Male Cannabis, What is it and How is it Grown?
When talking about marijuana all eyes are on the female, however, there are many interesting stories in the male marijuana. In today’s content you will learn all about male Cannabis plants, what it is, how it is grown, the benefits it has, what they look like and many other mind-blowing peculiarities. Did you know that the greatest Cannabis experts would give gold for some males and nothing for females? Here I tell you all about it!
Cannabis is a plant with thousands of uses for generations, industrial, food, therapeutic and recreational are the most important, although in Fukushima they use cannabis plants to eliminate the radiation left by the nuclear power plant when it exploded!
What is Male Cannabis?
Male Cannabis is one of the two sexes of the Cannabis Sativa species, specifically in those specimens with XY chromosomes. Chromosomes are highly organized structures, formed by DNA and proteins, which contain most of the genetic information of a living being. Chromosomes also define the sex of the plant. When a marijuana plant has XY chromosomes, it is male, while plants with XX chromosomes are female.
Male marijuana differs from female marijuana in many ways, the best known being that it does not produce seeds and that it contains a negligible amount of cannabinoids, the compounds that give cannabis some of its most sought-after properties. Some of the most common cannabinoids in marijuana are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), but male marijuana can barely produce them.
How many genders does marijuana have?
Marijuana has 2 genders, male and female, although it also has the mixture of both, which is known as hermaphrodite. The male marijuana is characterized by producing a great quantity of male flowers, which contain the necessary pollen grains for the pollination of the female flowers. These male flowers do not produce any resin, so they are not useful for the production of cannabinoid marijuana.
The female marijuana, on the other hand, produces a large quantity of female flowers, which contain the trichomes necessary for the production of resin. These female flowers are the ones used for the production of marijuana with cannabinoids, the most desired by the amateurs.
Hermaphrodite cannabis, on the other hand, is a plant that produces male and female flowers, which makes it not very useful for almost any use, since it does not have the amount of cannabinoids of the female and its pollen or seeds usually give more hermaphrodite plants, making reproduction unfeasible.
Differences between Male and Female Marijuana
As we have already told you, the main difference between male marijuana and female marijuana is that the former does not produce seeds. This is important for marijuana growers, as seeds can interfere with the yield and quality of cannabis buds. If the plant invests energy in producing seeds, it does not invest it in producing resin with cannabinoids.
But, as we have also told you, male marijuana hardly or not produces resin and cannabinoids, so if you thought that the best way to produce good resin would be to plant males, well, not really.
In the case of wanting to have marijuana with resin, what has been done for many years is to grow only female plants, and this is achieved with feminized seeds. Feminized seeds only produce female plants, so there are no males to pollinate them, so they invest all their energy in producing flowers with resin full of cannabinoids and not seeds.
On the other hand, male marijuana does not give resin, does not give seeds, is not so beautiful, but it gives pollen, and pollen has a very valuable use that we will tell you about later!
Finally, it should be noted that the male marijuana plant is more resistant to diseases and pests than the female.
What does male marijuana look like?
Externally, male marijuana is characterized by its shape, it lacks flowers and female reproductive organs, calyx and pistils, and presents male reproductive organs and clusters.
The differences between a female and a male marijuana plant are notorious, since it is one of the few plants in which the differences in the external structure are visible to identify the sexes. Unlike other plants, in which it is necessary to resort to DNA identification to determine the sex, marijuana can be identified with the naked eye. We offer you an image showing a male and a female plant. Click on the link below to learn all the differences and be able to determine the sex of the plant, even when it is not obvious.
How to grow Male Cannabis?
Growing male marijuana is similar to growing female marijuana. However, there are a few details that growers should keep in mind to get the best results. The first step in growing male marijuana is to select a suitable strain.
The strain has to be of the “Regular” type, as this is the name of the seeds sold in their natural form, which gives males and females almost equally. Buying feminized seeds will not lead to male plants, only females. And I confirm that there is no way to plant seeds that are 100% male, or what would be, and I invent the word, malinized. Then, it is important to choose a bank of high quality, because it will be vital for the viability and the result to be as expected.
In this page we offer you a lot of articles with all the theory about marijuana growing.
Benefits of Male Cannabis
Very few people know the benefits that the male marijuana plant can give, but some of them are of absolute vital importance, and I am certainly sure that they will surprise you.
For its cleansing and regenerating properties
As I let you know at the beginning of the article, the Cannabis plant is the best for cleaning both the soil and the air. The male marijuana plant offers its advantages to the soil thanks to its root systems, which aerate the soil and provide it with porosity. They also absorb radiation, heavy metals and toxic substances. Once absorbed, when the plant matures, they can be burned and disappear completely.
They can also make an optimized fallow of the land, in a rotational crop of this type, nourish and fertilize the land, leaving it ready for further agricultural use.
When it comes to cleaning the air, male marijuana also plays a very relevant role, many studies and field applications have awarded the Cannabis Sativa species as the queen of terrestrial plant species in air regeneration.
For traditional or industrial uses
Industrial hemp crops intended for fiber production are mostly composed of male plants due to their greater flexibility, resistance to twisting, thinness and sophistication. These plants are also used to produce fine garments such as bedding, underwear or scarves. Some male plants have a high content of cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound with medicinal properties. For this reason, many growers prefer male marijuana for this purpose.
Properties against pests
For many years, the dried plant matter of marijuana, both leaves and flowers, has been used as a natural repellent and pesticide for vegetable crops. In addition, planted at home, male marijuana can be used as an effective mosquito or other vermin repellent, although be careful that there are no female plants nearby, as they may pollinate them.
Preservation of the species
It is essential to have male marijuana for the production of more plants. Although clones can be made and have the same plants for many years, after many generations of cloned plants, they gradually weaken over time, so it is necessary to produce new ones using seeds, so that they become vigorous again in a natural way.
As a carrier of the most valuable genes
And we come to the secret jewel of the male marijuana plant, here we tell you the reason why this sex of marijuana is desired by the most experts, those professional growers called Breeders, who are the ones who create and put on the market all the new strains of cannabis.
Breeders give gold for some males because they carry almost the entire genetic load of the cannabis plant, it is not the female that passes most of the information from one generation to the next, instead, it is the male marijuana that does it. He is the stud of cannabis and for his pollen they pay millions!
If you liked this content about what is male marijuana and how to grow it, please follow us on social networks and on our mailing list, we are very grateful to know that you are there! To continue reading we recommend you Bottom-Watering, How to water cannabis from below?
If a marijuana plant is male it will produce pollen instead of flowers, this pollen will travel through the air to female marijuana plants and will fertilize them, causing them to produce seeds, which will be the offspring of both plants.
If you smoke a male plant you will not have the psychoactive effects of marijuana, this is because the male cannabis hardly produces resin with cannabinoids, therefore, it is not able to produce any effect. Neither do they produce hardly any terpenes, so the aroma will be just grass.
The male marijuana plant can be used to pollinate (fertilize) female marijuana plants, thus producing seeds.
To know if a plant has become male, the tops of the branches should be observed. If clusters appear that grow downwards and eventually release a powder, it is a plant that has become male.
What happens if a marijuana plant is male?
What happens if you smoke a male plant?
What can be adone with the male marijuana plant?
How do I know if my plant turned male?
References:
- Chromosomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome
- Fukushima floor cleaning: https://www.liberation.fr/terre/2011/04/22/faut-il-planter-du-cannabis-autour-de-la-centrale-de-fukushima_730959/
- Cleaning the air with cannabis: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00844
- Image: Ravenhurst~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public Domai.
- Image: By H. Zell, Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link