Hermaphrodite

TomHill said:

I have no love for them either & am still getting over the headache caused by a certain Malawi introduction into my neighborhood 20 years back. So, when folks come out strongly against I certainly understand where they're coming from. However I feel we must also be careful not to shoot ourselves in the foot as well.

Hypothetical situation:

We grow out 1000 Thai seeds & the top 10 regarding quality of smoke all have the ability to produce a few seeds on their own. What is the best course of action? Do we shitcan these individuals in favor of true females of lessor quality? Or, do we temporarily accept their imperfections & try to deal with their undesirable traits further down the road? The easy answer is to do both or plant another thousand but this may also interfere with our other responsibilities etc, & in reality may not always be an option.

The Chem & Trainwreck lines are two good examples of plants that have the ability to make seeds on their own. I believe these are fixed & prepotent in their valuable traits for this very reason. Should we not cross breed them even though a bit of progeny testing would locate males that masked this undesirable trait? Should we not grow them though we find 1 seed per ounce to be quite tolerable?

My primary goal is to have & produce the best that i can & i feel it would be a big mistake not to keep an open mind regarding intersex plants, & particularly those of exceptional quality.

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great post Tom--we should grow them and smoke them...your viewpoints seem logical, humane and wise...thanks!

wally- your perspective is understandably harsh towards 'hermie' genes, but you must remain tolerant of others perspectives, which may not be large scale breeding oriented...you and Sam seem to want to eliminate any 'hermie' genes completely, so you guys can grow your huge crops w/o having to 'inspect' thousands of plants....

like h3ad was saying what about the 'miracle' of evolution that has taken place to allow the plant that survival mechanism? are you suggesting that mans need for farming should outweigh this plant species' evolutionary destiny, this cunning adaptation that increases evolutionary fitness of cannabis ? seems excessive and short sighted....but a convenient and easy answer...

raco- thanks for the clarke excerpt...how has his view changed?? >>>>"Therefore, the difference between monoecism and hermaphrodism is one of degree, determined by genetics and environment"....seems like the answer to 'what' a 'hermie' is....

but isn't the main issue the value of the 'hermie' and to whom?
i would submit:
'Herm" Value--
large scale breeders/researchers==no value, conservationists==great value, all others==varying value....lol


zam-great info. as usual....can u elucidate on the "'djshort' male herms" u have worked with...thanks in advance (btw great magazine article! loved it)

peace and best wishes to all

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TomHill again.

Thanks Evolution,

But I'm not so sure I deserve it. I do ok in the field but my lab grades are pretty weak.
I've always thought of cannabis as a dioecious outcrosser though there are probably hemp farmers that would argue that till the caribou come home.
I was the one who submitted that Clarkes view has changed & I very well could be wrong too as he didn't write the book solo. He might use the "monoecious plants from within a dioecious population" that Grat3fulh3ad offered or tiedye420s "bi-sexual"- they both get the point across nicely. I doubt though that he would be calling them hermaphrodites as they are not perfect flowers.
I didn't think about it before you mentioned fitness but it would seem to me that monoecious plants would be much bigger targets for inbreeding depression than dioecious. Perhaps the folks strongly against intersexed plants are arriving there from a conservationists standpoint?

Zamalito,

When I first read DJ on that subject my jaw hit the floor. I thought it was gutsy as hell. It was an observation so wild & bizarre that it could have only come from field work. There seems to be some more folks that are giving it a go so we should know more. I think it's interesting enough for further investigation. I must admit I'm kinda rooting for him too as there's nothing i enjoy more than the occasional monkey wrench

This is SO interesting discussion. However, we should all thing a moment of other´s views & opinions and not knockout them immediately, this is the way we could finally learn & agree.

Thank you for interesting angle´s TomHill & Zamalito & Grat3fullh3ad and Raco for posting the reference and big thanks for Cedarberry for starting this discussion!!!

Something to think about: Why is it, that these plants that produce occasional nanner at the endside of flowering are quite often more potent than their straight sister´s/brother´s???

The only true hermies that I have personally seen are tropical sativas, now I'm wondering if there are pure indicas that are hermie prone. Both my Strawberry D and Chemdog D are hybreds and I'm sure that they have a little sativa in their backgrounds. I'm wondering if hermie traits are the result of the sativa. Are there pure indica hermies?

love threads like this one that can bring a lot of info to light ,, been giving me something to think about while im on holiday also ,,, thanks guys ...

