Male Cannabis plants

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Male Cannabis plant – How & when to identify the sex, pollen sacs, lifecycle and more thumbnail

How to identify a male cannabis plant? When to tell the difference?

Hey there and welcome (back) to Free the Tree ! Today we decided to take advantage of one of our plants being male to cover male cannabis plants 🙂
How to identify them early, what to do with males, what are their “use”, we’ll cover each point one by one

What is a male cannabis plant?

Are you wondering what a male cannabis plant is?

As the name suggests, it is a plant containing the “male parts” (pollen) of the plant. Its small flowers will contain pollen sacs that will, in time, release pollen in the air

For a little botanical knowledge here, cannabis is considered a a Dioecy specie. This means that seed contains either a male or a female gametes, producing a male or a female individual.

This excludes known stresses to cannabis that can produce herming or seed production without being pollinated as well as feminized seeds.

When to identify the sexe of your plant? (aka sexing)

You can start seeing signs of the sex during the stretch also known as the pre-flowering” period. This period occurs during the 2 first weeks of the flowering stage. During this time, your plant will show strong foliage growth and you will start noticing bud areas.

Below 2 pictures, one showing a male the other a female plant during the stretch.
Notice the little ball like growths on the male cannabis plant vs the little white growth on the female

Preflowering signs of a male cannabis plants

You can see the first “ball like” growth appearing at the intersection of the leaves and steams (knots). This growth is the first sign that this is a male plant.

If your not sure, wait a couple days to confirm. You’re not risking anything right now.

That said, generally that first gut feeling is right (scroll below to see the next stages of growth of the male plant)

Preflowering signs of a female plant

The first signs of a female plant also occur during the stretch. Small little white hairs (pistils) will start appearing at the same area mentioned for male plants.
Again, if you’re not sure, wait a couple days, things will clear up rapidly 😉

Check out the section below “how to tell the difference between male and female plants“, to see the growth of a male cannabis strain step by step.

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How to tell the difference between Male and Female cannabis plants

Cannabis is one of the few plants that is either male or female (apart from hermies). As we said in the previous section, you can start telling the difference at the beginning of the stretch. As time goes by the differences will become more and more obvious.

Telling the difference between male and female cannabis

We figured that the best way to help you see the difference between male and female cannabis plants is with pictures.
We have a step by step development below. You can click on each picture to get the full view of it.

Male plant – First signs of pollen sacs

See the first “ball like” growth appearing at the intersection of the leaves and steams (knots)? This is the first sign that this is a male plant. With time they will grow into pollen sacs.

Female plant – First pistils growing

The first signs of a female plant also occur during the stretch. Small little white hairs (pistils) will start appearing at the same spots as the male cannabis plant.

Male plant – Pollen sacs developing

As the stretch goes on, you will notice these little “balls” grow and increase in number. These are the first pollen sacs starting to grow

Female plant – Pistils transforming into little buds

On her end, the female plant keeps forming white pistils. When they are white, they are “humid”. This means that if pollen gets to them they will stick and pollinate the flower.

As time goes by, as long as the plant stays un-pollinated, the flower will grow.

For more on the flowering stage you can check out our full article

Male plant – Pollen sacs maturing

As the days go by you will see the little “balls” grow into packs of what seems like little buds of flowers. These are the pollen sacs forming.
They will keep getting bigger until they open up (looking like a small flower) and release the pollen.

Female plant – Flower growing & thickening

As time goes by, the un-pollinated female flower keeps growing more and more pistils. As a result, the flower grows bigger and bigger.

We are “unknowingly” using the stress of non-pollination to increase the yield of the final flower.

Male plant – Ripe & Open pollen sacs

Once the pollen in the sacs is ready it will open. When this occurs the anthers are revealed. The pollen it contains is released in the wind & on the leaves below.
When this happens you you will see what looks like dust the leaves.

If you have any female plants around there’s a good chance that they will get pollinated and will produce seeds.

On the picture above you can see ripe pollen sacs about ready to open on the top, and opened sacs at the bottom.

Note: if you want to breed your strain, check out our full article on breeding cannabis strains

Female plant – Flower nearing the harvest

At this stage, the female flower looks like what you’re used to; a nice, smelly, bud.

The fattening of the bud is due to the fact that the pistils aren’t pollinated. Every time the pistils dry up without pollen the cannabis plant grows new, fresh, pistils. This happens for 2 or 3 times, which fattens the bud quite nicely.
Dry pistils can be noticed as they are more of a orange brown color, instead of the white humid ones.

Whether you know it or not, as a grower you’re using the female plant by not being pollinated to increase yield.

The picture above is our SexBud nearing harvest, you can notice humid and dry pistils on her.

