Males and Females

[LuvBuds]

Hi i am flowering my three sativas as we speak they are in about day 5 of flower and just showing a few extra hairs and shit. I have never realy grown a male funnily enough only one that was given to me for decoration.

ANyways with the sativas they only have hairs everywhere does this Female or do males grow these too. Im a little scared casue the preflowers are sort of Male looking but i in denile and could be wrong. If hairs point to female then im ok otherwise i think i got males.

I have another that is more into flowering and is covered in hairs and looking like relatiely nice colas. The only thing is it has sort of stopped maturing. Is this normal?

It doesnt visually seem to be growng or buds getting bigger. Is this normal at this stage am i just waiting for them to ripen? they are pretty think buds not like huge and fat and im not sure wether thats the strain or growth problem.

What u reckon if u want more infor ask and i tell.

[tartass]

@luvbuds got any pics ill tell you straight away if you do

[Luke Skywalker]

Females have hairs, boys have balls. The balls on a male plant, (which is usually faster growing and slightly taller than sister plants before sexing, but not always) are positioned on the end of a short stalk, and eventually the flower will open and try and hang downwards, hanging the pollen sacs in the breeze to disperse. The male flower looks like a star from above when open.

 

Female plants will show small calyxes at the nodes, and these do not have a stalk. The two types of flowers will look superficially similar before they fully form, but should you see two white hairs, (the stigmas) come out of the flower, then you've got a girl.

 

A male should be instantaneously removed from the garden as soon as identified. A female should be watched too, as plants which are female can also develop some male flowers, due to either stress or genetics, and thus pollinate their fellow females or even themselves if not caught.

 

But yeah, it sounds like you've got a girl, although a picture, as tartass has suggested, would be a great help. There are some shots in here of male flowers and many many many shots of females, I think if you look in Tom's sig you should see a link to these pics.

 

Oh, and on the maturing thing, female plants will, upon starting the flowering process, grow very quickly, "stretching" out their branches to hold the developing buds. Some plants will produce a large amount of growth in the early flowering period, some will only put on about 1/3 of their total height once induced to flowering. Generally you can expect the plant to increase height by 1/3 to 1/2 in the first few weeks of flowering, and then it's growth rate vertically will taper off as the budsites develop out into colas. Some strains will only produce a wispy, "running" bud, with little thickness... Others will quickly burst out flowering and expand to almost unbelievable thickness, compounding flowers upon flowers upon flowers... Most fall inbetween. But as a general rule as well, (remembering that there are always exceptions to rules, no matter what they are) you can say that indica influenced plants, (short, broad leaflets on the leaves, and short internode spacing) are prone to larger, thicker colas and buds, and sativa infulenced plants, (taller, thinn leaflets on the leaves, long internode spacing) are usually found to have thinner, running buds. That doesn't necessarily mean they're less potent, just smaller yeilding per square foot of plant.

 

So yeah, the flowering will be like a burst, then a slow growth, then the calyxes, provided they aren't exposed to pollen, will swell as the hairs go brown and start to produce lots of lovely resin on the surface of the calyxes.

 

Hope this helps mate, hope you have a good harvest.

[Gazza2001au]

my plant was showing hermie signs but i let it go some how it reverted back into flower now its doing well im hopping for 2oz ;-)

[Psychedelic Gecko]

A question for experienced growers: How long usually does it take to accuratly identify the sex?

[Luke Skywalker]

From seed it could be anywhere from a month to three or more, depending on strain and conditions.

 

The only sure fire way to identify the sex of a plant is to grow it start to harvest, you can assume it's female by it's preflowers, but you just won't know until it's finished flowering as to it's true "sex". (Be that male, female or hermie.)

 

Most strains will show preflowers in the end stages of veg, but not always. Some growers will change lighting to 12:12 to induce sex, remove the males and then change back to 18:6 or 24:0 for further vegetation. Not all will react well to this, and it could add a bit of time and stress on the plants.

[jaikai]

A question for experienced growers: How long usually does it take to accuratly identify the sex?

send `em round and ill tell you sometime after easter...maybe july. nah aot really...

 

JAIKAI