Fan leaves are the big, iconic palmate leaves of cannabis: usually five to eleven serrated leaflets radiating from a long petiole, growing from the main stem and branches. They are the plant's solar panels, doing most of the photosynthesis and storing mobile nutrients that the plant can draw on later in flower. They carry far fewer glandular trichomes than bracts and sugar leaves.
In practice
Fan leaves are central to the defoliation argument. House approach: "tuck, don't pluck". Maximise leaf surface like a solar farm for the buds, and tuck leaves out of the way of bud sites rather than strip them. Cultivars respond differently: some clones lost most of their fans with no effect or even grew faster, while others suffered. Stripping within reason doesn't seem to hurt yield, but in the founder's experience tucking helps more. It remains an open question for GenetixBay trials.
Fan leaves are also the main diagnostic surface. Where and how a fan yellows tells you much more than new growth alone.
At harvest, fans are usually removed first; they make poor smoking material.
Don't confuse with
- Sugar leaf: small, resin-coated leaf within the bud.
- Leaflet: one blade of a fan leaf.
- Cotyledon: the seed leaf of a seedling.
The stalk that attaches a leaf to the stem at a node; in cannabis it carries all the leaflets of a palmate leaf.The process in chloroplasts that uses light energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen; cannabis uses the C3 pathway.A mobile nutrient is one the plant can move from older leaves to new growth, so its deficiency shows first on lower, older leaves: N, P, K, Mg, Cl, Mo.A hair-like outgrowth of the plant's skin; in cannabis the glandular types make and store the resin holding cannabinoids and terpenes.In cannabis, the small leaf-like sheath (perigonal bract) that wraps each female flower's ovary and carries the densest capitate-stalked trichomes.A small leaf growing from within the flower cluster, often coated in trichomes, which is trimmed off and commonly kept for processing.Defoliation is removing fan leaves from a plant to open the canopy to light and air; GenetixBay's house view is to tuck leaves rather than strip them.Bay Trials are GenetixBay's member-run controlled grow experiments that test growing claims side by side and publish the results openly.One of the separate serrated blades that make up a palmate cannabis leaf; a mature fan leaf typically has five to eleven leaflets.
