Let’s talk female anatomy! The botanical flower kind, of course! Too many people throw terms around that are wrong, because it was what they heard elsewhere. It’s confusing to people that are looking at a picture that actually know a bit about the female reproductive organ of a plant. I’ve given undesired information to people asking questions, and have seen other people do as well (though rare, due to the ubiquity of these mistakes in the cannabis community). By being educated, maybe we can provide better support at times
Bract (incorrectly called calyx)
What most people call the calyx, is actually properly called the bract. This is a (usually) green set of specialized leaves that house the female reproductive organs.
Stigma (incorrectly called pistil)
The long hairs that stick out of the bract are not pistils, but stigmas. In actuality the pistil includes the bract, stigmas, and more parts inside the bract. These stigmas are responsible for collecting pollen, and actually have tiny hairs of their own to aid in this process, called stigmatic papillae.
So what is a calyx then? Without getting too technical, the calyx is not very well defined in cannabis, and is very thin, only being just a few cells thick. It can only be seen if you open up the bract. It looks like a thin papery material that covers the ovule, the round part that may eventually get pollinated to become a seed. You cannot see a calyx by looking at a cannabis plant… it must be dissected.
How you gonna gate-keep these terms and not even mention the whole strain/cultivar thing?
This is such an uphill battle IMO, although very informative, I can never knock the proper usage of terminology. I just stick with saying what’s popular so I don’t have to repeatedly over-explain what I’m talking about
“Check out the calyxces and pistils on this strain!!” --I know what you mean
Great info-- but getting all hung-up on correcting how other people ‘talk’ or refer to things, especially if it is the COMMON term that is most-used is a futile battle, and IMHO – there are bigger issues to get hung-up on than pistils, pods, calyx’s etc…especially since ‘calyx’ IS Botanically correct…
Just as people do not use the biological/Latin terms for animals, plants etc…there are always going to be ‘commonly acceptable terms’ !
This is basic high school biology stuff. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was cannabis, maybe it would even be in a text book at that age. I am glad someone applied it to the cannabis plant for easy reference as I haven’t seen that through googling or in research papers.
If we are going to do the strain/cultivar thing can we also make sure variety is used properly too?
I have a deep love for science, but it is a heavy lift to get a once black market crowd to adopt scientific terminology. IMO let it happen naturally, not constantly berating.
Yo @RookieBuds & @Hemlock, I’d love to hear more about the strain/cultivar/variety thing if it would be permissible given the topic (or if there is another thread for it)
Seems like there is good cause for some biology lessons up in this piece
Speaking of which, I got my a$$ handed to me in the TSLS Landrace thread for offering some Maui Wowie, so clarification on these matters could really come in handy haha
Awesome topic! It’s unfortunate that so many prefer to keep the “common” verbage when it’s not accurate. The calyx bract thing especially, as well as “strain”. Sure I know what others mean when they say an incorrect term, but if trying to share in conversation and dialogue I won’t purposefully use the incorrect terms while preferring to use the more proper verbage. So at some point, I think it’s better for the community to level up, so to speak. Hazekamp and Fischedick 2012 advocate for the usage of the term chemovar instead of cultivar whereby plants are identified by their chemical fingerprint rather than a so called whimsical name.
Another one that I think needs attention is the distinction and differentiation between leaf and leaflet. From my observation, when most talk about wide or thin (more accurately called narrow) “leafs” they’re actually trying to describe the leaflets. Cannabis has compound leafs which are made up of leaflets. While compound leafs can be big or small I don’t think the entire compound leaf structure is wide or thin (narrow), I mean, sure, in some contexts of referencing size I suppose big leafs could be considered wide but there are also many narrow leaflet types with very large leafs which could also be considered wide when considering the entire leaf structure from one end to the other.
To me, and I used to say “thin leaf” often myself but have since learned that it’s not very accurate, I now relate thinness and thickness of leafs and/or leaflets to the measurement from the top surface of a leaf to the bottom. From the surface of the adaxial epidermis to the surface of the abaxial epidermis.
Yet another common misusage in the cannabis community is indica and sativa. I used to often say sativa when wanting to describe thin leaflet drug types but have since learned that’s not accurate (Linnaeus 1737, 1753 and 1754; Lamarck 1785; McPartland and Guy 2004; Hillig and Mahlberg 2004; Small 2007; Erkelena and Hazekamp 2014; McPartland 2014; Clarke and Merlin 2013; Russo 2014; McPartland 2017; and many others have elaborated on this).
The botanical flower kind, of course! Too many people throw terms around that are wrong, because it was what they heard elsewhere. It’s confusing to people that are looking at a picture that actually know a bit about the female reproductive organ of a plant. I’ve given undesired information to people asking questions, and have seen other people do as well (though rare, due to the ubiquity of these mistakes in the cannabis community). By being educated, maybe we can provide better support at times 
