What is the Technical Term for 'Puffy Leaf Syndrome' from excess calcium in flower?

[Douglas.Curtis]

Hey all,

I am hoping the term is something well known and I simply missed it. When using excess calcium in flower, I get plants with thicker/puffier leaves. While this looks awesome, the end result is excess plant material under the same number of trichomes. Since terpenes and cannabinoids are not formed within the leaves and flowers, I have zero desire to increase their size by just cell size.

Is there a technical/scientific term for this 'enlarged plant cells' condition?

Thanks so much!

 

[Storm Shadow]

Leafus Maximus

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

LOL! Cute

It may also be tied to C3 absorption from excess CO2... from some initial reading I came across. I don't run elevated levels of CO2, so I'm not sure how much it applies.

Edit: So I don't measure CO2 levels, but the grows were all in living quarters. I would expect a minimum of 700ppm CO2 (likely much more), which I'm thinking would meet the elevated CO2 levels.

 

[Mantos]

Gum soak. Hard leaf. Ridged leaf. Vascular rearrangement. Hypercalcemia? Toxocalsmosis? Micronutrient deficiency? Lime injury? A breakdown of the conduction tissues with a concomitant reduction in translocation of photosynthetic lipids and sugars.

You've altered the transcriptome and lipid profile of the plant to something unrecognizable at this point. "Genetic drift". An entire generation of growers have only seen the phenotypes of excess calcium. It's why my blueberry is sour and skunky and someone else's smells like vanilla soap. Unmetabolized Calcium is the #1 cause of boof in America. The reason some people's OG Kush reverts to "earthy", looses the sour aspect. Makes GG4 smell like stale coco puffs instead of dank chocolate sour kerosene, etc.

 

[exploziv]

Since we are here, how do we avoid it? How much Ca is enaugh?

 

[f-e]

Do you mean a bit like N toxicity, but not dark green?

Quite a few things can cause that over achieving puffy downward cupping.

I don't believe this morphing has a different name for different causes. I'm not even sure it has a name.

We could call it shirley?

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

A healthy leaf?

 

[dramamine]

Gum soak. Hard leaf. Ridged leaf. Vascular rearrangement. Hypercalcemia? Toxocalsmosis? Micronutrient deficiency? Lime injury? A breakdown of the conduction tissues with a concomitant reduction in translocation of photosynthetic lipids and sugars.

You've altered the transcriptome and lipid profile of the plant to something unrecognizable at this point. "Genetic drift". An entire generation of growers have only seen the phenotypes of excess calcium. It's why my blueberry is sour and skunky and someone else's smells like vanilla soap. Unmetabolized Calcium is the #1 cause of boof in America. The reason some people's OG Kush reverts to "earthy", looses the sour aspect. Makes GG4 smell like stale coco puffs instead of dank chocolate sour kerosene, etc.

How many ppm of elemental calcium are you running?

 

[unregistered190]

How many ppm of elemental calcium are you running?

same question I have

I used to add cal-magic with every feed and I also used to run higher EC until I convinced myself that’s why my end product doesn’t taste as well or have the aroma I think it should.

So now I really have scaled back on EC to 1.0-1.2 and cal-magic at small dosage once a week but got deficiency in a couple plants.

Gotta find a happy medium….what ppm calcium do you shoot for?

Good topic, thanks for bringing it up.

 

[Three Berries]

I have one in flower now that was raised on excessive Ca. No puffy leaves. They margins are burnt and then lockout of what looks like nitrogen as the upper leaves tuned yellow, consuming themselves? Been on water for three weeks and the yellowing is getting worse. Near the end though with some amber trics coming on.

 

[f-e]

Regarding Ca levels, I can run 100ppm until the end of stretch. Then my Runoff goes up and I get N like cupping in the new growth, only it's not dark green.
My PPM's won't reflect other peoples though. I'm in small pot's going wet/dry a few times a day.
If I drop the Ca, no cupping, no excesive EC rise, no major K blocking. My big thread about my problems is boiling down to not reducing Ca, and coco chemistry. I have clawed back over half my losses, and I'm still on that same path

 

[dramamine]

same question I have

I used to add cal-magic with every feed and I also used to run higher EC until I convinced myself that’s why my end product doesn’t taste as well or have the aroma I think it should.

So now I really have scaled back on EC to 1.0-1.2 and cal-magic at small dosage once a week but got deficiency in a couple plants.

Gotta find a happy medium….what ppm calcium do you shoot for?

