The History of Herms

[Tipz]

Man! This one is sure to generate lots of opinions,and rightfully so. The subject is Herms and how they have evolved from the time of cannabis castle to ads in the back of hightimes to today.It will take everyone's input to get to the end of it.
I'll try to go back as far as I can and to the best of my recall and there will be plenty of mistakes.

Cannabis castle times..... The only time you ever heard of a herm coming from there or the sssc was from a practical landrace sativa.
Herms we're freaks at the time and were rarely seen, even with the growers on the west coast. I would venture a guess and say Herms accounted for less than 1% of the total population

To be continued

 

[stihgnobevoli]

i'm told by sciency types that the natural state of most flowers is hermaphrodite. male flower and female flower together in one.

 

[Tipz]

Like a lot of you, I ponied up some cash and sent it off to Neville.....after wait wait wait
It arrived Garlic Bud and HashPlant...it was on...Herms were virtually non existent, and rarely even discussed, and when they were even mentioned, it was considered a mutant with no value. The rage was sensimilla and no one wanted seeds after all that first wave of seeded shit from Colombia. It was a time for rainforests and sun circle light movers and pot with no seeds. I like you waited patiently bi monthly for senimilla Tipz......still no Herms of significance

To be continued

 

[Tipz]

The first time I saw any Herms of significance, was the second seed run of SFVog, the strain was pervasive out west. All of a sudden, folks gardens were pollinated,after all the complaints old swerve said he would make it right, he never did after a half hearted effort. The money just got to good, so he kept pumping out the Herms right to SFVog F3. And the public kept sucking them right up, everyone and his brother became a breeder and the trait just kept proliferating

 

[mojave green]

So swerv is the source of all herms huh?

 

[Tipz]

Proliferation exponentiated...more Herms in the genepool, more crosses with genetically involved Herms. More more more....the comes the chemical inducements, wallet protectionism.

 

[Tipz]

So swerv is the source of all herms huh?

U can't possibly be that dense

 

[Tipz]

For every swerve there are ten more just like him, damn the plant, fill the wallet, also let me say the cannabis world is built on the backs of the folks that actually do good work, and there are plenty here. Once never mentioned Herms...... Now it's well if you get one good phenotype it's worth it thinking BS.

 

[betshtick]

For every swerve there are ten more just like him, damn the plant, fill the wallet, also let me say the cannabis world is built on the backs of the folks that actually do good work, and there are plenty here. Once never mentioned Herms...... Now it's well if you get one good phenotype it's worth it thinking BS.

I'm really interested in this topic. Seems even 4-5 years ago hermies were pretty rare for me. In the last 12mos everything I've popped (from a variety of sources) has had herm phenos, except one strain of kush.

There's always a tradeoff. I'm not too surprised that after years of inbreeding and feminizing chasing that monster yielding, 30% THC cash cropper that finishes in 45 days we're left with nothing but flashy names and muddled genetics.

 

[Tipz]

the plant is a tightly integrated web of synergistic interactions. The target effect of chemical manipulation does not arise in isolation from the rest of the plant.
Chemical manipulation changes the morphology,physiology and metabolism, which can affect the way the plant relates to its environment.

ANY statements on targeted chemical manipulation are generally not based upon comparative morphological study, much less compositional assessment of aspects not visible to the eye. These types of statements are not generally made by plant morphologists. Tipz

 

[Tipz]

Let's take a look realistcally at how Herms are propagated, proliferated and distributed by the
F A R M...... the fellow who runs the site is basically a sleazeball. Within the site, the admin has created his own seed vending"..... Divine genetics..... When breeders send their seed in, basically the guy keeps what he thinks is desirable, makes s1s, attaches a 200. Price tag and distributes. He chemically induces predisposed herms distributes them to the public without any regard for the public or the plant. And if he doesn't keep your money, what the hell are u getting??? In thread discussions with OGR, he readily admits to breeding herms and then selling to the public. It's seed people like these that are what's wrong in the seed business today. So u wonder why your garden has hermed?? Go figure

 

[DemonTrich]

since we are on the topic of hermies, im not a breeder, nor do I have any knowledge of how breeding works. my question is, why cant the hermie gene (if its a gene) be sorted out in the breeding process to make a hermie resistant strains? with all the advances in breeding why could it not be possible?

I lost particular plant to hermies (consistently for 5 cycles back to back to....) that was the best plant to help my rheumatoid arthritis. no matter what I tried, I could get the pant to stop throwing nanners at week 6.5 every cycle. it was like clockwork, 6.5 and throwing nanners.

 

[joe2]

I used nothing but bagseed from various bags last summer and had a very high amount of hermies, I had never seen it before and every summer ive always got a few bagseed plants. I saw also some say its a newer thing, or more frequent now then before, I have a newish edition of an older grow book Marijuana growers guide, and theres a couple paragraphs on the topic of hermies in there, id type a couple quotes out of there but it was recently run through the wash.

