A kid once told me she thought corn grew on trees. Don’t make fun of her. It wasn’t her fault she’d never seen a corn plant. It’s the same way many cannabis lovers have never seen weed being grown and ask, “What does a weed plant look like?”
In this guide, I’ll help you understand what a weed plant looks like by discussing the anatomy of a cannabis plant. Besides describing the different parts of a weed plant, I’ll explain what each part does, how they look, and how to use them.
What Does a Weed Plant Look Like?
Male cannabis plants have thinner, lighter 4-6-inch leaves, and small clusters of pollen sacs. Females are shorter with bushier, broader, darker leaves, and trichome-covered buds.
Each leaf is serrated and attached to a fan-shaped cluster of 5 to 9 leaves. The fan-shaped cluster resembles cassava and chaste tree leaves, but cannabis leaves have distinct serrated edges.
A fully matured weed plant can be anywhere from 10 inches to over 10 feet, depending on the breed and environmental conditions. For example, indoor-grown cannabis plants are typically shorter than wild-growing ones.
It has a sturdy main stem with branches that extend outward, carrying clusters of dense leaves and resinous buds. The sticky resin-coated buds of a matured female weed plant sit above the fan leaves, which look like the image above.
The buds contain the most cannabinoids and terpenes, making them the most desirable part of any cannabis plant. During its flowering phase, the bud will sprout pistils that look like noodley strings. The color of these pistils will depend on the cannabis strain, ranging from white to orange or red.
Maturing female cannabis plants also have trichomes on the buds and leaves. From afar, the trichomes make the plant look sugar-dusted and give the plant its distinctive cannabis scent. You can see the orange noodle-like pistils sticking out and the dust-like trichomes in the image below.
Note that this is only a general description of the typical female cannabis plant’s appearance. Several unique strains are available that slightly deviate from this description. For example, there are weed strains with purple-greenish leaves and others with orange-tinged leaves.
How to Tell Male and Female Weed Plants Apart
Like most living things, weed plants have genders. You have the male cannabis plant and the female cannabis plant. Hermaphrodite cannabis plants (both genders) are also a thing.
Do female and male cannabis plants look the same?
No. Unlike their male counterparts, mature female cannabis plants produce the desirable cannabinoid and terpene-rich flowers or buds. Also, female cannabis plants are typically shorter and bushier than male plants.
Other distinctive female cannabis plant features that you won’t typically find in male cannabis plants are:
- Slenderer and more abundant leaves
- More trichomes
- Pistils and stigmas for catching pollen from male plants
On the other hand, the typical male cannabis plant is less cannabinoid-rich with thicker stalks and fewer leaves. In the place of buds, it has pollen sacs as shown in the image above. These sacs release pollen (plant semen) to fertilize female buds.
Buds that get pollinated (or disvirgined) have lower cannabinoid levels, which is why cannabis farmers strive to keep male weed plants off their farms. Just like every father chasing boys away from their daughters.
What Different Parts of a Cannabis Plant Look Like
Every part of the weed plant contains cannabinoids, including favorites like CBD and THC. However, the concentration of cannabinoids generally varies between weed parts. Let’s delve into the different cannabis plant parts to see their functions, features, usability, and cannabinoid content. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of what a weed plant looks like.
1. Buds (Flowers)
If you’ve only ever bought cannabis at a dispensary, this is likely the only part of the weed plant you know. Buds or flowers are the knobby clumps at the end of the weed plant’s branches. You can find them on female cannabis plants, and buds contain the highest concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes. This makes buds the most valuable part of the weed plant among cannabis growers, processors, and consumers.
What It Does
Buds make up the reproductive part of the female cannabis plant. If a bud receives pollen (plant semen), it will become fertilized and yield seeds that you can replant. However, fertilized/pollinated buds contain fewer cannabinoids. So keep your female weed plants away from horny male weed plants if you want cannabinoid-rich buds.
