What Is a Marijuana Plant?
Plants produce the oxygen that we breathe, the food we eat, and, in the case of marijuana, the psychoactive substances we use as medicine and intoxicants. Without plants, life on earth would be composed mainly of humans, animals, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms.
Cannabis plants share many characteristics with other members of the Plantae kingdom. Like all plants, during photosynthesis plants use light to transfer electrons from water to carbon dioxide, producing glucose. Photosynthesis also produces oxygen for all breathing organisms. Like all vascular plants, water and nutrients are absorbed from the soil through the plant’s roots.
As any marijuana connoisseur knows, though, there is at least one thing that sets this plant apart: its ability to produce the psychoactive and therapeutic chemical compounds known collectively as cannabinoids. THC and CBD may be what growers are most concerned about when it comes to producing marijuana, but that does not mean they can focus exclusively on these chemical components. Instead, they need to develop a basic understanding of what marijuana plants are and how they work.
Plant Cells
All plant cells begin as generalized cells. These cells multiply via cell division, then expand outward via cell elongation. Cell division occurs primarily at the plants’ crowns, the tips of its roots, and at the fringes of its leaf nodes. First-time growers are often astonished to see how quickly cell division and elongation produce growth. Some plants can grow as much as three inches per day.
As plants grow, their unspecialized cells become specialized, meaning they change to perform different specific functions. Although there are many types of plant cells, they can be divided into three general groups: ground cells, vascular tissues, and dermal tissue.
Ground Cells
Ground cells are known by the scientific name parenchyma. All functional parts of the organism fall into this category, including most leaf cells, with the exceptions of those found in stomata and veins.
Vascular Tissues
Vascular tissue is responsible for transporting nutrients and water from one part of the plant to another. There are two main types of vascular cells. Xylem tissue transfers water and minerals from the plant’s roots to its stems, leaves, and flowers and phloem tissue carries the glucose produced in the leaves via photosynthesis to the rest of the plants.
Dermal Tissue
The plant’s outer layers are composed of dermal tissue. Dermal tissue can be found not just in the plant’s waxy outer layers, but also in its stomata. The stomata must open and close to regulate CO2 absorption and water transpiration, so it makes sense that they would be protected by dermal tissue.
Basic Plant Systems
Female cannabis plants are composed of four primary systems: roots, stems, leaves, and flowers, often referred to as buds. Each of these systems has different types of cells and performs a different purpose, but they are all equally important when it comes to supporting plant growth. These systems are all also very adaptive so that you can find success growing anywhere from Oregon to Illinois.
The Root System
The root systems on wild cannabis plants can grow as large as all the above-ground sections of the plant, combined. Extensive root systems allow cultivated marijuana plants’ feral brethren to collect water and nutrients, survive droughts, and extend their reach well into the surrounding soil. Indoor marijuana plants typically have smaller, denser root systems since growers provide them with everything they need to thrive without having to stretch out for it.
All cannabis plants, both domesticated and wild, uptake most of their water and nutrients through their roots, so it is important to keep them healthy. When growing in pots or a hydroponic system, that means checking the root tips. They should be white and covered in small hairs. Brown root tips can indicate excessive concentrations of water in the soil, nutrient imbalances, or root disease.
The Stems
Plants transport the water and nutrients collected by the roots to other areas through their stalks and stems. Stems are composed primarily of vascular tissue, but they also have an external layer of dermal tissue for extra protection.
Healthy cannabis plants, whether they are grown in soil or hydroponics, should have thick stems. This not only makes large plants able to transport nutrients and water efficiently but also gives them plenty of support to bear dense buds later in the season. The best way to support healthy stem growth in indoor grows is to provide a steady flow of soft air using fans while the plants are young, as this stimulation causes them to direct more energy to producing thick, healthy stems.
Cannabis plants experience the most stem growth during their seedling and vegetative stages. Once they start flowering, the plants begin directing most of their energy toward flower growth.
