A monoecious plant carries separate male and female flowers on the same individual. Maize is the textbook example. In cannabis, monoecy is a trait selected deliberately in some industrial hemp cultivars for uniform seed and fibre crops; those plants are genetically female (XX) with stable expression of male flowers (Faux et al. 2014).
In practice
For drug-type growers, monoecious is mainly a word to read precisely:
- A monoecious hemp cultivar is a bred, stable line, managed for grain or fibre.
- A drug-type plant that suddenly shows male flowers on a female is intersex (hermaphrodite), not "naturally monoecious".
Monoecious hemp pollen can seed nearby drug-type crops, just like a male. Outdoor growers near hemp fields should know that.
Don't confuse with
- Dioecious: separate male and female plants, the natural state of cannabis.
- Hermaphrodite: in grower usage an intersex female, an unwanted abnormality.
- Perfect flower: a single flower with both stamens and pistil, rare in cannabis.
Myth check
House position: monoecious hemp was bred on purpose and is not the norm for cannabis. Its existence does not make herm-prone drug lines acceptable. Those reflect poor breeding. See the sex guide.
A female flower with a pistil but no functional stamens; in cannabis, a bract-wrapped ovary topped by two stigmas.Hemp is cannabis grown for fibre, seed or other uses and, in many laws, defined as Cannabis sativa with no more than 0.3% THC by dry weight.A male flower that carries stamens (anthers on filaments) and no functional pistil; in cannabis, five drooping sepals around five pollen-shedding anthers.An IBL (inbred line) is a seed line that has been inbred and selected over many generations until it breeds true for its main traits, giving uniform offspring.In cannabis growing, a plant (usually female) that develops both pistillate and staminate flowers or anthers; botanists call it intersex or monoecious expression.The pollen-producing part of a stamen; in cannabis each male flower has five anthers that split to shed wind-blown pollen.The female reproductive organ of a flower (ovary, style and stigmas); in cannabis growers loosely call the visible white stigmas "pistils".Herm-prone describes a line whose plants often produce intersex flowers; GenetixBay treats this as a breeding fault and a reason not to breed from it.Having male and female flowers on separate individual plants; drug-type cannabis is naturally dioecious with an XY sex-chromosome system.