How It Looks
When most people think of what a weed plant looks like, they picture the bud. Cannabis bud or flower looks like a mass of packed vegetation at the end of branches. Depending on the weed strain, the bud can be green with a touch of red, orange, purple, or blue. On high-quality buds, you’ll find a coating of white trichomes, which resembles a dusting of sugar or snow from afar.
How to Use It
After harvesting buds, you should dry them to remove excess moisture and cure them to enhance their flavor and potency. You can smoke dried and cured weed flower or make oils, vape juices, tinctures, and other cannabis products with it.
2. Pistils
Pistils are the strand-like bits you see protruding from buds. The pistil can be a different color from the bud, taking shades of white, orange, red, pink, or brown. You typically see pistils on female cannabis plants that have entered the flowering stage, and it’s usually a white or light green color when it first appears.
What It Does
You can find pistils on only female weed plants. The strand-like structure has stigmas with a gummy coating that sticks out to catch pollen and fertilize the bud. This is why you only see pistils during the flowering stage, as the plant needs them to get knocked up.
How It Looks
As I’ve said, cannabis pistils look like strands or threads sticking out of the bud. Their color is typically different from the bud itself.
How to Use It
You typically consume the pistils as part of the buds. However, there’s no proof that pistils contain significant quantities of cannabinoids. I mostly rely on pistils as a visual cue to determine if my cannabis is ready for harvesting. Once most of the pistils have changed color and curled inward, I put on my harvesting hat.
3. Trichomes
Trichomes are tiny growths that cover much of a cannabis plant’s surface, making the plant look like someone dusted it with ash or powdered sugar. While you can find trichomes all over a weed plant, including on the leaves and stems, you’ll find the highest concentration of trichomes on the buds.
What It Does
Trichomes are highly valuable because they are rich in cannabinoids and terpenes. They give the weed plant its distinct aroma and significantly determine the plant’s potency. For example, male cannabis leaves aren’t as potent as female cannabis leaves because they have fewer trichomes.
Also, trichomes coat buds in a sticky fluid called resin, a cannabis product that’s highly valued for its cannabinoid potency.
How It Looks
A weed farmer will no doubt mention trichomes if you ask them what a weed plant looks like. From afar, trichomes look like a coating of white moss or sand on cannabis buds.
Up close and under a microscope, trichomes look like tiny mushrooms with long stems and bulbous heads.
How to Use It
While harvesting, drying, and curing cannabis be gentle to avoid accidentally brushing or shaking off the high-value trichomes. Most people smoke buds with trichomes on them to enjoy a full cannabinoid and terpene profile and potent therapeutic effects.
Alternatively, make kief by gathering trichomes from dried buds and leaves. You can get the trichomes by sifting dried buds and leaves to collect the trichomes as they fall off. This will give you a trichome powder (kief), which is highly potent and usable in blunts, pipes, or for making edibles.
4. Cola
A healthy female cannabis plant will have several buds distributed across its branches. The cola is the main bud at the top of the plant, sitting above all else like a crown. It’s the biggest flower cluster, making it the largest and most cannabinoid-rich bud on the plant. It’s simply the most prized part of a cannabis plant.
What It Does
You typically get one cola per plant. While it’s a bud, it’s usually larger than all the other buds a weed plant produces. Due to its size and trichome density, it offers the highest concentrations of cannabinoids, terpenes, and other desirable compounds.
If a female cannabis plant gets pollinated, the cola will shift from producing resinous, cannabinoid-rich buds to yielding fertilized seeds.
How It Looks
Cola looks like any other bud, except that it’s bigger and can only be found at the crown of the cannabis plant. However, if you ask for a picture of what a weed plant looks like, you’ll only see the cola on a fully matured cannabis plant.
How to Use It
You can process harvested cola into various cannabis products, such as tinctures, oils, supplements, and more. Or, you could just cure it and enjoy it in a blunt or bong.
5. Sugar Leaves
Most people who ask “what does a weed plant look like?” can’t tell the difference between sugar leaves and fan leaves. Sugar leaves are the smaller leaves closer to the bud. These leaves contain far more cannabinoids than fan leaves, which is one of the reasons I don’t trim them off buds. However, sugar leaves are nowhere as cannabinoid-rich as buds.
