How to identify marijuana plants? 2019 Updated

The ability to identify cannabis leaves may enable you to distinguish marijuana growing in the soil. Cannabis sativa grows throughout many regions of the United States except for the hottest and coldest areas — desert southwest and upper Great Plains regions. Learn the basic characteristics of marijuana plants to identify the leaves and buds. According to the Virginia Tech Weed Identification Guide, marijuana plants may grow as tall as 10 feet.

Identify a cannabis seedling. The first leaves — called cotyledons — lack the serrated edges and have an oval shape. The initial true leaves appear opposite the stems and they appear significantly different from the cotyledons because they have serrated edges and a thinner shape.

Although cannabis leaves are usually decussate, as the plant prepares to flower the leaves may begin to emerge in an alternate pattern. Interestingly, rejuvenated cannabis plants demonstrate alternate phyllotaxy.

Experiments with hemp showed that early-planted specimens, which flowered in low light conditions but did not die, began to put out new alternate leaf growth when hours of sunlight increased. The initial new growth was simple rather than compound, and as new growth continued, the number of leaflets gradually increased.

The ability to determine if a marijuana plant is male, female, or hermaphroditic is key to knowing which will actually produce buds that get you high. So how do you identify a marijuana plant?

First off, it’s important to know why identifying the different marijuana plant sexes matters.

Cannabis plants show their sex by what grows in between their nodes (where leaves and branches extend from the stalk). What starts as a pollen sac on a male plant or a stigma on a female will become what either spreads or catches pollen, respectively. Luckily, we can see these differences weeks before they actually start serving their purposes in the reproduction cycle. These are known as “pre-flowers.”

Pre-flowers begin to develop four weeks into growth by using indoor grow tent and cannabis grow lights, but they may take a little longer depending on how quickly the sprouting phase occurred. By the sixth week, you should be able to find the pre-flowers and confidently determine the sex of your plant.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH MALE PLANTS?
Male plants do contain low levels of cannabinoids and also produce the aromatic molecules known as terpenes, which are responsible for the signature smell of the cannabis plant. However, most growers are entirely opposed to the male plants that appear in their cannabis grow tent, and take immediate action to banish them from the domain. This is because once this pollen touches a female flower, they will pretty much immediately stop developing resin, lose their sinsemilla status, and start producing seeds. Most growers start with feminized seeds for this reason, as these are guaranteed to produce almost exclusively female plants.