A cannabis plant tells you through its leaves how it feels and what it needs. You only need to see & recognize it.
Cannabis can be classified into three sub-species. Sativa, indica and ruderalis. However, most cannabis you come across today involves a cross between two or three of these species. So what you usually see in your grow room are cannabis leaves with mixed characteristics. The leaves can have three, five, six, nine or eleven leaf fingers and appear in various shapes. This ranges from narrow and slender to wide and round.
Sativa
Sativa leaves have long and slender fingers and some leaves have as many as 13. Usually sativa plants have a lighter, lime green color.
Indica
Indica leaves are small and broad and usually have 7 to 9 thick fingers. Leaf is dark green.
Ruderalis
Ruderalis leaves are narrow and develop only 3-5 slender fingers. According to many growers, they resemble the leaves of young sativa plants in color and shape. However, these plants are special because they bloom regardless of the amount of light they receive.
Fan And Sugar Leaves.
In addition to the leaf types of sativa, indica and ruderalis, there is also the leaf position. The largest leaves of the cannabis plant, with the characteristic finger shape, are called fan leaves. The other leaf type, the smaller leaves in the buds, are the sugar leaves.
Fan leaves
Fan leaves are the large leaves that develop during the vegetative growth phase. They act like solar panels and absorb light, which they convert into energy. This energy is used by the plant to grow. Fan leaves also sometimes serve as emergency stores of certain nutrients, such as nitrogen. If the plant cannot get these nutrients from the soil, it can use the reserves from the leaves. When this happens, the leaves discolor and turn yellow. Fan leaves contain only traces of THC, CBD and other cannabinoids.
Sugar Leaves
Sugar leaves are nestled in the buds and sometimes peek out. In doing so, they are covered with an icy layer of white trichomes. This is also what gives them their name. In essence, sugar leaves provide structure to the buds, keeping them intact. Sugar leaves are packed with trichomes, which in turn are filled with cannabinoids. However, they can make for a tart taste when you smoke them. That's why growers usually cut them off the buds. Sugar leaves, then, are not optimal for smoking, but they are super suitable for making hash or cannabis butter.
What can the number of leaf fingers tell you?
Your plant can also communicate with you by showing you the number of leaf fingers. Under normal circumstances marijuana has at least 5 leaf fingers.
However, the number of fingers can vary due to different DNA and the age of a plant. The 1st leaves usually gives only 1 leaf, and the 2nd from 3 fingers. After that, each leaf usually contains between 7 - 9 fingers. Some deviate from this norm. These produce somewhere between five and thirteen leaf fingers per leaf. This number is not a cause for concern, but a normal phenomenon. Often a high number of fingers also indicates which generation your cuttings or seed are in, the more fingers the purer the DNA and the stronger the plant.
However, when adult plants begin to have leaves with only three fingers or even just one, this can be a sign of stress.
Light Stress
Sometimes weed plants begin to produce three-fingered leaves due to light stress. In general, plants have their own preferences and get used to their environment rather quickly. Therefore any drastic change can already be a threat and cause stress.
If you change the light source, for example another lamp, or move the plant from indoors to outdoors or vice versa it can happen that your plant only produces three fingers per leaf.
- Disturbed Photoperiod
Photoperiodic plants like cannabis require a longer period of darkness to flower. This is also how they respond in nature to available sunlight as the season changes. Indoor growers should therefore keep their growing space completely dark for twelve hours a day. If cannabis plants are given even a little light during that time - for example fifteen minutes - they can already become stressed and start producing three-fingered leaves. Check your time clock extra for small mistakes and pay attention to lights in your grow space, no matter how small, or light influences from outside such as lampposts or advertising lights.
Regeneration
Sometimes growers choose to bring their plants back into the growth phase. After harvesting some buds, they let the plants regenerate for a few weeks. This offers a number of advantages:
- You can skip germination or cuttings all together.
- The plants become much bushier the next time around.
- You can keep your harvested plant and use it immediately for the next harvest.
Regeneration naturally causes stress in cannabis plants. Sometimes they show this by producing three-fingered leaves. In such cases these strange leaves are perfectly normal.
DNA
If you have already grown different types of weed, you know how much different varieties of marijuana can differ from each other. These are differences in such things as taste, smell, effect, size, leaf, and shape.
Environmental Stress
Since marijuana plants are sensitive to the environment, several causes can cause stress, which causes them to produce three-fingered leaves. This phenomenon can occur, for example, with fluctuations in humidity and temperature, pests, etc.
Next blog part 2