An anther is the pollen-bearing head of a stamen, held up on a thin filament. Inside, pollen sacs produce pollen grains; when ripe, the anther wall splits lengthwise (dehisces) and releases them. Cannabis is wind-pollinated, so anthers shed large volumes of light, dry pollen that can travel a long way on air.
In practice
Breeders collect pollen by isolating a flowering male and tapping open flowers over paper. Pollen kept dry and cold lasts weeks in a fridge and much longer frozen.
On a female, anthers matter as a warning sign. Single yellow-green anthers poking out of a bud ("bananas") are exposed stamens from an intersex plant. They can shed pollen without the plant ever forming a full male flower. Remove the plant or the affected parts quickly, and don't breed from it.
Growers sometimes call a closed male flower a "pollen sac". Botanically the sacs are inside the anther.
Don't confuse with
- Staminate flower: the whole male flower containing the anthers.
- Stigma: the female pollen-receiving hair.
- Seed pod: a pollinated bract holding a developing seed.
Pollen is the fine powder released by male flowers that carries the male gametes; when it lands on a female's stigmas it fertilises the ovules and produces seed.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.In cannabis growing, a plant (usually female) that develops both pistillate and staminate flowers or anthers; botanists call it intersex or monoecious expression.A male flower that carries stamens (anthers on filaments) and no functional pistil; in cannabis, five drooping sepals around five pollen-shedding anthers.The sticky, hair-like tip of the female pistil that catches pollen; each cannabis female flower has two, white when fresh and darkening with age.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.In cannabis, the small leaf-like sheath (perigonal bract) that wraps each female flower's ovary and carries the densest capitate-stalked trichomes.Having male and female flowers on separate individual plants; drug-type cannabis is naturally dioecious with an XY sex-chromosome system.