Im with you 100 % Wally, I am also at holiday and we currently have thundering weather, so there is no better way to use your badweather holiday day´s than lurking on ICmag and smoking good old sativa spliff right after you have woke up So Wally, have a nice and enjoy the holiday!!!

I am amazed about the amount of wisdom these threads bring together!

i agree 100% aswell tom , i guess my need for no intersexed plants is a little selfishly based and more of a case of making things easier for myself ..
i certainly have come across some strains that produces male flowers on them late in flower and i do still grow them ...
i just wouldnt make seed for sale from them is all because it could cause problems for others ..
i have made some hybrids from them and in the first generation very little show intersexed plants , sometimes none in the right conditions ,, but the f2s are often problematic ..

Well I have used random female hermies to make feminised seed. (1999)
I have carried the feminised seed to fourth/ fifth generation and outcrossed it.
I inbred the feminised seed, and this was where i ran across the most problems.
I somehow locked in a hermaproditic trait, to shoot major bannanas out at the last 3 weeks- just when they were about to get fat, they all hermied at once.
I managed to remove the hermie trait, by outcrossing with a male which reversed to a female....
This is part of what took 10 years to finish my strain stinky.
I have a reversed g-13 male now. I am very happy...
My latest theory involves stress, and if stressing them mildly- might bring forth hidden traits which may otherwise go unnoticed.
Stressing groups to get to the solids in the group, testing offspring, bla bla bla...
Anyone use this method? do the "big boys" stress their huge crops to get the undesireables to show?
tie

Tiedye,
I thought femed seed was from female plants forced to produce male flowers. Can you use hermis to produce 100% female seeds?
peace and pot

Not a true hermie
But what puts out random staminate action on a predominate pisillate plant.
The process used was rodelization, or letting it go a bit longer than usual.
By inbreeding S2 and furthur breeding with furthur "random" hermies found in this line, It caused a lock in of the trait and hermorphadites which never produced a sack- but bannanas on every bud just when things got exiting...
It was devastating- I put the entire line aside for over a year...
I managed an outcross which went to 3rd gen without hermies...
I then used an early flowering male and brought the traits back..
So I'll be finding a solid late flowering male to take this particular line to IBL...
I just love to play, I am running like 25 strains this year..
I plan to do a little breeding with them. Like 5 or 10 male species.....
I am doing it outdoors to reduce the chance of hermies, and the males will be collected and removed before mid to late july.
And then I'll hose the whole garden down. L.O.L.
I plan to use testubes and a little paintbrush to make a few crosses to play with.
So like anything which hermies this year will end up on the burnpile...
Too much work and future stockpiles at stake....
As far as I know most of the strains I am currently working with do not have tendecies. tendecies to be both sexes in any degree is a definete removal criteria here.
With the exception of the rare male who goes into reverse.
Can you say "yeah baby"
tie

hi all intresting topic.

I have never sean a pure sativa go hermie once it was sexet ever.

The only time i have seen sativas show hermi sex is at sexing and you would see male / female or hermies ( both sex ) and i have never seen a pure sativa once it had shown sex as a female hermie threw its flowering cycle they always showed up at the time of sexing (onset of flowering ).

The first time i ever saw a female plant go hermie in mid to late flowering was an unknow dutch line.

Indicas some tend to throw a few nannas tawards late flowering some are sterile some indica plants tho do produce some late male flowers that do produce viuble pollen and i think it may just be a preservation trigger.

I have seen same pure sativas on say a 14 ft plus plant produce 1 single seed agine i feel its a preservation trigger and if it was stray pollen there would be more than 1 viuble seed or plants growing and flowering next to her would also have seed wich they did not.

The odest thing i have seen relating to female plants was a plant mid flower from the main steam out of know were throw out a new brach only 2 inches or so long with one single male flower and after i removed it from the plant it did not come back and the plant harvested and flowers were seedles .

intristing read, couple of questions? whats the difference between a male turning female, and a female turning male? seems like when i hear "it hermed on me" is referring to females throwing up bannanas. so could we say herm tendencies instead of hermaphrodite? what if a small scale breeder was stuck with all females and no males to breed with, but his strains had this herm tendency, would it be logical to use what male pollen he could stress out of his plants? also if everybody breed this tendency out of all lines would it be the same as growing landraces inside( as to utilize inside space for those who do work inside) but when put back outside it couldn't grow right because it was breed for inside use. hope this made cents

Well, our OHxSk#1 throws nanners if we do something that it doesnt like but it doesnt always do it, and that pollen is very viable, its just so damn good that its no problem to pick those nanners off the buds and so what if it has a few seeds if it is more potent than anything else i nthe garden. some plants just are too good to throw away.

