WEED WEIRDNESS

WHORLED LEAF ARRANGEMENTS, leaf buds, hermaphroditism, fasciation and variegation are a few of the strange anomalies you might see in your cannabis garden. The larger your garden, the more likely are you are to observe abnormal plant characteristics. In this article, I’ll discuss various anomalies that you might encounter, the causes of some of these phenomena and how to determine if the symptoms are caused by genetic mutations or by pathogens.

WHORLED LEAF ARRANGEMENT

In a seedling’s early vegetative stage, cannabis leaves usually arise in pairs, on opposite sides of the stem at each node. At maturity, and when flowering, it’s common for seedlings to develop an alternating leaf arrangement, with just one leaf at each node, although leaves may continue to arise in pairs. A whorled leaf arrangement (or whorled phyllotaxis) is much less common, but is far from being the rarest of cannabis’s odd displays. Whorls can have three, four or more leaves at each node. This isn’t symptomatic of any infectious disease, and it might actually increase yields. At least one breeder has attempted to stabilize the trait, but we’ve yet to see a commercially available strain bred to consistently produce a whorled leaf arrangement.

HERMAPHRODITISM

Two main types of male flowers occur on otherwise female cannabis plants: monoecious male flowers and hermaphroditic male/female flowers. Although