If you grow enough Landrace plants you are going to find some Hermaphrodite/ intersex plants, known here after in this thread as Hermies or Herms. Some landraces, like those coming from Southeast Asia in particular, are known for hermies, sometimes in high percentages. I’ve heard of 90-95% in some Thai, for instance. The common practice is to kill all Hermaphrodites out of a fear that the whole crop will be inadvertently pollinated by the herm pollen, giving birth the following generation to more hermie plants. A reasonable fear. But what about the genepool? Is elimination of ( up to)90% of a genepool a good idea? I thought a thread showcasing different kinds of Hermaphrodites would be a good idea for us landrace growers to hone our skills at spotting these unwanted male flowers, and hopefully to stop some unnecessary plant murder😁at the same time. Not all hermies are created equally. There are 4 types I’ve come across.
Type 1) features a plant that sexes as a female (or male, )only to produce opposite sex flowers early in flower, but only on the main stem and/ or on main branches. (Here we are concerned only with those plants sexing as female.) These early male flowers can be removed and typically no more will appear. Sometimes they don’t even contain pollen. You can expect to find this type of male flower rather early in the flower cycle. This type of hermie is easy to deal with.
Type 2) features a plant that sexes as a female. The flower cycle continues regularly until late in flower, the plants start to produce " bananas". Think of a male flower as an orange. Once the peel is removed, you’ll find individually wrapped sections inside. It’s the same with male flowers. A banana is one of these interior sections without a peel protecting it. Some are tiny, some are large. Some plants produce so many bananas they have to be cut down. Others produce just a few. They may or may not have pollen inside them. Most growers have come across this type of plant, and choose to harvest a little early. Any pollination that occurs this late produces small immature seed, unless the plant is cut down past peak potency.
Type 3)features a true intersex plant with both male and female flowers growing together in the same flower from the beginning of the flower cycle, sometimes in equal amounts, sometimes leaning male or female. This type of hermie is always culled, and rightly so. These plants are nearly impossible to grow seedless or anywhere close to seedless. Offspring are just like the parent…a clone if you will.
Type 4) features any plant that doesn’t fit into one of these categories neatly. There’s some crazy ones out there. Too many variations to list.
Let’s fill this thread with photos of the less glamorous side of growing. Photos of the problem children.
Here’s an interesting hermie with all sorts of ways of making male flowers. This one is right out of the Alien movies. The male flower " hatches" out of a female flower
The way I learned to deal with hermies is to do a seed increase using all plants - if all plants hermie, use as is… if the odd plant herms I trim it back but still use it.
Make way too many seeds for base stock.
Then when growing out the next round you can cull at your discretion.
“Only cull once numbers permit it”
Finally… even if a line is 95% intersex… it should be possible to lower that ratio significantly by mating a good breeding pair (tests and more tests)
That’s what I’m doing. Hit the herms with stable male pollen. If they really misbehave, thoroughly pollinate one branch and cut off the others for easier maintainence.
I found this on a male this morning, only 1 pistil on the whole plant. I cut it only because it was just starting to open up and I received some pollen I would rather work with.
Add to the virtually infinite list of expressions representing herms, those that never produce any visible male’s flowers.
I firmly think that it’s an error to mix with herms their sexual expressions and their supposed genetical value.
The simple existence of some stable fems releases that can’t be triggered is the best proof in the cake of this. Of course i’m talking about the best selective works available for this kind of release.
Well, it depends on your breeding program, but usually the f3 generation is when you get some of the recessives lining up and producing ‘localized weirdness’…
I’m a little more ruthless than some when it comes to breeding selections as much as I’ll kill anything that shows signs of herms.
Statistically that will help ‘improve the stock’.
One of the best males i ever found was in a set of twins.Quite late in flower decided to spit pistil hairs like probably 20 hairs to the whole plant and never seeded itself but seeded its twin sister and to this day No herms in the seeds a very big portion are female too.Growing out another set i made from the batch i made and still not a herm to be found yet i even light stressed them and thier still going perfectly normal plants that smoke amazing
Ive been purposely watering the progeny with ice water and light stressing it to hell and back open tent flaps during dark left all the led power indicators on all the fans and power cords you name it i can not get them to herm no matter what i do.
Ive ran about 6 males that i could find slim pickings so far out of the bunch they are so freaking Loud and resinous it’s disgusting Resin glands on the Pollen sacs and not a single pistil hair yet ill pop them as i go ran one till it was dust he was clean.Need to get to more males is the problem can’t believe im having this problem with that batch but If your numbers are right i should sift one out eventually
I have a question regarding herms, if that’s okay. I was growing out some zamaldelica express autos from night owl seeds where I had 2 males and 1 female herm pretty badly but it was type 1 as described by @Upstate. My question is would any seeds made from these males be undesirable to use in any breeding projects or would they be acceptable to use?
Nope. Something I’ve long wondered about. By killing herms, what else are we denying the chance for existence? We could be wiping out scores of cannabinoids.
