubes
that feed certain leaves or branches, u cut
a leaf, that tube is still flowing nutes so it sprouts
a branch, mine look like a 3 ft xmas trees, fully decorated
in white caus more light gets thru ...

but what ever works for ya

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The plant's vascular system, filled with pipe-like vascular tissue, are the crucial conduits through which water and nutrients flow in plants. Without them, plants are limited to being a few inches tall, as is the case with mosses, hornworts, and liverworts, the only terrestrial non-vascular plants.

If you were saying that your plants are only or mainly covered in trichomes because more light strikes them due to removing fan leaves that is really questionable. A leaf on average will only absorb/stop 15% of the light rays that strike it leaving the other 85% to pass through and strike lower portions of plants. Unless someone is using inadequate lighting, which sadly is common but still believed by many to be adequate, more than enough light will penetrate a thick canopy for lower portions of plants to thrive.

An example of light penetration would be the 15 foot, 18 foot, 20 foot cannabis plants my brother in law would help himself to that he ran across in canopy jungle in Vietnam when he ran across them and had the time to fill his stash for free. Sunlight not only penetrated thick canopy jungle but also the foliage on the Sequoia-like cannabis plants. Yes grow lighting is like a single candle in comparison to the power of the sun but the principle remains the same and with the relatively small amount of foliage on cannabis plants if someone has adequate lighting there are in like Flynn and not only do not need to remove fan leaves for penetration but would harm rather than help their plants by removing any fan leaf that is still functioning.

Then of course as I have said more times than I wish I had to, removing healthy leaves will reduce absorbed light rays used to create energy and the 'factories' where essential carbohydrates are created and stored for energy for use during hours of darkness, when most growth and THC production occurs, and other essential elements are also created and stored in leaves and all that is lost. You also stimulate hormones, auxins, gibberellins, cytokinins and ethylenes, for example and that will cause plants to alter growth patterns and cell division and even slow down ripening of flowers/fruits.

Plants are extremely complex and they perform near countless functions that some people never imagine occur and they also never begin to imagine the negative changes they force on plants. They do not realize that cannabis plants, for as inexplicably difficult as they are for some people to grow, are really very rough tough hearty growing plants and they basically survive torture inflicted on them by growers and only because they are so resilient and hearty will they still end up impressive enough for their growers to cause the growers to believe that what they did was actually good rather than bad.

What they do not realize is the very same plant that impressed them would have been even more impressive had they not tortured it while growing it.

louisc said:

heres what cutting fans does 4 me,
like my cola tree ? , u can't even see the main
one, about 3 ft in diameter 3 ft high

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really? your main cola is 3 feet in diameter?

i wish, here's an update,
i only remove good fans to promote
branching in veg, or in flowering to
allow more light in but only a few
at a time

shit!!! never fort this would cause so much interest haha
thanks for all yhe input guys , keep it comin !
an is it me or does Brick Top actually sound like Brick Top in his explaination of things lol

importance of your arms?

Damn! Gotta spread some rep around before i +rep you again Brick Top. Some incredible knowledge man. Thank you

the brick is right about
his science and that's it's a truly tough weed,
but i say u can increase ur yield by pruning
and training a healthy plant with no ill effects,
just took it down yesterday

louisc said:

heres what cutting fans does 4 me,
like my cola tree ? , u can't even see the main
one, about 3 ft in diameter 3 ft high

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This is OK, but nothing amazing, I don't know what other growers you know, but those arennt very big buds.
I've tried cutting some leaves, and I've more recently ( and more intelligently) been leaving them on unless they show over 50% damage, and the latter has netted me far better results. I'll still tuck them away, and i use alot of stakes, and tie alot of buds from ceiling, but I've learned my lessons the hard way on fan leaves. Leave them alone, don't cut them off after day 5 of 12/12. i don't cut off anything after day5, and really i stop cutting 7 days BEFORE 12/12. I'm no expert, but some of these things are so obvious I don't know how people still even disagree on them? Plants need their leaves....mmmmkay?

OH' Brick Top...

How I wish I would have discovered your Post sooner!

I've done LOTS of reading and studying and my buds are looking (and smelling) Awesome, BUT I read a post elsewhere and the person said that it was desirable to remove larger leaves that block light to the smaller leafs directly around the buds because 'that', according to the author was where light was needed most... right were the colas are formed.

Just yesterday I removed about 1/4 of the larger healthy leaves just to give light access to the newer and smaller colas and their associated smaller leaves! Boooo... Again, how I wish I read your Post sooner because it makes complete sense.

From now on, no more trimming or editing natures way... unless the leaves are truly sick or show any signs of burn. Sadly, this is a bell I can not un-ring.

DANG@!

Brick Top said:

Fan leaves are not only a plant's largest most efficient solar collectors they are also factories where sugars are produced and warehouses where food/energy is stored for use during hours of darkness. During hours of darkness plants allocate increased amounts of energy for growth and also for THC production (when in flower of course) over the amount of energy allocated for those function during hours of light. Everyone should want as much stored energy in their plants as possible so those functions can operate at their maximum efficiency.

Until fairly well along in flower plants will attempt to replace any lost healthy foliage. For each leaf or branch removed the plant will allocate energy to replace what was lost elsewhere on the plant. That of course means that when someone removes leaves or branches thinking by doing so they can redirect the plant's energy to be used the way they want it to be used what will actually happen is the plant will attempt to recover what was lost and other functions will be deprived of some energy.

Someone cannot force a plant to allocate it's energy the way the person wants it to be used.

People look at plants and say to themselves, well the plant has 'X' amount of energy and those darn big fan leaves have to use a lot of energy to remain alive so I will remove them and more of the 'X' amount of energy will then be used for bud growth. Well once you remove the leaves 'X' amount of energy then drops to 'P' amount of total energy to use because the plant cannot absorb and use as many light rays.

So now your total amount of energy is down from 'X' to 'P' and then thanks to removing the leaves the plant takes some of the remaining reduced amount of total energy, 'P', and allocates it for replacing the foliage that was removed leaving the rest of the plant to rely on only 'K' amount of energy.

The belief in trimming plants to force them to use their energy for bud growth is based in flawed logic and not in plant facts. At some point in time someone who knew nothing at all about plants connected dots that really do not connect and failed to see they did not create an accurate picture by connecting the wrong dots.

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