Second grow - found a hermaphrodite

My second grow went soooo much better, than the first time. Really healthy looking plants. I used the biotabs.eu starter package to give nutrients to my CBD Euphoria and CBD Kush. That was a real success, up until today (after 4 weeks vegging and 4 weeks flowering).

Today I noticed something I haven't seen before:



I wasn't sure, but the second picture was a little bit more clear to me



I can safely say this is a hermie, right? When I touched it, the pollen fell down on a leaf below. I thought I could remove just a couple that showed up, but after inspection, it was clear that many more were starting to grow :/ most people gave the advice to remove the plant. So that's what I did. Still had about 4 weeks to go; this hurts me so much. As I only had 2 plants going.

I suspect the plant had too much stress due to the higher temperature in the grow tenth. This week it was apparently 27°C+ during the day in the canopy and she was super close (10-15) cm to my 4 DIY-COB leds (150W) (not showing any signs of burning though). I didn't have enough extra space above the lamps to hang them even higher :/ Maybe 4 weeks was too much vegging for my size of growtenth (about 80x80x160-180cm)


Good bey my love... :'( 1m of love to the compost bin

Let's hope my CBD Kush survives it.

Hi Dakoina,

Bad luck on your front. I agree, it was a good decision to remove the plant.
Even if your other two get seeds, which is very likely, it'll still be less seed than if you let it go.

Don't put the hermies down to grower error. A hermie is a hermie, is a hermie.
It is true that some won't show themselves until stressed, but they were hermie from the beginning anyway.

BOTH, dioecious, and hermaphrodite plants exist in Cannabis.
Hermaphrodites have both the male, and female chromosomes. Meaning they can self replicate.
The male, and female counterparts can't.

It's genetic. Always is.

@Aussieaceae thanks for your reply. Would the other seeds from the same seed package have the same problem? would it be likely they’d have the same problem too?

Dakoina said:

@Aussieaceae thanks for your reply. Would the other seeds from the same seed package have the same problem? would it be likely they’d have the same problem too?

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No worries,

Some varieties tend to have more than others. But in general, if you planted out a few dozen seeds, you'd likely get a handful.

Just consider it a natural occurrence. They're going to happen anyway, and there's nothing we can really do to stop it.

The trait generally is recessive though. So i'd try to avoid any seeds that came from one.

Spot on respone by Aussieaceae. I hope you have better luck on the next run Dakoina!

Logan Burke said:

Spot on respone by Aussieaceae. I hope you have better luck on the next run Dakoina!

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I hope so I know a lot about gardening, but this is a whole new world it seems. You can only learn by doing

Interesting, in my first grow I also had a Euphoria CBD that became a hermie, but I didn't notice it untill harvest time

Dakoina said:

I hope so I know a lot about gardening, but this is a whole new world it seems. You can only learn by doing

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Dude if you throw away every herm you get you aint going to get much weed.

Learn to live with them until your skills and strains improve. If you had no bud and i offered you some seeded bud youd snap my hand off and get high.

Why hate - why not learn

If you're using stable genetics, you really shouldn't get many hermies in growing....or at least I haven't, and I use autoflowering strains for the most part which are notorious for hermaphroditism. From what I've seen, if you can avoid light leaks and severe environmental stress and use good breeders, you don't run into them very oftenly. I only say to remove them to minimize pollination of your other non-hermaphrodite plants.

Next time I'll give it a try. I didn't know it happens this much. So that's one of the reasons why people use a healthy mother I suppose

Dakoina said:

Next time I'll give it a try. I didn't know it happens this much. So that's one of the reasons why people use a healthy mother I suppose

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When i was younger, i had an outdoor crop going. There were around a dozen plants, and 2 turned hermaphrodite.
I made the mistake of leaving them in. I was seeding the females anyway, and figured at the least the hermaphrodites would provide some smoke anyway.
Turned out to be the biggest mistake i could've made. I went from getting 1 or 2 hermaphrodites in a couple dozen plants, to about a 50% ratio.
Seeds were all mixed as well. The genetics were turned on their head, just from 2 plants.

While the hermaphrodites are a natural occurrence, and likely crucial in wild Cannabis survival, for our needs they are just too impractical.

I personally avoid them like the plague.
If i'm being honest, i'd much prefer a male than a hermaphrodite. Might seed our whole crop, all the same, but at least we have a decent stock of seed afterwards.

Give me a male over a hermaphrodite any day.

