This plant of a friend seems to only produce calyxes. Is this a genetic thing or could it also be due to some kind of stress? If it is because of genetics, do you think this could be worth saving by taking a cutting?
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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What's a Calyx?
Cannabis growers tend to use the words bract and calyx interchangeably. In actuality, the little oval shape with hairs coming out is actually a bract. In cannabis the actual calyx is a sheath of cells around the thing that becomes the seed once fertilized.
A cannabis flower is just a collection of bracts. We tend to colloquially call the fat pair of little bracts that form at the base of the buds where they branch into leaves, the calyx
The bract is the outer leaves, whether the plant is seeded or not the calyx expands.
When someone says it’s a bract, it’s usually wrong, the term is calyx, but bract CAN be used since the petals in the outside aren’t usually pulled away, but on the ripe ones, they are.
https://herb-platform-images.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/27182640/Cannabis_Calyxes_The_3.jpg?auto=format&fit=clip&ixlib=react-8.6.4&h=448&w=816
Oh yeah, super common argument, old heads especially. That image is at least a decade old and has served well!
Most scientific studies and even most modern literature identify that structure in the image as the bract. Whereas the cannabis calyx is a few cells thick and covers the seed, part of the perianth. it's not visible until a seed has expanded.
Lemme give you an example:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00350/full
It's funny tho, this study calls out the argument.
Despite all this you still see it both ways, or bract (calyx)/calyx(bract). Calyx was the term for a long time.
It’s not an argument, only cannabis growers (incorrectly) call it a bract, it’s a calyx by plant nomenclature.
Maybe don’t just read cannabis material? You can learn a lot more from general botany. Uneducated growers have been calling it incorrectly for so long, that people following along are now incorrectly saying it’s the correct term. And people like you perpetuate it. New growers see old growers using it, reference that, and now you’re quoting it like it’s gospel.
It’s a calyx, the bracts protect them, sorry dude.
Edit, holy fuck dude, read your own link, picture from it
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/447153/fpls-10-00350-HTML/image_m/fpls-10-00350-g002.jpg
The bracts are below the singled flower (calyx)
Actually, we're having an argument about it right now!
Cannabis growers, botanists, scientists. As research on the plant has been allowed in the last decade, these specfic structures have been defined, that's why it's the modern definition.