The History of Herms

[genedigger]

ive noticed pollen that is not viable coming from hermies.if it pollinates another female plant no seeds grow.ive seen this happen alot.

 

[luxcultivars]

Herms in the 1930s

Some Herms are males some are females ...

Interesting! The plot thickens.

I'm not sure what has led the lab I met with to conclude anything regarding cannabis hermaphroditism. They have a few statements on their web site that seem... less than correct? Such as the first sentence regarding seeded females producing 'less medically useful cannabinoids' (huh? I've always thought even seeded females produce full potency, no?) I don't tend to see many seeded flowers so maybe I'm wrong on that one, but I thought that this was a myth.

But they are the credentialed ones with the lab, not me. I'm sure peer-reviewed research will sort it out in the coming years, though. http://phylosbioscience.com/research/#genetics-of-sex-determination

And yes, some females do reverse but produce sterile or nearly-sterile pollen. I've run across that a couple times. It seems fairly rare. Late-term stress bananas are also sometimes sterile; I have a strawberry rhino like this. No seeds, just a ton of bananas to pick off the blooms; the trimmers hate that strain.

 

[Tipz]

Would it be the plants energy is focused on seed production. Practical experience should provide the answer here. Have growers here noticed a reduction of potency in seed plants?
Less medically useful = less potency, may not be as off the mark as thought.

 

[DemonTrich]

ive had a hermies female plant spew its pollen over other plants and those plant hermied as well.

recently a strawberry and cream plant (from fem seed), threw both seeds and nanners. and pollinated the Sc plant nest to her, and 2 gorilla glues below her. subsequently I killed off both SCs that showed signs of being issues, and cut the lower branches off my glues that were compromised. I haven't seen another nanner or seed in over a week. so im hoping I caught everything.

 

[symbiote420]

Would it be the plants energy is focused on seed production. Practical experience should provide the answer here. Have growers here noticed a reduction of potency in seed plants?
Less medically useful = less potency, may not be as off the mark as thought.

Great thread start homie! To answer that I've never noticed a decrease in potency with seeded buds and I'm always chucking something, the buds I've deseeded smoke just as good as the same cut grown for sinsemilla.

What a coincidence I was just talking about some of OGR's breeding practices in a thread.... you always get one of those diehard jump in front of the bullet Secret Service keyboard ninja types coming to the breeder's defense like they were there to help him with all his projects derailing the thread with pre school-ish name calling.... I'm glad he erased his post. We just live in a world where peeps don't stand for something anymore, I remember when breeders were ran off if herms were reported now they are treated like rockstars & celebs just because peeps are able to find one good pheno outta 15 - 20 beans. The reason I believe herms are on the rise more these days is because proper selections is becoming a lost art form plus everybody and they're mama wanna be a breeder making big $$$$$. It's now a culture of mesh this potent clone with that potent clone or mesh popular strain A with popular strain B. No real selection and the sheeple are eating it up!!!

 

[genedigger]

my pops grew seeds out back in the 70s and he got hermies from bagseed bud back then.i dont believe this is some new phenomenon.

 

[genedigger]

im gonna talk to him later an see what the ratio was back then.i remember him saying he got buds that had male and female parts in the bag.he was on the eastcoast so it prob wasnt homegrown.

 

[mojave green]

Maybe just more inexperienced growers around inducing hermies from stressing their plants. i see a lot of climate control issues amongst modern growers. follow the grow room design thread. How much can I yield with these 15kw lights I bought? What? I need to climate control my room? Bah, no time for that, I got to get these lights up! Not that I'm impressed with the modern breeders either.

 

[DemonTrich]

im an experienced grower. I have my room(s) dialed in perfectly. I have no plant issues, either nute or bug. I harvest +1g/w every single harvest. and I lost my most important strain due to it throwing nanners. after 5 continuous cycles of trying everything I can think of and other growers suggestions, I finally killed the he/she off.

now my new seed pack (I wont mention the breeder), 2 plants out of the 4 that germinated (one seed was a dud) were he/shes, seeds and nanners. another grower on here with the SAME exact strain, popped the SAME time, our plants were 1 day apart from throwing seeds and nanners.

 

[Betterhaff]

my pops grew seeds out back in the 70s and he got hermies from bagseed bud back then.i dont believe this is some new phenomenon.

