Here's Shiggity's explaination from the eye candy thread:
Yes Sue it can. In this case the whole plant has not gone polyploid just a bud. Polyploidy is the failure of a plant cell to divide correctly. It retains both sets of chromosomes. Cannabis is normally 2N like humans. We have matched pairs of chromosomes. In mitosis a cell divides and separates the matched set. Each matched set is then copied in the new cell to make it 2N again. With polyploid we have 4N. A 4N polyploid can mate with another 4N. But if it mates with a 2N, there will be infertile offspring because they will be 3N. Or so I remember haha.
So in jameslee's case certain branches have had a mitosis defect causing them to go polyploid. The phenotypes that result from the polyploid genotype Can include ribbon stems, larger leaves and those weird linear buds. A fully polyploid plant will have buds like this all over and the effect can be unsettling to say the least. I find it to be a bit creepy!
These pics are examples I pulled off of an image search: