Cannabis and Gender
Cannabis plants can be male or female, occasionally they are hermaphrodites a mixture of the two. Clusters of resinous flowers known as buds only form properly on pure female plants. Females therefore are the only things worth growing if you want to end up with buds of sinsimilla. It`s very hard to tell the sex of a plant until it begins to flower and even then you can never be really sure of its sexual pureness until it, or cuttings taken from it have completed a full life cycle.

Female Flowers
A single female flower consists of a little green seed pod with two fuzzy V shaped hairs poking out of it. These hairs, called stigmas are usually white but they can be other colours. The individual flowers build up through flowering to form the dense clusters commonly called buds. Look near stem and leaf joints on your plants to see them forming.

Female Characteristics
Females tend to be shorter and bushier than male plants. They usually take 7 to 21 days to change from growing to flowering when placed on a flowering light cycle.

Females can Change
Even pure female plants have the potential to turn male or hermaphrodite. This can happen if the plant is stressed too much through bad treatment or if hormones are applied to the plant to induce male flowering. Often near the end of flowering unfertilised stressed out females will produce one or two male flowers in a vein attempt to continue the species. Over cloned mother plants kept for too long can also suddenly start producing clones that change sex.

Hermaphrodites
These are plants that are part male, part female. Some equatorial Sativa varieties of cannabis are naturally hermaphrodite and the use of them in the crosses that seed banks sell will sometimes show up. Other times hermaphrodites are caused by the plant being stressed. Quite often you will get plants that are mainly one sex with maybe a branch that shows flowers of the opposite sex. Hermaphrodites are best dumped as they will only lead to disappointment.

Male Flowers
Early on male flowers look a bit like small bunches of mini green bananas or grapes. These bunches are actually sacs where the pollen forms. Later on these sacs open, push back their tepals, like petals but not, and release their pollen. Male flowers contain little THC and their pollen can make people unwell. Like hermaphrodites males are best dumped.

Male Characteristics
Male plants are usually taller than females so they can shower them with their pollen. They also have less leaf and often look thin and straggly compared to a female of the same variety. Male plants start flowering more readily than females taking 7 to 14 days to respond to a change in light cycle.

Separate the Sexes
Unless you have plans to breed or to produce lots of seeds always separate male and female plants as soon as their sex becomes apparent. One or two male plants can churn out enough pollen to tun a whole crop to seed.

Light and Flowering
Once cannabis plants are a couple of months old they can start to produce a few pre flowers even under constant light. These pre flowers can be a good indication to the sex of a plant but can`t be relied upon. To flower properly most varieties of cannabis will require 12 hours of constant, uninterrupted total darkness each day. The dark period needs to be at a regular time each day so use a timer switch if you are using lamps and don`t be tempted to peak during darkness or you will delay flowering, stress your plants and promote sexual deviation.

Sexing a Mother
If you want to grow using cuttings then a good unstressed female to use as a mother is a must. But how do you find a plants sex without causing it stress by flowering it and then reverting it back to vegetative growth? Simple, take a few cuttings from the plant and put them straight into a flowering cycle instead. They are only to tell you the sex of the parent plant so you don`t have to look after them too much.