Can I grow seeds I found in my weed?

Q: Can I grow seeds I found in my weed?

You can grow seeds found in your weed, but bag seed is a gamble. Seed in sinsemilla bud often comes from a plant that hermed and pollinated itself, so it tends to be nearly all female and to pass the herm tendency on. Its parents, sex and flowering time are unknown. It is fine for practice; for a real grow, buy documented seed. Check local seed rules first.

Short answer

Yes, bag seed will often sprout and grow, but it's a gamble. Seed in seedless-style bud usually means a plant hermed and pollinated itself, so the seed tends to be nearly all female and to carry the herm tendency. Grow it for practice, not for a crop you care about. Grower practice, with the GenetixBay breeder position on herms.

Legal first. Rules on seed possession and home growing vary; check your local rules.

Why

Self-pollinated seed is female but herm-prone. Pollen from a hermaphrodite's own male flowers carries only X chromosomes; in a controlled study, that seed produced only female plants, while cross-fertilised seed gave about 1:1 ^[1]. Feminised seed works the same way, but a good breeder uses a female proven stable before reversing it ^[2]. A herm in someone's flower room had no such test.

The parents are unknown. The strain name on the bag tells you little; same-named retail samples often turned out to be different genotypes ^[3]. Bag seed is a cross of something with something.

Seed can also come from a stray male. Then expect roughly half males.

The numbers

	Bag seed	Documented seed
Parents	Unknown	Recorded
Females	Often nearly all (if from a herm); ~50% if from a male	Nearly all (feminised) or ~50% (regular)
Herm risk	Higher	Grow-out data should show it
Flowering time	Unknown	Stated, and checkable in journals
Cost	Free	Paid

What to do

Check that growing is legal where you live.
Germinate a few seeds; immature pale ones rarely sprout.
Grow them as photoperiods unless they flower by week 5 on 18/6.
In flower, check every week for pollen sacs and bananas with a loupe.
Remove any plant that makes pollen sacs. Don't keep it as a mother or save its seed.
For a crop you care about, buy seed with grow-out records.

Common mistakes

Growing bag seed beside a good plant and getting the good plant seeded.
Saving seed from the bag-seed plant that hermed.
Trusting the strain name on the bag.

Full article: Regular, feminised, autoflower or clone
Answers: why there are seeds in my buds · preventing hermaphrodites
Articles: male, female and hermaphrodite · reading a seed listing
Terms: bagseed · hermaphrodite

Bagseed is a seed found in purchased flower, of unknown parentage and often the product of accidental pollination, including by intersex plants.A seedling is a young cannabis plant from emergence of the cotyledons until it has several sets of true leaves, typically the first 2-3 weeks.Pollination is the transfer of pollen onto a female flower's stigmas; in cannabis it is usually by wind, or by hand when breeders pollinate chosen branches to make seed.Herm-prone describes a line whose plants often produce intersex flowers; GenetixBay treats this as a breeding fault and a reason not to breed from it.In cannabis growing, a plant (usually female) that develops both pistillate and staminate flowers or anthers; botanists call it intersex or monoecious expression.Home grow is growing cannabis for personal use at your residence, permitted in some jurisdictions within plant-count, location and security limits.A male flower that carries stamens (anthers on filaments) and no functional pistil; in cannabis, five drooping sepals around five pollen-shedding anthers.A chromosome is one long DNA molecule packaged with proteins that carries many genes; cannabis normally has 10 pairs, nine autosome pairs plus an X/Y sex pair.Feminised seed is seed made by pollinating a female with pollen from another female (or itself) that was chemically reversed, so nearly every seed grows into a female.The genotype is the set of alleles a plant actually carries, either at one locus or across its whole genome, as opposed to the traits you can see.Germination is the stage where a viable seed absorbs water, splits its shell and pushes out a root (radicle), usually within 1-7 days at 20-30 °C.The daily length of light versus dark; photoperiod cannabis flowers when nights grow long enough, rather than at a fixed age.18/6 is the standard vegetative light schedule: 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness each day, keeping photoperiod cannabis from flowering.The pollen-producing part of a stamen; in cannabis each male flower has five anthers that split to shed wind-blown pollen.Nanners (bananas) are exposed, banana-shaped anthers on a female flower: a hermaphrodite trait, not a normal part of late flowering, and a reason to cull.A small handheld magnifier, typically 30-60x for cannabis use, used to inspect trichome heads and spot pests and male flowers.

Follow-up questions

Will bag seed be female?

Bag seed is often mostly female, but not for a good reason. Seed found in sinsemilla bud frequently comes from a hermaphrodite's own pollen, which carries only X chromosomes, so its seed is nearly all female. A controlled study confirmed seed from hermaphroditic flowers gave only female plants. Those plants are likely to inherit the herm tendency, so watch them closely in flower.

Is bag seed good for a first grow?

Bag seed is fine for a practice first grow, because it costs nothing and teaches the basics. Expect surprises: unknown parents, unknown flowering time, possible males and a higher risk of hermaphrodites. Keep it away from other plants, check for pollen sacs weekly in flower, and never keep a bag-seed plant that herms as a mother or breed from it.

Are seeds from a hermie plant worth keeping?

No. Seeds from a hermaphrodite cannabis plant aren't worth keeping. They are nearly all female, but they carry the same readiness to herm, so the problem passes straight on. GenetixBay's breeder position is that herm-prone lines come mainly from bad breeding, and that the answer is to cull them, not to grow out or share their seed.

Sources

Punja ZK, Holmes JE. 2020. Hermaphroditism in marijuana (Cannabis sativa L.) inflorescences: impact on floral morphology, seed formation, progeny sex ratios, and genetic variation. Frontiers in Plant Science 11:718. doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.00718

Flajšman M, Slapnik M, Murovec J. 2021. Production of feminized seeds of high CBD Cannabis sativa L. by manipulation of sex expression and its application to breeding. Frontiers in Plant Science 12:718092. doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.718092

Schwabe AL, McGlaughlin ME. 2019. Genetic tools weed out misconceptions of strain reliability in Cannabis sativa: implications for a budding industry. Journal of Cannabis Research 1:3. doi.org/10.1186/s42238-019-0001-1