A bract is a modified leaf associated with a flower. In female cannabis, each pistillate flower is enclosed by a perigonal bract: a small, cupped, green structure that wraps the ovary and from which the stigmas protrude. The bract swells as the flower matures and, if pollinated, encloses the developing seed. Bracts carry the highest density of capitate-stalked glandular trichomes on the plant.
In practice
What growers call "calyxes" or "calyx-to-leaf ratio" are, botanically, bracts. A "high calyx-to-leaf ratio" means many swollen bracts and few sugar leaves, which makes trimming easy and puts more resin into the bud. Bract swelling in late flower is one of the visual ripeness signs, alongside trichome colour.
Because bracts are where most resin sits, the share of a dried bud's mass that is bract (and trichome) rather than stem and leaf sets a hard ceiling on what flower can test.
Don't confuse with
- Calyx: the true calyx is a thin, reduced perianth on the ovary, barely visible; growers use the word for the bract.
- Sugar leaf: a small true leaf among the flowers.
- Pistil: the female reproductive organ inside the bract.
A female flower with a pistil but no functional stamens; in cannabis, a bract-wrapped ovary topped by two stigmas.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.The large mushroom-shaped glandular trichome on cannabis bracts, with a multicellular stalk and a resin-filled head; it holds most of the flower's cannabinoids and terpenes.A hair-like outgrowth of the plant's skin; in cannabis the glandular types make and store the resin holding cannabinoids and terpenes.A small leaf growing from within the flower cluster, often coated in trichomes, which is trimmed off and commonly kept for processing.The maturity of glandular trichome heads, read by colour under magnification: clear (immature), cloudy or milky (mature), then amber (ageing).The first leaves produced by the shoot tip after the cotyledons, with the plant's characteristic serrated leaflets.The female reproductive organ of a flower (ovary, style and stigmas); in cannabis growers loosely call the visible white stigmas "pistils".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.The dense, elongated cluster of flowers that forms at the end of a stem or branch; the main cola tops the leader.The dry, single-seeded fruit of cannabis that growers call a seed; a hard shell (pericarp plus seed coat) encloses one embryo and does not split open.
