Hey I'm pretty new to the growing scene. This is actually my first indoor grow and I have a little bit of an urgent question about a couple of my babies! (The actual question is near the bottom in bold, in case you want to skip the intro...) My question is about these supposed "Specious Staminate Flowers" that are mentioned in a quote that seems to be reused on a bunch of websites: "Please note that occassionally specious staminate flowers will appear in the last days of flowering of a female plant. These do not drop pollen and their appearance is not considered evidence of deleterious hermaphroditism." I'm growing some clones that I was told would most likely pop "herm" flowers. I recently noticed something that looks out of place on the tops of every one of the buds on my Heavy Duty Fruity's. As far as I can tell from what I know of how male flowers look, they look alot like male flowers. However, they are really small and hard to make out even with a jeweler's loupe... Unfortunately I lost track of how long I've been flowering for (haha... n00b I guess..) and I'm actually pulling one of my other plants soon. These two plants that have the male flowers (?) don't have any trichomes that are amber, but there are alot of them. I was hoping to get a little more weight out of these two plants but I'm now thinking I'm going to have to harvest them before they pollinate everyone else who seem to be late flowering... Do any of the more experienced growers here know if there really is such thing as specious staminate flowers? I mean can these male flowers really be "sterile" in other words? Should I not even worry about them dropping pollen? I'm probably going to yank these plants soon unless anyone is really sure that these flowers won't pollinate! BTW, I tried to take some close-up pictures, but they didn't come out too good so I won't be posting them... Also, I'm using LED's and dry ice, and the plants are pretty dark green with red stems.. These little male flowers that I think I'm seeing are red, on top of a bed of green calyxes... basically only one per cola... right at the very top. I've read that the male flowers (stamen?) are only supposed to be green, that's why I mentioned this detail. Thank you to anyone who can offer insight!
It's true that some strains, especially if they have been feminized, can show a few male sacs very late into flowering. Nothing to worry about with these. Not sure if these are sterile or not, but in a sense it doesn't matter because they appear too close to harvest to pollinate and affect your bud. Male sacs showing in the middle of flowering, however, are another story...
Thanks for your reply! Does anyone else know if these flowers are truly "specious"? Also, I just went into the flowering room and it looks like pretty much all of the plants have these little staminate flowers popping up..... Might be time to chop down and start the next round I guess.... I think I can probably attribute this problem to the stress of setting my lighting timer wrong... woops... Thanks again. SWGreenThumb