Growers who want to employ advanced pruning techniques like topping and super-cropping can benefit from a slightly more in-depth breakdown of stem components. They need to be able to identify the stems’ nodes and internodes to determine where to prune the plants.
Put simply, the nodes are found where the leaves meet the stems, and the internodes are the spaces between the nodes. The reason that is so important is that growers need to top their plants when they have between three and five nodes for maximum effect. Topping involves cutting the internode of the plant just above the node, causing the stem to split and produce two separate colas later in the plant’s life cycle.
The Leaves
Cannabis plants produce different types of leaves throughout their life cycles. First, they produce sucker leaves in the seedling stage, then progressing to fan leaves in the vegetative stage and sugar leaves during bud formation but biologically, all of them serve essentially the same function. They are home to chloroplast cells, which is where the magic happens in terms of photosynthesis. These cells gather sunlight and use its energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into usable sugars.
Like stems, leaves are made up of different parts. In horticultural terms, the stalk is called a petiole. The veins of the leaf extend from the petiole to its tips, and the meat of the leaf, called the mesophyll, is what contains the chloroplasts. The undersides of marijuana leaves have tiny holes called stomata, used to transmit carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor. As noted above, a plant’s leaves attach to its stem at the nodes.
When most marijuana enthusiasts think of pot leaves, they immediately call up a mental image of a five-fingered leaf. These large leaves are known as fan leaves. However, cannabis plants in their seedling stages do not immediately start producing fan leaves. They start out by producing first a one-fingered leaf at the first node, followed by a three-fingered leaf at the second node, and only start producing five-fingered fan leaves when they enter the vegetative stage.
Different types of marijuana plants have different numbers of fingers on their fan leaves. Indica-dominant plants typically have seven to nine fat fingers, while Sativa-dominant plants typically have a larger number of longer, more slender figures. Some leaves may have as many as 13 fingers. The number of fingers on marijuana plants’ leaves are also a good indicator of the plant’s health, so growers should monitor leaf development throughout the seedling and vegetative stages.
The Flowers
A marijuana plant’s flowers are the last thing to develop. In the wild, a cannabis plant’s flowers serve as its reproductive organs. In cannabis cultivation, reproduction is often undesirable. That is why growers must remove male plants from their crops as early as the vegetative cycle to prevent female cannabis flowers being pollinated by the pollen released from males.
The composition of male and female flowers is a little different. Male flowers have stamens composed of filaments and pollen-covered anthers. Female flowers have pistils composed of styles and stigmas, which are typically either sticky or feathered to allow them to catch pollen. Female plants only produce seeds when their flowers’ pistils are pollinated by male plants’ pollen. Although it is essential for reproduction, pollination will substantially reduce the quality and potency of a marijuana crop by increasing seed production and thereby decreasing cannabinoid production. When you hear of autoflowering seeds, these are simply varieties that have the heavy influence of ruderalis genetics that enables them to flower under any light cycle. Most regular seeds will require a specific light cycle of 12 hours with 12 hours of dark in order to enter the flowering stage.
In an unfertilized female plant, those resources will instead go to producing higher concentrations of trichomes on the female flowers. These are the tiny hairs found inside the buds’ calyxes. Trichomes secrete cannabinoids, including THC, so it is important to encourage plants intended for human consumption to devote as much energy as possible to producing as many of them as possible. This is the ultimate goal whether growing CBF seeds for producing medicinal tinctures or high-potency 710 seeds for producing weed concentrates.
The Bottom Line
With the help of this brief introduction, growers in Ohio, Georgia, and New Jersey should now have a better idea of how marijuana plants work. They have been introduced to the three main categories of plant cells, the four primary systems that accumulate nutrients, drive growth, and facilitate plant reproduction. This should clarify successful growing strategies and potential issues that could come up over throughout the plants’ life cycles. At the end of that cycle, growers who pay attention and alter their feeding, lighting, and pruning techniques appropriately can expect dense, potent, healthy buds. For high-quality wholesale seeds, check out kindseed.com!
