The Life Cycle of a Bud

Does anyone know of a good resource for reading about this? I'm on my first grow and it seems like my buds are changing every day. When I looked this morning, I saw what looked like seed pods on the buds on one plant. I immediately thought it had hermied, but I looked at it from stem to stern and couldn't find any male flowers or "bananas" that I have seen in pictures. I've done a lot of reading and it seems these could be resin sacks or empty seed pods? I don't know. I have a lot to learn.
I'd like to find a good resource that would help me better understand the bud life cycle. I found a couple via Google, but they didn't have good pictures and a picture is definitely worth a thousand words...
I'll try to upload a bud pic as soon as I can so you can see what I am talking about.

I could be wrong but, it sounds like your talking about the calyxes. How old are your plants? When the budded plant matures the calyxes swell, some times so much so that it may look like there's a seed in there.

INDOOR GROWING

That makes sense. The plants are 51 days old, in their fourth week of flowering. Here is a couple of pics.

Cereal box said:

you're talking about the calyxes. .

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Yes... the Calyxes.. those prove you are growing a Female !!!! CONGRATS!!!!!
Now...
In 3-4 months when you pull your plant out of the bud room, those calyxes will grow to triple size and will look like they will explode!
THC Baby... oh yes... THC ....producing the stuff...
Calyxes !!! Congrats man!

Awesome! Freaked me out a little this morning, I will admit....hehe I was going to pull a couple with tweezers when I got home and open them up. I have checked these plants with a jeweler's loupe religiously since they were wee ladies...I haven't found male flowers on them and I was afraid it went hermie....

The pic is really blurry but I'd say you got a few seed pouches going on.

bird mcbride said:

The pic is really blurry but I'd say you got a few seed pouches going on.

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I will pull some off when I get home and see what's in them and let everyone know. I'll try to get some better pictures too.

Yea, I'm almost positive you have seeds there, don't pull them all off, just check one make sure you have some, let them mature for future growing. If you didn't have any male plants, check again for hermaphrodite signs. Those flowers can be really small and sometimes hard to see. I grew 8 hermies last summer, all clones from the same plant, I kept trying to take off all the pollen sacs but i still ended up with like 1000 seeds! Didn't count them all but I have a prescription pill bottle filled up to the top with seeds. I still smoked the weed once the seeds were removed and it was descent. I then grew 3 plants from seed with those seeds, picked the shortest plant with the widest leaves(indica for indoor growing). I'm now cloning off of that one.

Smootherpete said:

Yea, I'm almost positive you have seeds there, don't pull them all off, just check one make sure you have some, let them mature for future growing. If you didn't have any male plants, check again for hermaphrodite signs. Those flowers can be really small and sometimes hard to see. I grew 8 hermies last summer, all clones from the same plant, I kept trying to take off all the pollen sacs but i still ended up with like 1000 seeds! Didn't count them all but I have a prescription pill bottle filled up to the top with seeds. I still smoked the weed once the seeds were removed and it was descent. I then grew 3 plants from seed with those seeds, picked the shortest plant with the widest leaves(indica for indoor growing). I'm now cloning off of that one.

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Yeah, it's really weird, because I have 4 plants in a scrog setup and this is the only one that looks like this. It is the most mature plant too though. I was surprised to not see this on my other mature plant, but I'm a complete newb.

If it's a hermie, it will spread to the others. You might want to separate them and keep that one for seeds. Other people would tell you to get rid of the seeds because of greater chances of getting more hermies. Regardless, most of the seeds are good for me but I think mine hermied because of extreme heat in the attic last summer and not because of hermaphrodite genetics. I had good ventilation but no AC temp would go as high as 35 celcius! I would run my lights at night ,7pm to 7am, to minimize heat during mid day hours. It was just too hot outside.
From what I understand, when a plant is a hermaphrodite due to stress it suffered, it's like it kicks in to survival mode to create her own seeds cause she thinks she will die before reproducing. This creates "feminized seeds" Female + Female = greater chance of female seeds.
On the other hand, if you get a hermaphrodite under perfect growing conditions, you would want to avoid those seeds, bad genetics. Greater chance of more hermies.

Awesome. Thanks Pete! I have a PC case I can put it in. I like the idea of having feminized seeds and if it's hermied, I bet it's because of stress. This is my first grow and some abuse has taken place....I am still going to pull some when I get home and see whats inside of them.

Something else, that I thought was weird is that these suckers seemed to appear overnight. I look at my plants everyday pretty good and they weren't there yesterday.. But like I said, this is all new to me too, so who knows?

Well, I cut a couple off and they had a couple red hairs coming out of them. There wasn't anything but goo inside. My other plant has them now too. On another bad note, I put in another 120 watts (actual) and the heat has risen. When I got in today, they were drooping BAD and the pots were bone dry. I am going to have to watch them close every day. They are only in 1 gallon smart pots.

Worst case scenerio, my whole first crop will be seedy if I don't kill them first.

That really looks like you are going to get some seeds in those, strange you don't see any male flowers on your plants.

I bet you're right. As bad as they looked when they were low on water, I will be happy if they live until harvest, seeds or no! That scared the crap out of me! They looked pitiful. The leaves have started picking up already though. These plants are AMAZINGLY resilient!

There she is all wilted.

I pulled a plant yesterday and to my surprise (and somewhat dismay) today I'm going around the plant like a wild bird eating the seed pellets. At least i feel good thirty minutes later and i got the plant picked before the seeds really started to mature. As for the seeds there good eaten' when fresh and immature for sure.

Good eatin? lol. +rep