I see the talk but I dont see alot of the ' hug a hermie ' philosophy in action. Take for random example Love Potion#1, won the cup a few years back but I dont think Ive seen one person outside the original breeder working with it.

Herbalistic said:

^^ I agree, like I said before, "female" plants that produce maleflowers are usually very potent. (at least in my experience) + The pollen that comes from these maleflowers is very often sterile and dont pollinate any femaleflowers!

Very interesting discussion people!

ps. thank you for the interesting link grat3fulhead!

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I just got off the phone with a friend who had his 400 plants pollinated by a handful of Purple Kush that broke out in male flowers and dropped. His whole room is seeded with the plants closest to the male flowers being seeded the most.

Why just a few with male flowers in the same area of his room? No light leaks at all.

Obviously the pollen was not sterile.

Oh, I don't think there's any arguing that intersexed plants can ruin a growers trip man. But is that enough to circle the wagons & wipe them off the face of the planet? (& this is assuming it's even possible)

Folks often simplify as it seems to be the first logical step in solving
difficult problems. However, it does bring in the potential for
overlooking key factors does it not? All that I am suggesting is that
we hang up our lab coats & set aside our peer reviewed articles for a
second & admit to ourselves that the science is still relatively young
on this before we accept blanket philosophies like "do not grow, &
certainly don't breed to an intersexed plant". Breeding plants for
quality of smoke is as difficult and frustrating as breeding working
dogs for character, & in my opinion if this is the primary goal then it probably should not be set aside lightly for anything. What if it turns out that an environmental sensitivity trait/s is/are also somehow a prerequisite to reaching the highest potential of quality smoke within a given line? What if it turns out that the best smoke on the planet is often from intersexed populations & this is in fact no coincidence?

She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane.

Wow,
I don't know what to say about the lack of understanding about intersexed, hermis.
First of all does anyone think they know why hermis are so common in todays drug genepool?
Is it maybe because of the continued use of female clones that have intersexed genes?
As for Asian plants like Thai, the reason they are so prone to hermi is not because of their high quality, it is because they were poorly bred using intersexed parents.
I have mentioned it before, how if all the growers are trying to produce sinsemilla then any seeds found are likely to be from intersexed male flowers from female plants. Do this for several hundred years and you end up with lots of intersexed genes in the genpool, like Thai. Intersexed plants are not the ones to use for breeding, unless you do not care about adding more intersexed genes to the genepool. I do care and will not use them any more.
I think for most people it is a matter of connivence, and small plant numbers used for breeding. If you had a choice between a intersexed and true female of the same line and they were the same quality which would you choose to breed with? I suggest that most breeders just don't use enough plants to find TRUE FEMALES and so they settle for the best they can find with limited numbers, and if the plant is intersexed they use it anyway, not because it is really the best, but rather because they can not grow enough plants to find what they really want, quality and intersexed free.
Man has allowed intersexed plants to proliferate, it is up to man to fix the problem.
You can be part of the solution, or part of the problem, the choice is yours.
Does anyone really want intersexed palnts? Or do they just have plants they love that also happen to be intersexed? Using intersexed plants for just Cannabis production is harmless, but if the intersexed plants or clone is used to make seeds the problem is being kept alive and being spread to more and more of the drug genepool.
I don't think that anyone wants that.
If you want quality then look for quality, and don't use intersexed plants. Or you will be building on others mistakes.
Tom, do you understand that man created the hermi problems in the first place by using intersexed plants and by not using intersexed plants will fix the problems? No need to hunt them all down and kill them all off. Just don't breed with them, they are a mistake.
-SamS

Tom,
I suspect the reason that hermis are strongly related to high quality is because of the hand of man. Man selects for high quality but has not rejected all of the intersexed plants that often found in populations created by Sinsemilla growers.
Intersexed plants have a casual relationship with potency not a causal one.
Intersexed plants are not found very often in plants that do not have the hand of man in them, they are just mistakes that if left to nature would ceast to exist in a few hundred generations.
-SamS

"Tom, do you understand that man created the hermi problems in the first place by using intersexed plants and by not using intersexed plants will fix the problems?"

No Sam, this is not my understanding at all. Is it not common theory that dioecy evolved from hermaphrodism?

Also, when did you stop breeding to intersexed plants & what has been your findings? How effective have you been in breeding intersexed traits out of a given population? (second hand knowledge would certainly be appreciated as well)