What is a Cannabis Pollen sac composed of?

To be able to show you what a pollen sac is composed of we went ahead and kept our male plant. This allowed us to harvest pollen sacs at different stages of growth and look inside 🙂

Honestly it’s pretty awesome to watch a male grow, we hadn’t seen it so far and there’s a beauty to them too.

Before showing you the pictures, here’s a couple useful terms

Male cannabis Flower – Useful definitions

Before getting to the parts of the male plant, here’s a couple definitions of parts we will see.

Sepal

The sepal is the outer part of the flower, what is described as the “sac casing” in our pictures

Stamen

The stamen is the part of the flower that produces pollen. Generally, there’s a little filament that supports the anther;
You can see the stamen, filament and anther of cannabis in the pictures below.

Anther

The anther is the part of the stamen where the pollen is actually produced;
On the cannabis plant it’s the little pieces that hang when the pollen sac is open.

Note: As we said previously, cannabis is a Dioecy specie, meaning that each plant is either male or female. This is why below you will not see any pistils or any other female parts of a plant.

Image credit to amnh

Cannabis Pollen – Steps of the pollen sacs ripening

Ripe pollen sac

In this picture you can see a pollen sac that has started to open.
The sac casing called the Sepal is starting to open, revealing the stamen at the center.

Open pollen sac

In this picture we’ve aligned, from left to right:

Closed, still forming, pollen sacs
An open pollen sac with the anthers open
Another open pollen sac showing the open sepal (casing). It fully reveals the anthers, allowing the pollen to blow in the wind.

Cannabis pollen released from the anthers

Here we scraped the inside of the anthers (left) in order to release the pollen (right) contained inside.

With just 3 anthers we got a good amount of pollen, just imagine what a full grown adult can release into the air!

Naturally, the male cannabis plant would have release its pollen in the following way:

The opening of the pollen sacs
The anthers drop: Generally here most of the pollen is released onto the leaves below
With the wind, the pollen gets picked up from the leaves and travels, searching for a humid pistil to hook onto.
Once attached to a humid cannabis pistil, fertilization happens, a seed will be born 🙂

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Can a female cannabis plant become male?

The short answer is yes, it is called “herming “, meaning that the female plant starts to develop male part.

As we’ve said earlier, cannabis is a plant that is either male or female (Dioecy specie). In some cases “herming” can happen. This means that a male section has started growing on a female plant, or vice versa.

There are 2 general situations where this can happen. First, the genetic make-up of the seed was a hermaphrodite. Second, the female plant was under stresses during its life that made her turn into a hermie.

It would be hard to give you a full list of stresses that can make a plant become a hermaphrodite, but here’s how we think of it :

The goal of a female plant is reproduce, aka produce seeds.
Stresses in her environment can make her think that she doesn’t have time to wait for pollen to arrive.
In some cases, she will do what she needs to in order to reproduce.
For this reason she can adapt the genetic make-up of certain sections in order to produce pollen and self-pollinate.

Keeping this in mind, what can produce hermaphrodites are stresses that can put her survival at stake.
Here are some of the known ones:

Stresses to cannabis that can produce hermaphrodites

Sudden change in photoperiods: Cannabis times its life cycle around the number of light/dark hours in a day. Sudden changes in the photoperiods can really mess her up, especially interruptions of her night cycle.
Read up on photoperiods and cannabis
Bad climate: Temperatures that are too high, over too long, can definitely kill your plant. This is especially true if there’s little water available. As it’s a life-threatening situation, she can turn into a hermie in order to “auto-pollinate”.
Read up on the best climate for cannabis
Over-flowering: Yes you read right, if you wait too long to harvest she can start herming.
We’re not talking of a couple days here. If your remember right, we’re playing with the fact that the female plant is expecting pollen to reproduce.
If you really wait too long (weeks), she’s going to start “thinking” that pollen will never arrive. Being as awesome as she is, she’ll solve the problem herself by producing the pollen.
Read up on harvesting cannabis
Heavy watering issues: Under-water and over-watering can be very stressful for cannabis. A watering schedule that is totally erratic may stress her in a way that she thinks she won’t be able to fully develop. That may make her rush to produce seeds.
Read up on watering your cannabis babies
Nutrient burn: Soil that is too rich in nutrients is a soil where your plant cannot absorb any nutrients. This nutrient lock-out, if left untreated, can be deadly. As we’ve said previously, a deadly stress can… make her do anything to survive (herming)
Read up on nutrient burn
Pest invasion: A massive pest infestation, like a deadly spidermite attack, can definitely finish off your plants. In this case, and if she has time, she may turn hermi, or directly produce seeds without being fertilized;
If you’re in this case, you’ve got other things on your hands… We’ve had these headaches 101 times, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thermal shock, especially to the root system: Thermal shock happens when exposed to a strong difference in temperatures. For example, if it’s very hot out and you water your plants with very cold water, you can give them thermal shock. Just like with humans.
This is one of the reasons why it’s said that you should not water your plants during the hot hours of the day. During these hours the soil (and roots) are very hot, even room temperature water can be considered as “very cold”..

