Does stress cause hermies?????

[Budley Doright]

Im sure most would say either yes or prabably....


Ive seen lots of folks start some seeds get some hermies and come up with all sorts of sources of stress to cause their hermie problem....

Here is my question on hermies and stress....


Ive grown for a long time and seen most of the stuff people post about here....


Twins.... 3 cotyledons... male to female reversals.... lots of stuff.....



But here is something Ive not seen but Im sure it happens once in a while.....


Does stress cause hermies????

If it does then I would expect clones which were free of male flowers turn to hermie after the first grow or two....



In other words a plant which gets male flowers after it had been clearly free of those male flowers for more than a grow......


IOW from my experience if a seed plant is 100% female it will be female thereafter....


if during the first flowering it is hermie....it will always be hermaphroditic.....


I asked this question when I was a mentor on overgrow......


While Ive seen all kinds of threads here and elsewhere one thing I have not seen is a thread like this.....




To experienced growers.... I have had this fabulous plant for several grows.....
during that time it has never had male flowers....
now all of a sudden after 4 flowerings there they are.....
Can I take a cutting from where there are no male flowers and it be 100% female again????



Or something along those lines.....



So if stress really causes hermies we should have stories of seed plant both normal and feminized which turn not in the first flowering but later in life.....


Lets hear your stories....



Does stress cause hermies???



Or are hermies born not made??????



I put this thread in this section because I feel that hydro guys are probably the most knowledgeable growers not that this is a hydro issue.......

 

[Budley Doright]

Stress can cause hermies, light stress for sure. Some are breed that way. Just look at the vendors. Some you will always get hermi plants from their seeds, others you never will.

Its the difference between shit breeders and good ones in my personal opinion!

Thats not what I asked.....


Im asking for personal experience with plants that had no male flowers the first cycle flower or two but put male flowers on later....

From my experience....


if a plant is hermie it will be hermi the first flowering....


Im not interested in that type hermie in this thread.......



I would be extra interested in those who have grown feminized plants and had no male flowers....


yet turned hermie some months or years later.....

 

[High Country]

I have stressed my strain with the following.

1. Lack of water
2. To much water.
3. Changes in light schedule.
4. Changes in temps.
5. pH all over the place.
6. EC levels all over the place.
7. Spider mites and other bugs.
8. General lack of care.

The only time it showed male sex was when colloidal silver was applied to reverse a female and subsequently produce feminised seed.

It has never hermied.

BUT THIS IS WHAT COLLOIDAL SILVER DID TO A FEMALE PLANT

MY STRAIN...HIGH COUNTRY INDICA.

 

[Budley Doright]

I have stressed my strain with the following.

1. Lack of water
2. To much water.
3. Changes in light schedule.
4. Changes in temps.
5. pH all over the place.
6. EC levels all over the place.
7. Spider mites and other bugs.
8. General lack of care.

The only time it showed male sex was when colloidal silver was applied to reverse a female and subsequently produce feminised seed.

It has never hermied.

BUT THIS IS WHAT COLLOIDAL SILVER DID TO A FEMALE PLANT

MY STRAIN...HIGH COUNTRY INDICA.

Thats pretty much the point of this thread.....


Ive heard many folks especially breeders who blame hermies on stress...whatever that is....


Think about it....if stress actually made hermies it would happen in subsequent grows.....


IME the stress thing is just a grower or breeders wivestale.......



Im sure that stress could cause male flowers.... it might happen now and then....


but not enougjh to suggest it had something to do with stress....what ever that is????


So bring us your stories.... can we prove or disprove this stoner fact???? lol....

 

[grassott]

I've never had a hermie so I don't know, but does light leaks cause hermies? Now and again I check temps and RH when it's the dark period. I do this very occasionally on my flower and my veggy garden. Ain't never had a hermie yet.

 

[Budley Doright]

IME....only in the first flowering.....wink wink wink....


Honestly Im very careless about light leaks and if they caused hermies I should be able to say so.....


But I cant......



I dont think light leaks cause hermies either......

This goes back to the premise....



If light leaks caused hermies it would cause them in later flowering cycles.......

 

[High Country]

I've never had a hermie so I don't know, but does light leaks cause hermies? Now and again I check temps and RH when it's the dark period. I do this very occasionally on my flower and my veggy garden. Ain't never had a hermie yet.

I've had light leaks, water leaks, timers shit themselves, lose power and bulbs give out.

End result...no hermies.

 

[Budley Doright]

Im hoping what this thread will do is to disprove an oldstanding cannabis myth......


The proof will be in literally hundreds or thousands of mother plants....


Over my years Ive had lots of moms.....



yet never once has one turned...... for any reason....

 

[High Country]

If your plant has hermie tendencies it will do it in a perfect climate controlled growing environment. Nothing will stop it from going hermie.

But if you've got a stable strain you can abuse the crap out of it and it still will not hermie.

But add a sex reversal chemical and it will turn into a male and produce pollen containing only xx chromosomes.

If this pollen is used to pollinate a clone of itself the end result will be feminised seed containing the same stable attributes.

Thats all it could be...it can be nothing else.

