A plant's appearance, size, growth rate, and many other characteristics of strain are hard-coded into the plant through its genetics. Over time breeders, have combined desirable genetics to achieve new characteristics, such as auto-flowering. You can explore the huge variety of strains in existence on Seedfinder. While every strain has its own characteristics how strongly they are expressed differs with every seed and is also affected by the health of the plant. The qualities an individual plant displays are its phenotype.
Flowering type
There are two categories that define how cannabis plants enter the flowering stage: Autoflowering plants that "automatically" enter the flowering stage after a period of time, and photo flower plants that enter flowering based on photoperiod.
Autoflower
Autoflowering plants naturally have a short life span of around 80-90 days, in this time (given good conditions) the plant will go through the cannabis life stages. Autoflowers don't rely on light schedule to flower so they can be exposed to higher DLIs. After harvesting it is not possible to re-vegetate the plant again.
Photoflower
Photoflowering plants rely on photoperiod indicators to "decide" when to enter flowering. Indoors this is usually controlled by changing the light schedule to include a dark period.
Phenotypes
A Phenotype is the manifestation of the plant's genetics in its physical appearance.
Modern genetics has given us cannabis with a wide variety of leaf apperances
Notable strains
- Lowryder
- Ducksfoot