A trichome head is the glandular top of a capitate stalked trichome: a disc of secretory cells under a cuticle that swells into a storage cavity filled with resin. Livingston et al. (2020) showed that these stalked glands, which dominate mature flowers, are the main sites of cannabinoid and terpene production. Head diameter on mature stalked trichomes is commonly in the range of roughly 50-120 µmbeing reviewed, which is why hash makers grade them with micron screens.
In practice
Everything solventless processing does is about separating heads from plant tissue. The cleaner the separation, the higher the cannabinoid content: pure heads are far richer than flower, because flower is mostly bract, leaf and stem by mass. That gap is also the logic behind the GenetixBay potency ceiling: dried flower can't approach the cannabinoid content of its isolated heads. Heads are fragile; warmth, handling and agitation break them and smear resin onto plant matter.
Don't confuse with
Myth check
Frost shows how many heads you can see, not how full they are. See Mythbusters.
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 cannabinoid is any compound that binds the body's cannabinoid receptors or shares the typical cannabis terpenophenolic structure; the plant-made ones are phytocannabinoids such as THCA and CBDA.Terpenes are volatile hydrocarbon compounds built from five-carbon isoprene units; in cannabis they are made in the trichome heads and are a major part of aroma and flavour.Micron bags are fine-mesh filter bags graded by opening size in microns, used to separate and size trichome heads in ice water hash making and to filter rosin.The potency ceiling is the practical upper limit of cannabinoid content in dried flower; GenetixBay holds that flower labelled above about 35% total cannabinoids is not credible.A hair-like outgrowth of the plant's skin; in cannabis the glandular types make and store the resin holding cannabinoids and terpenes.A non-glandular, claw-shaped hair on cannabis leaves that contains a calcium carbonate crystal (cystolith); it makes no resin.The female reproductive organ of a flower (ovary, style and stigmas); in cannabis growers loosely call the visible white stigmas "pistils".Kief is the loose, powdery collection of trichome heads that falls or is sifted off dried cannabis through fine screens; it is the simplest solventless concentrate.Hash is any concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis and collecting or pressing them, from dry sift and ice water hash to hand-rubbed charas.Bubble hash, or ice water hash, is a solventless concentrate made by separating trichome heads from cannabis in cold water and collecting them on graded mesh bags.Full melt is the highest grade of solventless hash, so pure in trichome heads that it melts almost completely with little or no residue when heated.Solventless describes cannabis concentrates made only by mechanical or physical separation, using screens, ice water, heat or pressure, without chemical solvents.
