This is something I’ve wondered about for a while and hopefully someone can explain it for me. If I light stress a plant and it goes herm the seeds are pretty likely to be hermies as well, even if the parent was stable. But plants that are reversed with CS or STS produce feminized seeds.
Why don’t solid females that herm through stress also create feminized seeds? They also lack the Y chromosome, so how does that work?
The way silver (STS/CS) works is a mechanical action that blocks the female flowering hormone. Without the female flowering hormone, the plant produces male flowers. They are not forcing the plant to herm through stress.
Yeah, the CS/STS is a mechanical action to block the female hormone from reaching the bud sites, causing male flowers. Nothing else is changed in the plant.
Herming though is a genetic expression in the plant itself. The enviroment is causing the plants to activate genes that cause the male flowers, so any seeds made from that point forward would have those same hermie genes expressed in them as they’re already expressed in the plant.
So basically the female has the genetic material to make herms but never a true male…makes sense.
Well I guess that explains it then haha, thanks guys!
Actually one more question: would all the seeds from a stress herm end up being hermaphrodite, or would it be theoretically possible for some to be true females as well?
Yes, the intersex tendencies are a sliding scale. They would be more likely to herm under similar stress. Like begets like and all…
Cool good to know, thank you
As ReikoX says if the plants from those hermed caused beanz are stressed they will probably herm also. But if not stressed they should revert to the characteristics of the unstressed plant. The genetics which cause stressed produced herms are still there but just not shown.
Case in point - the Wifi I use was from a stressed caused herm seed. The grower had grown it 2 times with no problems but the 3rd time he inadvertently stressed it alot and it seeded itself. He passed out the beanz with this warning. I grew them out with no problems at all and I always have small stress problems but never big ones. No herms at all on 4 runs so far. But as I said if these are stressed alot I’m sure some of them would herm.
From my understanding, and its a good chance that im incorrect. But, using silver spray to make female seeds with a plant that will herm on its own due to stress will also result in seeds that could likely go hermie. Ive heard many seed makers say they stress test strains before making female seeds and they choose the ones that can handle stress without turning herm.
That’s sweet. I mean alot of legendary strains came from bagseeds and were likely from random bananas in the original grow so it makes sense.
@Grohio for sure. We see so many strains with herm tendencies that were produced by good old male female action these days. I guess if the traits there it’s there 
Peace @Grohio. I believe I read that as well somewhere before. From different ppl at different times so I would say it is a good point.
Be well
Peace
I thought hermi pollen do end up being feminized in general, but with the risk of the offspring also producing hermies. Before the silver treatments, intentionally stressing the plants to hermi was one of the ways of making feminized seeds.
Peace @Seamonkey84. This is true as I recall some years ago ( over 10) hearing that Soma or Sagamatha had used this method( I could be wrong on the names of breeders), but this wasn’t an intentional stressing of the plant. They would run it longer than it is supposed to go and keep doing that until they got mostly female beans. Was a big controversy back then. Such is why many ppl took a long time to come around to fem beans, and many still dont mess with them to this day for this reason as well. This I know… the names may be wrong but yes they did do it… be well
Peace
Stress doesn’t turn plants into hermies, it’s just a dye that labels them.
Silver actually does turn a plant into a hermaphrodite, but it does not change the genes, and when the silver goes away the plant goes back to normal. That’s why it’s impossible for the babies to hermie because of the treatment, because the silver isn’t present in the second generation.
If you find a hermie in feminized seeds, it’s because the parents were hermies.
But there must be stress conditions that could get even the most stable of strains to throw out a bit of pollen…at least I would assume. Would those beans still have herm tendency, and if so would it be a lower percentage than ones that were produced the same way from a more unstable plant?
Ya I think that’s called senescence? Flowering the plant for so long that it throws male flowers. It must be a response to the plant thinking it’s breeding window is closing so it pollinates itself.
If the parent doesn’t hermie under normal stress conditions the babies shouldn’t either. To take it a step further, if you purposefully weed out plants that hermie under normal amounts of stress, your next generation should be progressively safer against random hermies.
A stable plant dies from stress before it hermies, and if a plant survives the stress but shows intersex traits, it probably just needs our help getting into its grave.
If you find a stressor that’s consistently turning stable females into hermies, monetize that shit. Lol.
Yep, to tag along on WF, my understanding is there are plants and strains that will NOT hermie under any stress, they’d sooner die than show intersex. Those are the plants to breed with.
Cool so it’s almost like the trait has to be in there to some degree for hermage to even happen. It would be cool to find a way to easily force intersex with any plant.
Can only reply from personal experience…
A couple grow logs ago the Sweet Lemon BBS I was growing got light stressed and hermied.
The clone of the same plant didn’t hermie at all (meaning it was MY fault).
Now, a later run of the seeds from that plant produced females, went to harvest without problems.
This run I have two more seeds and they are both female and will continue with them thru harvest checking as one must. I check ALL the plants… those low hanging balls can sneak up on ya…
I’ve given a number of these seeds away and warned those folks to watch for the unwanted, but if they go thru to harvest it’s a greasy lemon pledge wonderland…