An achene is a small, dry, one-seeded fruit that stays closed at maturity. What growers buy as a cannabis "seed" is botanically an achene: the hard outer shell is the fruit wall (pericarp) fused tightly over the true seed coat, with a single embryo and a little endosperm inside. Each develops from one pollinated pistillate flower, wrapped in its bract.
In practice
Mature achenes are typically 2-5 mm long, grey to brown, often mottled or "tiger-striped", and they rattle out of the bract when ripe, usually around 4-6 weeks after pollination. Pale, green or soft seeds are usually immature and germinate poorly. A breeder checks ripeness by the colour, a firm shell that resists a gentle squeeze, and bracts starting to split.
Storage is about the embryo inside: cool, dark and dry. Seeds kept at low moisture and low temperature hold germination for years (Small & Brookes 2012).
Don't confuse with
- Seed coat (testa): the thin layer of the true seed, inside the achene shell.
- Bract: the leafy sheath that wraps the developing achene, not part of the fruit.
- Calyx: the reduced perianth on the ovary; often misused for the bract.
The protective outer layer of a seed; in cannabis it is fused to the fruit wall and forms the hard shell that cracks open at germination.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.A female flower with a pistil but no functional stamens; in cannabis, a bract-wrapped ovary topped by two stigmas.In cannabis, the small leaf-like sheath (perigonal bract) that wraps each female flower's ovary and carries the densest capitate-stalked trichomes.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.Botanically, the sepals of a flower; in female cannabis a thin, reduced perianth on the ovary, though growers use the word for the resinous bract.One of the two rounded seed leaves packed in the embryo that open first after germination and feed the seedling until the true leaves take over.The embryonic root, the first structure to emerge from a germinating seed, which grows down to become the primary root or taproot.