A lot of the old imports were coming from hermie stock, full of seeds. Not a surprise those seeds would produce more hermies. Probably not until the advent of domestic growing and sesnsimilla was there much of a concern about them, especially in mj producing countries. Hell, they probably liked seeded bud because it added to the weight.

 

[sprinkl]

Imports were probably male/female plants grown together as well, though I'm sure there is a significant % of herms in most landraces. It was then bred out but with bad breeding practices the % increases again. If you breed with a seed found in a bud you should at least do thorough stress testing to keep the % down.

 

[ahortator]

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.

I am not agree with Mr. Sengbusch. I have read the same thing by Ivan Bocsa.

IB: The natural state in which hemp appears was and is dioecious. Monoeciousness is artificial in hemp, it can only exist with the help of man, and without selection, the dioecious state will return in two or three generations. It is therefore very hard and demanding to keep 90 to 95 % monoeciousness during seed multiplications.
http://www.internationalhempassociation.org/jiha/iha01215.html

I think they kept in mind they would have male pollen from other fields or wild or feral hemp. I think you need some male pollen in order to get some males, and in subsequent generations as males do better their job than hermies, they spread the dioecious trait into the monoecious population.

I have been growing a landrace saved from the seeds of one only hermie plant, and I have never seen a male since 2009 in the line.

I can be wrong, but I think when farmers and growers grow sinsemilla (seedless), unconciously they select the intersexual trait. After all if farmers chop all the males the only plants that can make seeds (selfing or pollinating the true females) are the intersexuals.

Greetings.

 

[kopite]

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

Thanks for linking that paper, will have to read all 37 pages now here's one that you may find interesting,

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.12364/pdf

 

[stoned-trout]

I don't mess with intersexual plants or people...I kill the plants,,cant kill the people....yeehaw.. I don't consider a late flowering plant that gets a few bannanas a herm really as it happens a lot more than everyone thinks..you just don't notice ....

 

[genedigger]

ive seen almost every strain ive ever grown throw male flowers if its been flowering along time.thats the plants last ditch effort to try and reproduce seeing as thats what a plant wants to do is make babies.i guess letting it flower to long is a form of stress so it makes sense that they all could have this trait.

 

[Psyco G]

There are so many types of herm.

Some have males and female preflowers but grow up to be fine and female.

Some have nanners pop out early flower, some late

Some come out through stress others are genetic

Some nanners come out in the main cola, some on the bottom of the plant and on others everywhere.

Some don't produce pollen

Some produce pollen but no seeds, some produce pollen make seeds but they ain't viable.

I once had a mango girl I sprouted from seed she gave off many generations of clones for a few years, then one day every clone we took from her hermied. Dunno why she was good before and many people had the cuts and they were fine, then one time everyone's and mine all hermed. It wasn't user error for sure.

I used to have a dedicated spot for bag seed and had loads of herms.

Since I've grown organically I have never had one. Which is strange. I swear we have herms due to stress of being grown indoors, under lights. Even the outdoor herms must be used to be grown indoors then put outside it must stress them. That is my theory it's proberly wrong

 

[harry74]

Some have males and female preflowers but grow up to be fine and female


I´m growing a home made cross and..


Tinny male flower. 1 internode above...

Female flowers, In the other side there are another 2.

Is the only male flower I´ve seen so far.
I´ll wait a bit.

Blue Glo

 

[KiefSweat]

the British report on ganja growing in India from the late 1800s or early 1900s talks about how there was a dude who's job it was to go to all the fields and cull the males, they left the herm plants to collect some seed from.

 

[sprinkl]

So how do you explain males from S1 seed that produce normal male/female offspring?

To me, it would make the most sense if cannabis is effectively monoecious, having XY chromosomes and both parts. Plants could be 50/50 or more towards one side depending on a few genes. When plants are 100/0 it would make a true male or female. Breeding with such plants would ensure mostly herma free male/female progeny while breeding with sensitive plants would tip the balance back towards 50/50 eventually.
It could still mean true males are XX and most males are XY but with strong male expression.

It would explain why I get on average 1 seed in about 1 oz of outdoor grown weed from femaleseeds. Must be a really tiny banana else I'd get way more seeds?

 

[harry74]

In fact they did grow some of those seeds in Temperate House, Kew Gardens-London. The biggest Victorian GlassHouse at the time, heating on the floor included.

The Brits have been always fond of gardening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens