How To Tell If Your Plant Is Male Or Female Before Flowering

“You can make educated guesses about a cannabis plant’s sex by examining the stem width, branches, and leaves, but these indicators are not reliable. Also, cannabis seeds don’t come with information about the plant sex. The definitive way to identify a cannabis plant’s sex is by observing the pre-flowers that appear at the nodes of the plant.”

As a cannabis grower, if your goal is to grow seedless buds (sinsemilla), you only want to plant or produce female plants in your garden. 

Unlike male plants, female plants are the only ones that produce the coveted buds that contain high levels of cannabinoids like THC and CBD.

You want to remove male cannabis plants from your grow area quickly before you risk pollination, resulting in seed development in your female plants.

This article will teach you how to identify female pre-flowers and male pre-flowers cannabis plants early in the growth stages. 

How Soon Do Cannabis Plants Show Signs of Gender?

Young cannabis plants can take up to a month after germination before showing their sex. While some plants may reveal their sex organs during the vegetative stage, most will only show their sex after entering the flowering stage, especially in indoor cultivation.

When they reveal their gender, the male flowers will have tiny and smooth pollen sacs. Male pollen sacs often tend to look like a small cluster of grapes at the nodes.

On the other hand, female cannabis plants will develop pistils with white structures and hair-like stigmas protruding from them. These structures, found at the nodes where branches meet the main stem, are indicative of a female plant.”

Now, how can you tell the sex between a male and female cannabis plant?

How To Tell If Your Cannabis Plant is Male Or Female

The most reliable way to determine the sex of your cannabis plant is by specifically observing the presence of either these male or female structures. Any other indicators the plants produce are not reliable metrics, as each strain has different characteristics that can easily be mistaken for the wrong cannabis sex.

If your goal is to cultivate seedless buds, male cannabis plants will take up room in your garden that would have otherwise been used to cultivate more feminised cannabis seeds. They will also pollinate all your female cannabis flowers and cause seed development. 

Pay Attention to the Cannabis Pre-flowers

As a home grower, the most reliable way to tell the sex of a cannabis plant is by looking for early signs at the nodes, which are where the leaves meet the stem. You’re looking at female pre-flowers when the female plants have small bracts with hair-like stigmas, while male plants produce pollen sacs.

Sometimes, this happens during the vegetative stage, but in most cases, the sex of your plant while possessing these structures will only become visible as they enter the flowering stage. 

Pay close attention to the nodes to be able to identify sex as early as possible. The nodes are the future bud areas of the plant. So, check for the early signs of structures to tell the difference between male and female sex of a plant.

Some growers, to save time, can take a tissue sample of young plants for laboratory testing to confirm sex, but this is a costly and uncommon practice. 

We’ve prepared a table to help you further understand the difference between the early signs of male and female cannabis plants, so you can quickly tell. 

Pro Tips: 

To avoid the time-consuming process test for sex by inspecting pollen from male plants, use feminised seeds or female clones. While feminised seeds are 99% female, it’s still good practice to regularly scout for any possible male plants to ensure all your plants will be female and produce buds.”

P/S: Top-quality feminised seeds are readily available on Aussie hemp seeds! 

What’s the Difference Between Male and Female Cannabis Plants?

The one major difference between male and female cannabis plants is that they show signs of their sex separately. The male plants have pollen sacs, which burst to release pollen. Female plants have pistils and white, hair-like structures called stigmas to catch pollen. 

When mature, the male releases pollen into the air, which the female flowers will catch. When pollinated, the female cannabis plants begin to produce seeds. 

Growers usually focus on female plants, called ‘sinsemilla’ (seedless), for a profitable and optimized harvest without seeds in the buds. Without seeds, female cannabis plants tend to produce higher THC levels and bigger yields. 

This is because the energy that would have gone into producing seeds is instead used to develop more potent female buds and biomass.

Is It Possible To Convert Male Cannabis Plants to Females?

The short answer is no. While you may hear some folks on forums say otherwise, there’s no way to turn a male cannabis plant into a female cannabis plant. 

However, on rare occasions,  Plants can begin to show both sexes as either a genetic anomaly or as a stress response. But that is much different than converting from male to female, and these plants, known as hermaphrodites, develop both male and female sex organs. 

That also means that they can pollinate themselves. If you choose to grow seedless buds, hermaphrodite plants should also be removed from the crop. 

Final Thoughts 

The key idea is to focus on the male or female plants in the pre-flowering stage, especially keeping your eyes peeled at the nodes, which is where leaves grow from the stems. 

Once you identify plant sex, your next course of action depends on whether your goal is seed production or seedless flower production. 

If you notice that the plant is male and you’re growing for THC-laden buds, remove the male before they release their pollen.