In case you weren’t already aware, each cannabis plant is either male or female – technically speaking, cannabis is dioecious in nature. Out of the two genders, the female plant is more sought after as they grow sensimilla, which are the large, seedless buds that we often refer to as weed. It is due to this reason that many growers buy cloned or feminized seeds.
If you’re working with regular seeds and want to know whether they can grow sensimilla, you have to determine the sex of your plant. It will itself reveal its gender to you as soon as it completes its 4 week birthday, which also typically marks the end of its vegetative state.
Look out for the signs of ‘pre-flowers’ which can be spotted between their nodes (where branches and leaves come out of the stalk). While a male plant’s pre-flower is a pollen sac, the female counterpart possesses a stigma, which catches pollen.
You can identify pollen sacs as small, round balls that grow at the nodes; stigma, too, looks similar but has little pink or white hair growing out of them.
If you have trouble finding the gender of your plant after 4 weeks, give them some more time – say 2 additional weeks – and we are pretty sure you’d be able to spot the differences, and hence the gender.
In case your plants have really small pre-flowers, don’t hesitate to use a small magnifying glass to determine whether it’s a stigma or a pollen sac.