What It Does
Like the fan leaves, cannabis plants rely on sugar leaves for photosynthesis. Each sugar leaf has a significant coat of trichomes, making it cannabinoid and terpene-rich. However, even though sugar leaves grow on buds, they don’t have as many trichomes or cannabinoids as the bud itself.
How It Looks
Sugar leaves look like regular cannabis leaves but smaller. You can find these small leaves growing on the bud, above the larger fan leaves.
How to Use It
You can leave sugar leaves on the bud, dry and cure them together, and use the finished product as you please. Alternatively, you can harvest the sugar leaves separately and make tinctures and oils with them.
6. Fan Leaves
Like every other leaf, fan leaves help the weed plant with photosynthesis. Since they are larger than sugar leaves, they do most of the heavy lifting for photosynthesis.
What It Does
Besides photosynthesis, fan leaves shield the cannabis plant from the elements. Fan leaves also contain cannabinoids and terpenes but nowhere near as much as sugar leaves, much less buds. This doesn’t mean fan leaves can’t yield therapeutic effects. You’ll just need to consume more if your dealer sells you more leaves than buds.
How It Looks
Fan leaves contribute significantly to what a weed plant looks like. As the name implies, fan leaves look like handheld Asian fans.
You can find fan leaves spread throughout the lower levels of a cannabis plant, below the buds and sugar leaves.
How to Use It
You can wash and eat fan leaves raw, blend them into smoothies, or make topical and tincture products. Smoking after drying and curing is also an option. But compared to smoking buds, you’ll need way more puffs to get your desired effects if you have only fan leaves. Alternatively, dry the fan leaves and use them as rolling paper for your blunts. Check out this article on how to use cannabis leaf as rolling paper.
7. Stems
Have you ever seen sticks in your weed? Those are stems, and you typically get weed with stems when you buy from that shady guy hanging out on the corner.
You could also end up with stems if you buy shake at your local dispensary. Shake weed is a mix of broken buds, stems, sugar leaves, kief, and other cannabis remnants that fell off the whole flower and settled at the bottom of a weed bag or jar.
What It Does
Stems are the branches that leaves and buds sprout from. You have the main stem that rises from the ground and serves as the backbone for the entire weed plant. Then you have the petiole, which is the stem that attaches a leaf to the main plant stem or branch.
These stems all work together to help weed plants maintain structural integrity, holding the plant up. Stems also transport water and nutrients to nourish the different parts of a cannabis plant.
You can find some trichomes on stems, and the stems themselves contain low amounts of cannabinoids and terpenes.
How It Looks
Stems look like twigs, growing out of the soil and branching out to sprout and support the growth of leaves and buds.
How to Use It
You can blend up the whole cannabis plant, including the stems, to make a cannabis juice, supplement, or topical product. You can also smoke stems if you buy dirt weed from a 1-star dispensary or budtender.
Lastly, there are manufacturers who use stems and other cannabis byproducts to make textiles, paper, and building materials.
8. Resin
Resin is kief’s sticky cousin. It’s a viscous, gooey substance produced by trichomes to coat cannabis plants, especially the buds. Resin is highly sought by weed lovers for its high levels of THC, CBD, terpenes, and other desirable cannabinoids.
What It Does
Trichomes produce resin to coat the surface of cannabis flowers, leaves, and stems. The resin helps the plant retain moisture and provides some protection against pests. More importantly, live resin is rich in cannabinoids and terpenes, making it excellent for experiencing cannabis’s therapeutic effects.
How It Looks
Resin is a sticky liquid produced by trichomes. So, the denser the cluster of trichomes, the more resin you can find. This is why healthy, high-quality buds have the most resin. Depending on a weed plant’s strain and maturity, the resin’s color can range from light yellow or amber to brown.
Since it’s a liquid coating that’s felt more than seen, most people don’t mention resin when describing what a weed plant looks like.