 

[Betterhaff]

The bag seeds are probably the result of the parent being a herm (or another plant in close proximity). Like begets like.

 

[DrFever]

Simple The introduction of fem seeds have you not noticed since the introduction of Fem seeds the hermie traits took right off let alone nanners

 

[Hrpuffnkush]

Theres different types of Herm's , Genetic and stress induced , Genetic "Monoecious hermaphrodites" is very tough to deal with , Thai's, Hazes , are known to have genetic Hermi's , Stress hermis are different from Genetic in the sense that growing conditions induce the"Hermi Traits" , Its the plants way to insure its survival for next season,, that once the plant gets back to its normal growing regimen and envoirment stress will go away "i.e." male pods or bananas will go away ... female to female S cross are more likely to show Male organs , than a female used from a male female F cross for reversal and making S type seeds , "i.e." solid genetics are much more resistant to stress enduced male organs

 

[luxcultivars]

Theres different types of Herm's , Genetic and stress induced , Genetic "Monoecious hermaphrodites" is very tough to deal with , Thai's, Hazes , are known to have genetic Hermi's , Stress hermis are different from Genetic in the sense that growing conditions induce the"Hermi Traits" , Its the plants way to insure its survival for next season,, that once the plant gets back to its normal growing regimen and envoirment stress will go away "i.e." male pods or bananas will go away ... female to female S cross are more likely to show Male organs, than a female used from a male female F cross for reversal and making S type seeds , "i.e." solid genetics are much more resistant to stress enduced male organs

The reason sexual reversals can perpetuate hermaphroditic traits is because 'breeders' don't take the time to properly weed out the individuals that stress-herm. IOW, they use plants that DO stress herm, which is exactly what you DON'T want to do.

The proper way to create non-hermi-prone femmed seeds is to take the female you want to reverse and stress the hell out of it, via light stress usually. Environmental stress, NOT chemical stress. If no stress bananas form then it is a good breeding candidate. If you do get stress bananas, that is not a good breeding candidate. If a plant stresses environmentally its offspring may have that trait too.

Why are there so many more herms now? Because for years now people have been producing herm-prone genetics by passing along plants from seeds that were the result of an accidental banana pollination in their gardens. Early fem breeders used this stress-herm reaction to create their seeds and a myth was born: that the feminization process itself was what caused herms.

In my own breeding projects over the years I have seen very few herms result after screening potential reversal candidates like this. After I see no herm response in a stressed female I move ahead with an STS treatment to reverse sex chemically. Almost all plants will reverse chemically; if a female doesn't herm from environmental stress they will still reverse with STS, and the resulting offspring will be much less likely to stress-herm; very similar to traditional m/f breeding.

Note that it isn't 100% effective (just as with m/f breeding) because there is always some potential for a hormonal profile that will result in hermi traits being expressed. There isn't just one gene like a switch; genes regulate the entire hormonal response of the plant, which can then result in bananas or herms if the profile is right.

 

[Tipz]

thank you both for your contribution to the thread

 

[luxcultivars]

There are a lot of myths about hermies. Glad to provide input. As was pointed out already, there are distinctly different types of expression that all fall into the category 'hermaphrodite'.

I was talking with some botany-PhD'd folks in a local lab who are exploring and mapping the cannabis gene pool and exploring which genes are involved in hermaphroditic expression. They told me that all hermaphrodites are technically females; that is why offspring will only carry the XX chromosome pair (female) and not XY. I personally find it pretty amazing that an XX (female) can create viable pollen at all.

After looking further into it I found this abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24840848

With dioecious plants like cannabis it's clearly a lot more complicated than just XX/XY. Fascinating stuff.

Full text in pdf format: http://www.ias.ac.in/jgenet/Vol93No1/241.pdf

 

[Elmer Bud]

Herms in the 1930s

Some Herms are males some are females ...

The Sengbusch Classification System is regarded as the definitive guide for selection of true monoecious types. According to this system, following selection, only 2nd or 3rd degree monoecious intersex types remain in the population. The predominantly male (1st degree) anbd predominantly female (4th and 5th degree) types are removed before flowering
Acording to the S.C.S the following monoecious forms exist, all with female traits.
-1st degree 80-90% male flowers
-2nd degree 60-70% male flowers
-3rd degree 40-50%.
-4th 10-30% (only on the primary axis, on a few branches, and one one or two secondary shoots
-5th fewer then 10% male flowers. (easily mistaken for a female type, esthetically if the few male flowers have already fallen off.)
...
A monoecious rate of 99% can be sustained, however dioecious male plants occur at an ever-increasing rate during subsequent generations, even if in the beginning they where not present in the crop population.