what's the difference between male & hermie plants?

I've been growing 2 plants, into my third week of flowering and noticed what appear to be pollen sacks(balls) on one of the plants still nothing on the other. My ? is how can I tell if the plant with the balls was a male plant or a plant that I stessed into a hermie? Also how do I collect pollen and how would I later use it . Last one I have many clones of each plant thats why I want 2 know wheather to keep them or not'

post some pics and i'm sure someone will answer your question right away......it's hard to tell ya w/out pics but it sounds like you have a male there bro......chances are if its a hermie the other 1 in there would be a hermie as well so at least you have that going for ya....1 lady is better`than none....thats for sure!

a hermie plant is a plant that starts female
then due to (too many reasons to explain, stress, light-leeks, strain)

it will force itself to produce both
male/female flowers











^^ what u wanna see nice white pistils female pre-flowers









a male 3 weeks into 12/12

I wouldn't ever assume hermie stress at that stage - very unlikely indeed, though it's not impossible.

As for pollen, as long as the male is isolated from the females, you can just collect it by tapping the flowers gently over some paper to catch it. Then store it in airtight vials in the fridge/freezer until you need it. Then dab it onto your chosen bud with a paintbrush at about four weeks flower (making sure to put a trashbag over the rest of the plant while you do it!).

Then immediately put a freezer bag over the pollenated bud, with a tie, and leave for about four hours (take the trashbag off the plant!) and then carefully remove the freezer bag and spray gently with water to kill any pollen on the leaves.

Et voila - four/five weeks later there should be seeds...hopefullly...

That is some serious pollen.......did you make any crosses from the pollen yet?

I have a feeling he made a cross just taking those photos!

Elevator, what are your favorite 2 seedbank strains?

Did I make some crosses? Oh yeah - there's plenty of data in my sig threads below, the 'Goldfinger' (Malawi Gold x Flo) being the most exciting so far.

As for favourite seedbanks - I have no idea - I've hardly ever bought any seeds! Most of my collection (over a hundred strains easily now, including home-made hybrids) I've acquired via trades or making them myself. I bought a few packs of Seedsman strains, as they were cheap, and by and large, very good. I bought Dutch Passion Flo (awesome - still growing it three years later), and Blueberry, which I killed at the seedling stage by going away for a day and overcooking them!

I'm testing the new DJ Short strains at the moment, and drying some Grape Krush F2s, and given my experiences with all the above, I'd say his seeds were probably the most interesting to my tastes, but my experience is so limited with seed companies I'm probably not the best person to ask...

a hermie plant is a plant that starts female
then due to (too many reasons to explain, stress, light-leeks, strain)

it will force itself to produce both
male/female flowers

Click to expand...

No, this is oncorrect. A hermaphrodite plant is one that has both genders, it is egually male and female, these are fairly rare, and should never be seen in comemrcially bought seed. They are most often seen in landraces, particularly Thai strains due to the farmers bad practices for centuries. Here is a Mexican I had recently that was a true hermie:







It is far more common for plants to express an intersex trait at some point in flower, and this can be at any point in flowering, both males and females do this from time to time and is called a hermie but this is not actually correct, as I said, a hermaphrodite is a plant that is BOTh genders.

Here are some examples of plants with intersex traits, firstly a Blueberry x ZamalHaze that began with just male flowers then began producing female flowers, this may have been a true hermie, but I doubt it, just a fairly extreme case of expressing a recessive intersex trait from the Zamal part of it's parentage:









This Blueberry x Zamalhaze began with just female flowers then a few days later began to produce male flowers, again expressing a recessing trait from the Zamal:









This SSSDH produce a few single stamen male flowers about 12 weeks into a 16 week flowering time, they were infertile and didn't produce any pollen, after producing male flowers for about a week it stopped, so this was a mild, insignificant case of the intersex trait rearing it's ugly head. By comparison, that Mexican ture Hermie spat pollen everywhere just as a male would. You can see a stamen in the centre of the second pic, absolutely covered in trichomes just like the calyxes, and in the third pic a couple of small yellow stamens can be seen at the top right.







Males can express an intersex trait too, this Blueberry male was pure male for many months, then after getting rootbound and heavily stressed he shot out some female pistils on one or two of his branches:







So the intersex trait is not the same as a hermaphrodite, and the intersex trait can crop up at any time and in many different degrees, sometimes plants will not show any signs of an intersex trait when grown without stress, but if stressed will suddenly produce male flowers, there are many examples of seedlines that are touchy and will express an intersex trait if stressed too much.

Elevatorman I thank you, that is exactly what i'm talking about.

British Hempire informative post, nice pics. I doubt many people have seen males throw pistils like in that picture. +rep for you