 

[Budley Doright]

If your plant has hermie tendencies it will do it in a perfect climate controlled growing environment. Nothing will stop it from going hermie.
=============================================


I agree entirely but....


I can think of a breeder or two that might argue.....lol



Let the numbers of mothers which have not turned speak as evidence.....

 

[High Country]

I've had the same strain for about 12 years. It is bagseed female and therefore clone only. I have produced multiple mothers from clones and multiple clones from the mothers.

As one can expect maintaining a strain for so long is a bit of a mission to say the least. How about a holiday? Fuck the plants, they'll be right...and they always have been.

12 years of abuse has not hermied them...add colloidal silver...then it all changes.

This stable strain is the perfect candidate for a sex reversal and the subsequent production of feminised seed.

My little holy grail.

 

[Budley Doright]

To me this is a very constructive issue.....


We all know that some strains hermie more than other strains....


maybe by breeder vs breeder as well......


If you get 10 feminized seeds for example....


and you find half hermie.....


and select one of the other five as a mother plant.....



is this plant more likely to hermie on you later.....



It would be very constructive to be able to say.....



Cannabis has plants with 3 sexes and they are


male ....female and....intersexed or hermie.....


Their true sex can only be determined thru the plants flowering.....


female plants that do not show male flowers during their first flowering cycle have a very low probability of ever showing male flowers.....

 

[High Country]

I decided to go down the feminised seed track after my mums were wiped out by spider mites. The feminised seed produced germinated and the progeny are now my mothers. The plants display exactly the same traits and seed produced were all female.

 

[NotaProfessor]

Does stress cause hermies? My opinion is no.

I believe stress does switch on latent hermie genes, normally dormant in females carrying the gene(s).

Here's my little bit of experience:
Bagseed sativa-dom mom threw a couple generations of clones until I severely mistreated some clones in flower (I hand-water in coco and got lazy and inconsistent) and hermies everywhere. The mom never hermied, though, and she hadn't been treated nicely either. (I subsequently got rid of her because the bitch had hermies!)

Bagseed indica-dom mom has given many generations of hermie-less clones, while she has never hermied (again, mom and clones not treated very nicely.)

 

[Budley Doright]

Does stress cause hermies? My opinion is no.

I believe stress does switch on latent hermie genes, normally dormant in females carrying the gene(s).

Here's my little bit of experience:
Bagseed sativa-dom mom threw a couple generations of clones until I severely mistreated some clones in flower (I hand-water in coco and got lazy and inconsistent) and hermies everywhere. The mom never hermied, though, and she hadn't been treated nicely either. (I subsequently got rid of her because the bitch had hermies!)

Bagseed indica-dom mom has given many generations of hermie-less clones, while she has never hermied (again, mom and clones not treated very nicely.)

Excellent post.....


Just what we are looking for.....



What we are trying to assess is the frequency of mothers or clones turning hermie after at least one male flower free cycle......

 

[Budley Doright]

ONe last thing...

significant evidence that plant sex is very stable after the first flowering....


and that stress does not generally cause hermies.....



Plenty of folks grow sea of green using only 1 plant variety....



another thread that Ive not seen and should have if stress is a significant factor in male flowers.....



dear Ed...
I grow sea of green.... same strain....
I notice that along one side of my grow....
a few of the plants are producing male flowers....
Is this because I .....blah blah blah......




If stress were an issue wouldnt there be threads like that????


How could there not be?????

 

[High Country]

I do SOG's all the time...no dramas.

 

[Budley Doright]

I do SOG's all the time...no dramas.

Exactly....


if stress caused hermies we would certainly have seen a see of green with some plants just female and others hermies.....



Sea of green is the perfect laboratory for the question ....


Does stress cause hermies?????


The only way Id be really convinced that a plant just started to have male flowers is within the context of a sog grow.....


If you only have a single plant then the male flowers may have been missed....



but if you can produce female and hermie plants from the same mom Im a believer........

 

[NotaProfessor]

What we are trying to assess is the frequency of mothers or clones turning hermie after at least one male flower free cycle......

My scant data: That sativa-dom got three gens of clean clones before I got hermies.

When I speak of stress I mean some heavy-duty neglect like media drying out, not the level of stress induced by training/trimming.

The first 3 gens were treated to various training/pruning schemes and not a hermie was to be seen. Treat it nasty and hermies. Seems to me, at least for this bagseed, hermies only appeared after a threshold of ill-treatment was crossed. YMMV.

 

[Budley Doright]

My scant data: That sativa-dom got three gens of clean clones before I got hermies.

When I speak of stress I mean some heavy-duty neglect like media drying out, not the level of stress induced by training/trimming.

The first 3 gens were treated to various training/pruning schemes and not a hermie was to be seen. Treat it nasty and hermies. Seems to me, at least for this bagseed, hermies only appeared after a threshold of ill-treatment was crossed. YMMV.

I would have to say that what you say is in fact evidence that environment can make a female produce male flowers....


whatever reason.... too little water is ok....


But there is a perspective of how many mother plants that all of us have had... how many light leaks....


how many overferts...


pump goes out...

fan dies...

timer goes belly up.....


bulb blows...



yada yada......