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What to do with a male cannabis plant?

So what can you do with a male cannabis plant?

This really depends on your goals. The first thing to note is that cannabis pollen has a very strong capacity to pollinate. This means that if you have females around, there’s a good chance that they’re going to get pollinated.
Once pollinated, the flowers will produce seeds instead of fattening up.

With that in mind, the main thing you need to determine is the objective of your grow:

You’re growing to get the best yield possible
In this case, chop chop chop as soon as you’ve identified the male(s). Keep the space and nutrients for your females
You’re growing to learn / discover
Welcome to the club! In this case let them grow a bit 🙂 Honestly we really enjoyed having a male and watch it develop.
In our case, we let the very small males live their full life. They only had one or two pollen sacs.
We also let one larger male, used for the pics here, grow until the first pollen ripened and opened. It was really to see the full development but didn’t want our females to be pollinated. This was definitely playing with fire, but worth it.
Once the first pollen sacs had opened we chopped him down as added him to the mulch.
You want to breed your strains
In this case take good care of you male my friend! We did a full article on breeding cannabis for tips. That said, here you can let them do their thing and watch the magic happen

What to do with my male plants after cutting them down?

Decided to cut down your male plants? Don’t throw out the foliage it’s fuuull of nitrogen and other nutrients!

You can use all the foliage as mulch for your soil but it’s best to use it for other plants. Using cannabis as mulch for cannabis can be a source of diseases.
You can lie it on the ground near your other plants, or straight into your compost.

Same goes for all your other plants, the foliage you remove can lie right on the topsoil. This will create mulch and nurture your soil.

Just keep in mind that you don’t want to lay foliage under the same plant, this can facilitate the diseases.

Are male plants dangerous for my yield?

In short, yes they are! As we’ve said previously, we are using the stress related to the lack of pollen in order to increase the yield.

During the flowering stage, you can see the pistils dry up (turn brown), then new ones grow, which fattens the bud.

This consecutive new growth of pistils is a consequence of the lack of pollination. Once pollinated by a male plant, this process will stop. Your female will be focusing on growing seeds.

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Pollen or trichomes? What is the difference?

Before ending this piece we wanted to go over the difference between trichomes and pollen.
This is a bit of a “plant lover rant” to be honest, but I think at least growers should keep this in mind!

Trichomes

The term “Trichome” itself defines an outgrowth or appendages on plants, algae, lichens or protists.

Source: wikipedia

On marijuana they look like tiny crystals, white powder or little hairs that cover the buds and leaves near them. Once you look closer, you’ll notice that it’s actually thousands of small little bulbs.

Trichomes grow on the female flowers of cannabis, and contain the cannabinoids we consume, like THC, CBD, CBN.

The female cannabis plant uses trichomes to protect her flowers from animals, heat, the wind, etc.

To learn more about trichomes check out our in-depth article

Pollen

The term Pollen is a fine powdery substance, located in the Anther, consisting of microscopic grains discharged from the male part of a flower or from a male cone. Each grain contains a male gamete that can fertilize the female ovule, to which pollen is transported by the wind, insects, or other animals.

Source: wikipedia

Only a male individual has the ability to produce pollen and it is used to pollinate a female individual. It is the equivalent of a spermatozoid in the animal relm.

So with this in mind, be aware every time people talk of cannabis pollen, whether for hash-making, extracts, or whatever, people are speaking of trichomes, since it’s produced by the female plant.

The difference isn’t all that important “in the world”, but botanically the difference is huge. The comparison for humans would be like saying a woman produces sperm.

I think that as a grower you should keep in mind that pollen is produced by the male parts of a plant. Trichomes can be produced by both, but the ones full of cannabinoids that we want, are produced by the female.

Alright folks with that said that’s it for this one!
Hope you found what you were looking for, if not don’t hesitate to reach out 🙂

Until next time, be safe and grow easy

About the author

plant-lover

Plant Lover is Free the Tree's founder and a passionate grower of plants. Mostly from the city, I work on my computer all day so about 4 years ago, on my off time, I started growing to have some more green in my life. I never imagined I would fall in love with botany and discover so much about this plant. Since then I keep learning everyday, meeting new awesome people of our community and which keeps me growing constantly You can always get in touch with me on our Instagram!