Dakoina said:

Next time I'll give it a try. I didn't know it happens this much. So that's one of the reasons why people use a healthy mother I suppose

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This plant has rock solid genetics, freaking unchangable, in 10000 years time tomatos evolve into desert bushes, lettuce into giant trees but mj will still be mj.

When peeps say shit genetics they are really confusing mjs rock steady long term survival strategy of never altering genetics with ''that last plant i didnt like the taste off' genetics - this is science and some plants decide not to mingle and change genetics and therefore spend millions of them avoiding and manipulating to do just that.

So at some point mj through some freak mutation or cross picked up the hermie trait and then proceeded to xolonise the world. Then comes modern man and we cultivate it but by that point were fucked because we can never breed that trait out because mj hardwired that sucker into those rock solid genetics and its unchangable.

To add another curve ball into the diamond mj also has some of the most complex sexual genetics ever seen in plants - its up there lets say that. For this reason firstly that makes it hard for science to study and it has had very little value when there are easier plant genetics to profit from.

These two facts means we have zero answers except for its hardwired into every strain and it will show if you piss it off but also you can simoly trigger a herm and we dont have an exact hypothesis, light leak, nutes, etc etc all banded around but no real hard science so we just assume stress is the trigger in one form or the other.

Those that talk about traits and breeding are wetdreamers - breed just one hermie free strain and bingo you be rich in seed sales over night - sadly this hasnt happened in all my years here yet.

But back to growing, tweezer carefully off and finish as best you can , try other strains to find ones easy to grow so you dont get stress and thus they treat you well by not hermieing. I only know one strain that herms a lot but everyone says everything herms and all genetics are shit so youve just got to ignorecthe hype and keep doing grow after grow till one day your even firgot the last time you ever got seed.

I forgot to mention theory behind why mj loves to herm.

First the numero umero reason pollen is deactivated is water. Secondly the futher pollen has to travel the less its success rate.

So mj learns to put a pollen sac right in tbe middle of her bud and BINGO in the bad years she still manages to spread a few seeds and cling to another season odmf life.

A whole species can be wiped from the face of the earth in one bad year, mj learnt to be resilliant cause she knew if she could survive a few million years through all that climate change and shit she would eventually find what must be luxury to them inside our tents.

Mother nature made one fuck of a plant and it has domesticated us in the end

One last rambling - the few studies showed mj female to male ratio increased after many bad years. Ylu would assume the male would increade to produce more pollen but again mj plays to its hermie genetics and increases female because herms gurantee seed when males cant due to bad weather

I encourage you to read some biological studies about hermaphrodite organisms.

They have double the chromosome count. They possess both xy (male), and xx (female) chromosomes.
Which means they can self replicate.

Now throw a couple males, and females into the mix, that's where it gets far too complicated for me.

But long story short, using seeds from a self seeded hermaphrodite, is going to get you a heap more of them.
Done it and seen it.

It really is a fascinating plant, and if it weren't for hermaphrodites, i don't think wild cannabis would have survived nearly as long as it has.

Aussieaceae said:

I encourage you to read some biological studies about hermaphrodite organisms.

They have double the chromosome count. They possess both xy (male), and xx (female) chromosomes.
Which means they can self replicate.

Now throw a couple males, and females into the mix, that's where it gets far too complicated for me.

But long story short, using seeds from a self seeded hermaphrodite, is going to get you a heap more of them.
Done it and seen it.

It really is a fascinating plant, and if it weren't for hermaphrodites, i don't think wild cannabis would have survived nearly as long as it has.

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I read them and then referenced similar plants and technique used to identify proteins which is where science says it gave up in mjs case because it was so complex and some of the proteins they could not workout due to endless seemingly complex interactions.

What i wrote was a culmination not a beginning to the subject as far as i can workout

Just thought it was an interesting point to make, that's all.

From my own experience, I'd rather avoid hermaphrodite plants all together.

Take it easy everyone.

Hmmmm...all I know, is that in 5 years I've had 1 hermaphrodite..lol. Maybe I've just had a lucky run with it.

Aussieaceae said:

Just thought it was an interesting point to make, that's all.

From my own experience, I'd rather avoid hermaphrodite plants all together.

Take it easy everyone.

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Does one nanna on a plant bearing three pounds of the dankest primo'est knock your socks off bud make it a hermie and you want to avoid it or its seed?

If you were seeing pollen falling then any other plant that was flowering is likely already pollinated.