How to Use It
You can extract resin from buds to produce oils, live resin, and other cannabis concentrates. Like kief made from trichomes, resin is very rich in cannabinoids and terpenes. But unlike kief, which is powdery, high-quality resin’s texture is comparable to honey. You can also find resin that’s as thick as wax or processed to have a shatter, budder, or crumble-like consistency.
9. Roots
Like most plants, cannabis plants have roots, and they are an essential part of the weed plant that’s required for survival. However, like resin, most people don’t mention the roots when describing what a weed plant looks like. This is because the roots are underground and out of sight.
What It Does
Weed plants have a fibrous tap root beneath the soil. The root anchors the plant, preventing it from being knocked over or easily uprooted. The root also extracts nutrients and moisture from the soil to feed and nourish the plant.
How It Looks
The typical cannabis plant has a main tap root and fibrous roots. The tap root digs straight down into the soil to serve as the plant’s primary anchor. The fibrous roots, on the other hand, are exploratory, seeking out moisture and nutrients to sustain the plant.
How to Use It
Cannabis roots may not have significant quantities of cannabinoids like buds and sugar leaves. But they aren’t empty and useless either. Studies indicate that cannabis roots’ cannabinoid content may provide therapeutic effects if you make salves, teas, or supplements with the roots.
10. Seeds
You can find cannabis seeds in fertilized female plants. The seeds grow out of the buds after they’ve been successfully pollinated.
What It Does
Cannabis seeds help with growing a new batch of weed. The seed will typically have the same genetic makeup as the female plant that birthed it and the male plant that pollinated the flower.
How It Looks
Farmers describing what a weed plant looks like will only mention the seeds if you ask about fertilized female cannabis plants. Depending on the strain, weed seeds can be brown, green, black, or yellow. They are small and oval-shaped with a hard exterior.
How to Use It
Hemp seeds have become a popular snack because they are rich in protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. However, they don’t contain significant amounts of cannabinoids. You can typically find sticks and seeds in weed bought from illicit street dealers.
11. Ovary
Did I just blow your mind? Yes, like women, female weed plants also have ovaries. A cannabis chick’s ovary is where seeds go to develop after pollination. You’ll probably have a hard time finding it, but my research says a cannabis plant’s ovaries are in the bud at the base of the pistil. This makes sense since the pistil collects cannabis jizz (pollen) to fertilize seeds. Since the ovary isn’t visible, you’ll rarely hear it mentioned in descriptions of what a cannabis plant looks like.
12. Pollen Sacs
The pollen sac is the cannabis plant’s equivalent of your dad’s scrotum. It produces and releases cannabis jizz (pollen) to impregnate (fertilize) mature female weed plants. The pollen sac’s anthers handle shooting the sacs’ load. So if you walk through a weed farm of male plants during pollination season, you’ll be snorting pure cannabis jizz – Enjoy!
What Parts of Weed Do Dispensaries Sell?
Before cannabis legalization and dispensaries, many of us bought our weed from shady street dealers. The bag would contain dried leaves, stems, seeds, and if we were lucky, some bud. Now, you can visit a licensed dispensary, budtender, or online cannabis store to buy high-quality buds.
Compared to other parts of the cannabis plant, weed buds or flowers contain the highest concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes. I mean, on the bud alone, you get the most resin and trichomes. It’s why experienced marijuana processors and farmers prioritize buds over other parts to make the best cannabis-derived products.
Reputable dispensaries will sell you cannabis flowers as cured weed, which are buds that have been dried and aged to enhance their flavor and potency. The higher quality of cured buds makes it pricier than uncured weed.
You may also find shady dealers who offer weed that has been dried but not cured. Such cannabis contains less moisture to prolong its shelf life but hasn’t undergone aging to attain the flavor of cured weed. It’s basically the difference between fresh meat (fresh cannabis), jerky (dried weed), and aged meat (cured weed).
Check out these guides to learn more about the differences between drying and curing weed and how to DIY them at home.
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