Males and females
Cannabis is a "dioecious" plant: there are male plants and female plants. Only females make buds. Males make pollen, which the wind carries to the females to fertilize them. A fertilized female stops putting energy into resin and fills her flowers with seeds.
Regular and feminized seeds
A regular (natural) seed gives a male or a female, roughly half and half. Feminized seeds are made with pollen from a female (see colloidal silver) and give almost only females. For production you use feminized; for breeding (making new strains) growers prefer regular, because picking a good male is half the job.
How to tell
In pre-flower, in the joints of the branches. The female shows a little green drop with two white hairs (the pistils). The male shows balls hanging from a tiny stalk, with no hairs: these are the pollen sacs, which open after 2 or 3 weeks.
What to do with a male
If you want seedless buds, remove it as soon as you spot it, before it opens: a single plant can pollinate the whole crop. If you want to breed, keep it apart, far from the females, and collect its pollen.
▲ Pros
- Its pollen is useful for crossing
▼ Cons
- Let loose in a shared spot, it fills your harvest with seeds
🎮 Practice it in UnderGrow
Regular seeds are bought at the shop (for breeding). The lens shows the sex from pre-flower. The male gives no buds: a few days after flowering starts it opens its pouches and pollinates all the females in bloom at that spot. So it doesn't fill your other grows with seeds, take it to breeding before it opens: there its pollen is collected (10 doses) when it opens. Before that you can also pull it out.
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