A cola is the terminal inflorescence of a cannabis branch: many tightly packed pistillate flower clusters stacked along the top of a stem, with small sugar leaves among them. The largest, on the main stem, is the main or top cola. The word is Spanish for "tail".
In practice
Training decides how many colas a plant makes. An untrained plant with strong apical dominance puts most of its weight into one main cola. Topping, SCROG and manifolding make many even colas, which share light better.
Big colas carry risk. A dense top cola can hold moisture inside, and Botrytis cinerea (bud rot) usually starts inside such colas near the stem, out of sight. In late flower, check the biggest colas first by gently parting them and looking for brown, mushy flowers or grey fuzz. Keep RH in late flower around 40-50% and air moving through the canopy.
Foxtailing (spires of new flowers growing out from a finished cola) is usually heat or light stress, sometimes genetic.
Don't confuse with
- Bud: a general word for any flower cluster; a cola is a large terminal one.
- Popcorn bud: small, loose buds low on the plant.
- Calyx: an individual flower structure within the cola.
A female flower with a pistil but no functional stamens; in cannabis, a bract-wrapped ovary topped by two stigmas.A small leaf growing from within the flower cluster, often coated in trichomes, which is trimmed off and commonly kept for processing.The suppression of side-shoot growth by the main growing tip, driven mainly by auxin flowing down the stem from the apex.SCROG (screen of green) trains a few plants under a horizontal net, tucking shoots so the canopy forms a flat, evenly lit layer of many tops.Botrytis cinerea, the fungus behind bud rot or grey mould, which rots dense colas from the inside in cool, humid conditions late in flower.Relative humidity is the water vapour in air as a percentage of what it could hold at that temperature, so the same RH dries plants differently at different temperatures.Foxtailing is the growth of new, elongated calyx spires on top of existing buds; it can be genetic, or a stress response to excess heat or light.Light stress is damage when leaves or buds absorb more light than they can use or dissipate, showing as bleached white or yellow tops nearest the fixture.In cannabis, the small leaf-like sheath (perigonal bract) that wraps each female flower's ovary and carries the densest capitate-stalked trichomes.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 point on a stem where a leaf (petiole) and its axillary bud attach; branches, flowers and clone roots all originate at nodes.
