Hermie Seeds. Are they worth planting?

[Swamp Thang]

I have a few plants that started out flowering beautifully as females, only to start producing pollen sacs well into the flower cycle. I grow in the 12/12 tropics, just north of the Equator, hence my year-round grow season here.

Well this one plant in my garden did that sneaky gender switch over the course of a couple of weeks when I didn't have time to visit my grow spot, and then pollinated itself, producing a fair amount of seeds.

Generally speaking I try and plant all seeds I produce, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that the seeds from a hermie plant will ONLY produce hermie plants, in which case I would not want to plant them.

My question is whether seeds from self-pollinated hermie plants are capable of growing into normal female and male plants, OR, if they will only grow into hermie plants, as I recall reading in the past.

I have no use for hermie plants, so I will toss out the seeds if the consensus from you experienced growers is that normal plants cannot grow from hermie seeds. Any advice on this question would be much appreciated.

 

[soil margin]

From my understanding hermie seeds CAN produce normal plants but are going to have a much higher rate of mutation/hermaphrodism than what you would see in a normal seed. In my opinion it wouldn't be worth planting unless you were just bored, wanted to experiment and had no other seeds.

 

[Swamp Thang]

Much thanks for the clarification, Soil Margin. I think I'll just go ahead and toss out these seeds, considering the increased odds of producing yet more hermies if I plant them

I must say it was quite a surprise to see a hermie develop so far into the flower cycle, when the buds were really close to ripeness.

 

[soil margin]

Yeah that has always been my observation as well, most strains that I've seen hermie did it within a couple weeks of harvest.

 

[h.h.]

Chances are you'll get another female plant with a few staminate flowers. If it was good the first time, it should be good again.
Next time cross the hermie with a bud on a more stable female and you should get a majority of pistillate (female) plants.

pistillate hermaphrodite pollen-parent is one which has grown as a pure pistillate plant and at the end of the season, or under artificial environmental stress, begins to develop a very few staminate flowers. If pollen from these few staminate flowers forming on a pistillate plant is applied to a pure pistillate seed parent, the resulting F1 generation should be almost all pistillate with only a few pistillate hermaphrodites. This will also be the case if the selected pistillate hermaphrodite pollen source is selfed and bears its own seeds. Remember that a selfed hermaphrodite gives rise to more hermaphrodites, but a selfed pistillate plant that has given rise to a limited number of staminate flowers in response to environmental stresses should give rise to nearly all pistillate offspring.

Clarke, Robert Connell (1981-06-15). Marijuana Botany: An Advanced Study: The Propagation and Breeding of Distinctive Cannabis (Kindle Locations 1517-1522). Ronin Publishing. Kindle Edition.