Good topic, thanks for bringing it up.

For a while now I've been feeding 150 in veg, 130 in flower. I'm in coco in a sealed room with CO2 at 850 ppm so my total EC is about 1.7-1.8. I'm always trying to see how much K I can run without blocking Ca, and vice-versa. Been scaling back the EC slightly again to see if I really need to feed that high.

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

Resin and terpenes are made on any available plant surface near a flower, be it calyx or leaf..It is all about everything being there in sufficient PPm's AND everything being there in correct ratios and proportions..and theres more...and more...One does not need a hundred bottles to achieve this..My product on the shelves is a 3 part and silica...It'd be a one part if the components didnt react with each other when they were concentrated. The facts of the matter are that once you have it all worked out, a balanced diet with everything in there in correct proportions and sufficient PPM's, Ganja is happy and will perform, if you want to tweak it for different growth stages there only needs to be upping or lowering proportions of things by about 20% for max effect, and one can flower a plant to be amazing, fat, as dense as genetics allow and as much resin as genetics allow, with fat thick healthy disease resistant foliage ( I try aim for thick leaves, I select for it too)...and it will all be dripping with resin and terps if the genetics allows so. I also feed lightly, which is relative..at abouts 1.6 to 2.0 EC closer to 1.6 mostly, daily logging medium EC's and adjusting as plant eats more or less, steering EC down if it is rising or up if it is dropping, until flush which a long flush is not needed if one has been keeping things in a happy range the whole time soil EC wise. This steering was taught to me in commercial vegetable hydroponics drip feed in pine sawdust bags 20 years ago by old timer vegetable farmers, its nothing new and nothing fancy is needed. Anyway..

Pic below, illustrates the above..Resin weighs a lot more than leaf or plant material..we used to use this with a canning jar or gumby method to make bubble hash before bubblebags were available here..plant floats, resin sinks. So..One can't get a bud of the size below, and mass, without it being dense as F and half resin and half green stuff..Ca was high throughout as this was flowered on a standard balanced formula I run my veg on or moms on when there is a period without high clone demand. I had so many areas flowering in peak of summer and only so many recipes allowed on the watering system so this was flowered out on a standard high Ca high K, low N veg formula..and its somewhere between the density of quartz, and diamond..LOL.but also as I was saying in the thread on how to increase frost, genetics plays a huge part, and then environment, of which diet and root zone parameters etc are a part..This was not the only nug like this and being never wanting for any nutrient in its whole life and being in the right environment and having the genetic potential, it is also very fragrant..there was a whole greenhouse of them. Light plays a huge part, I was measuring well over 2000ppfd of nice soft diffused light in the middle of the day as this whole lot was setting bud at 3-4 weeks..No real climate control in those low tech areas, humidity and temperature had huge swings. One has to work with what one has.

Proof is in the pudding.

 

[Cvh]

D.C. would it maybe be possible to a post a picture about the issue? And maybe one of a leaf that isn't affected as a comparison?

It's for me the first time I hear about this.

Thanks

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

I've realized now my growing environment was likely high CO2 at the time, being in small living quarters with several people. As I stated in the "Growing Different Strains Together" thread, this effect is more likely tied to both high CO2 and elevated calcium.

As for how much calcium I was using, I have no way of determining as I have no concrete measurements to fall back on. All I know is I was using several ml of KNF water soluble calcium per gallon, and no measurement of the KNF water soluble calcium strength. I cut back to about half of what I started with and everything was back to normal. Healthy, but a normal leaf thickness.

Let me see what I can find in my photo archives, but be prepared for it to take a few days due to my current schedule... I'm hoping I took some photos. Ugh. lol

 

[Three Berries]

I had droopy wide puffy leaves one time in . I think it was too much water and heat as it was at the end of the day. And high CO2, 3k or so.

 

[Brother Nature]

What do you mean by puffy leaves? Is that like when you get those thick/heavy leaves, like succulent plants, rather than the light/paper thin kind of leaf? e.g. more water retention in the leaf than it can use?

If that's what you're speaking of, it's called Oedema, I've not come across it's causation being high calcium levels though, but I've also not researched too much into it.

 

[f-e]

Puffy Leaves

Maybe a bit limp towards the extremities?

 

[Mantos]

Puffy Leaves

Maybe a bit limp towards the extremities?

Is the brain an extremity? The technical term is fluffy, not puffy.

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

As it slowly slides downhill...Picture worth a thousand words.