What Does Monecious Mean?
Monecious means that both female and male flowering reproduction parts can be found on one plant. Unlike most other plants, which are either male or female, the natural landrace marijuana plants are typically both and express both male/female characteristics.
In the wild, monecious plants have the upper hand in survival because they can achieve self-fertilization. Although in marijuana cultivation, growers prefer and work to breed only dioecious strains, which are either male or female.
For the production of cannabis concentrates and medicinal marijuana, only the female plants are cultivated by growers and plant breeders for optimum flower and bud production that contain high levels of cannabinoid-rich trichomes.
Maximum Yield Explains Monecious
Monecious marijuana plants produce male cannabis flowers, which are hard, bulbous, buds, and female flowers.
The male flowers are generally unusable for medicinal marijuana or by the pharmaceutical trade.
The female flowers of the cannabis plant look starkly different than the male. They are usually sticky and have ample trichome resin-secreting glands that are rich in cannabinoids. The abundance of trichomes attracts pollinating insects to fertile female flowers to achieve fertilization.
Unfertilized cultivation using only dioecious strains is typically preferred by growers over monecious marijuana plants to create an ample yield of cannabinoid-rich plant material.
Fertilization of the female flowers by the male flowers is discouraged by growers because once the female flower achieves fertilization it ceases to produce the cannabinoid-rich trichomes and puts its energy into developing seeds.
