@JoeCrowe Challenge accepted. In fact Iāll attempt the biggest image stack yet for this, let me grab a coffee and maybe slip into some 907 Blue Genesā¦
Trichome pics really really need me to get skilled with a true focus stack. The depth of field is SO limited!! Iām working an image now, this one isnāt my favorite by far but you can see the potential here if I can focus-stack a set of this:
@FieldEffect check out the scope pics and btw, the 907 is more blueberry in cure than it was at harvest, which is just incredible to me. Jar opens and I damn near hear the sound of a tin can of blueberries being cracked as a kid.
First attempt at a focus-stacked set. Itās not great but Iām getting the workflow in place. This one has six (6) focus intervals, and took me around 30 mins to capture, work software and export. I clearly bailed before getting the background in focus
What Iām learning here is that trichomes sway in the breeze and move around more than I expected!
Thatās some crazy stuff. Itās frightening how it seems to correctly interpret context and the natural use of language. Some of the data is questionable, but itās believable if you donāt know any better. I donāt believe checking for amber trichomes in weeks 5 or 6 is really necessary. The amber ātraitā is not rare, but appears to be a natural occurrence in many (most?) strains. -And in my experience more amber means more stony less psychedelic or trippy.
I am not sure this statement is correct??
Are you speaking of a non withered trichome?
Are you speaking of clear trichomes with amber liquid inside?
I just want to make sure we are on the same page here.
Im not sure of the differentiation youāre making there. Every strain Iāve ever grown eventually had clear trichomes turn cloudy and then amber. If you are refereing to a natural yellow color trichome that is immature, thatās a unique experience I do not share.
In fact I am, they may be reddish in color too.
But yes, immature not withered.
I believe this is where the myth of using amber/withered trichomes as a gauge for when to harvest comes from.
I feel we are making a mistake when we harvest with 80% withered trichomes.
I feel too much of the THC is being converted to CBN and CBD ect. if we let too many trichomes wither before we harvest.
I get a ton of backlash when I say this, I expect some more too, but I really believe it to be true.
To me a withered trichome is a trichome that is harvested too late, unless you do this with the purpose of obtaining another type of canabinoid.
As @JoeCrowe has stated, anecdotally anyhow, that a plant taken half way finished still should have large amounts of THC in its trichome heads.
heh heh here Iāll expand on that story because it was a radical one.
That immature batch of hash I made, was the one I sent to the compassion club to get my foot in the door. It was so good the owner of the club was waiting for my call to say he wanted it on the product list. It was sooo long ago but I think it clocked in at 75%.
It does! Those look pretty uniform and un-withered. It seems like some of the āpurpleā strains Iāve read about that are purplish as soon as they start to matureā¦
That whole purple color moving up the stalk is a whole nother rabbit holeā¦
It seem to take forever to get to the head most times.
And sometimes it seems like it will never get thereā¦WTF.
Folks tell me it is only color/anthocyanin, but I ask why is it going to the trich head.
If it got there early it could be for protection, but it gets there so dam late what purpose would it serve?
This is for the purple reference, but just so happens to have amber too.
From the link someone provided above.
Pretty sure the anthocyanin always remains encapsulated within the hypodermal cells and doesnāt get injected into the trichome. It is the scenecence of the secretory vesicles which bring on amberingā¦whether from cannabinoid and terpenoid component oxidation or another as of yet undefined mechanism which seems to be not yet be fully understood. Pics of the different stages of trichome cuticle degradation, which exposes brain-like wrinkling, may show dried oil but then again may just be exposing the dead underlying secretory vesicles.
Trichomes never went amber nor cloudy within a healthy gland, all the way through 72 days of flower at 12/12, final harvest was middle of week 10. Iād have taken it further but the top colas inspected were looking to me to be mature if not past that stage. All stigmas/pistils (which is correct?) were brown and curled up/dry. The plant was going fairly purple in appearance. The smoke from colas harvested 2 weeks prior are strong! All leading me to decide to harvest the rest.
I saw increased bursting/leaking of trichomes start around week 9, and I was also surprised to see that what looked intact at the zoom level @JoeCrowe is posting, when zoomed in to really inspect the trichome gland, you can see little areas of imperfection. Joe can you zoom further in and/or adjust your lighting to come from a different angle?
Trichome lifecycle on this particular plant went from clear and perfectly smooth, to clear interior with a frosted glass wrinkly cuticle, to bursting and leaking, to browning of the remaining resin.
Any amber I saw was related to obvious degradation/senescence - this surprised me and I think it must be related to this specific plant/phenotype.
I have grown many plants that went very yellow/amber much earlier and within healthy trichome glands. The LSD pheno I have/had was irregular in this way where, again the glands remained clear and the cuticle itself is what went ācloudyā by wrinkling and becoming less taught, like a deflated balloon.
Those are archived photos, I whipped them up on 3/18/2021. I have about 821 photos! Currently I only have big bud and PCK in bloom, and those photos are of meat breath. They cover the spread from bloom day 2 through bloom day 71. I have a really good phase contrast one, lemme find it.
My old hHerojuana had red trichomes and made a deep red oil when extracted so I do understand that there is some coloration coming from somewhere, at least for some strains-- as the majority of hash and oil is clear or tan and not red, but anthocyanins are water soluble so they donāt mix with the oils nor do they leak into the waxy cuticleā¦and I have not seen convincing pictures which definitively prove otherwise.
What I see most is that clear trichome heads, when pictured clearly in focus, act as a magnifying lenses and reflect+magnify the purple coloration from the stipe and secretory cells but do not contain any pigmentation in the oils contained in the trichome"s cap. These pics show āpurpleā trichomes but when observed closely show clear oil on top of a purple substrate layer.
I can get down with that! I donāt have definitive pictures to share on that one, but up close itās amazing how much the trichome heads reflect the other structures and pigments.
Unrelated, hereās a pic of random mixed dry sift from the bottom of my trim bin:
Those spheres are colored carbohydrates inside the trichome cap. It requires a special mutation to the plant, in order for the color to form like that. Usually you canāt see the carbs, as they are clear. Sorry the scale is off by 10X where it says 10microns it should say 100.
