Fan leaves, Part II - Extension to cloning

[GreatLife4All]

I saw another thread on here about fan leaves. I have some questions surrounding this issue.

I have been doing some reading on this due to my partner asking questions. The genotype for marijuana indicates that it starts with single leaves, then has two fans with three leaves apiece, then five, seven, nine, and finally eleven. So... why do depictions of MJ leaves always have 7 leaves? Five or eleven are just as appropriate...

What I didn't realize is that the plant is considered "mature" after it hits 11 leaves and is ready to bud. After it hits 11 leaves, and depending on the flowering time of the strain, the plant reverses itself. It falls from having large, 11 leaf, fans to having 5, 3, and then finally a single leaf per fan (which is in the middle of the bud) - which is hopefully very small.

I wonder what the implication of this is for cloning. When I take clones, it is from the bottom of the plant and I pick from the cuttings that I do right before placing a plant into the flowering tent. The clones always have 3 or 5 leaves per fan when I clone them. I am curious if there is a difference in plant health if you start a clone with 3 vs 5 fan leaves? Theoretically, the shoot with 5 leaves is more "mature" - but does that matter? Maybe you want the youngest shoots possible - which would mean cuttings with 3 leaves would do better.

Has anyone played around with this? Even if not, any thoughts or opinions?

 

[onlypotent420]

Can't wait to see the answer to this

 

[GreatLife4All]

Yes, my strange questions.

I didn't control the cloning box this time - my buddy did all the work.

I was trimming all the plants... he is a bit squeamish about this step.

To be honest, I hadn't even thought about this question till I saw this in my "Subscribed Threads" section.

Here is a picture of the clone box that I previously posted. For convention, let's treat everything as a 5x5 matrix - thus the upper left corner is Plant 1-1. We have 5 rows and 5 columns.

All of column one came off the largest LOJ. All the clones there have 5 leaves (hard to see because of trimming). They are all still very healthy and have minor roots now.

The second column of five came from the smaller LOJ (1,2), (2,2) in the flowering tent. They all have five leaves and are very strong clones. I haven't checked their roots as I do a sort of random check. These clones are smaller in size - the same size as the WW clones. The last three in that column are Super Silver Haze - they all have five leaves.

The next two columns all come from four plants - they are all cuttings or cuttings of cuttings from a single WW plant raised from seed four generations ago. As I mentioned in my Grow Journal, these plants were a little small, but I bum rushed them into flowering anyway. Still testing stretch basically. Back to topic.

Because the moms were small, the clones are small. Some of them do, in fact, have three leaves. I'll update this later if I am wrong, but from the picture I count 4 that have 3 leaves (Plants (1,3), (2,3), (4,4), (4,5)). Plant (1,4) looks to have three leaves - no way to verify since it is dead.

Ok, so far I have suffered two deaths. The plants in positions (1,3), (1,4) have both died. The plant in position (1,4) looked very healthy till she toppled. Her stem was crushed by the neoprene collar right where she entered. There were no roots below, everything on top looked good and green. Definitely not related to leaf count.

Ok, that leaves plant (1,3) without an explanation. I am not sure what happened to her. She simply died. She wasn't the shortest - but very close to it. I don't typically have good luck with short ones. And even the ones that make it out of the clone box typically get culled. Probably more related to size than the number of leaves (but these two are related, I am confused right now).

Everyone else looks healthy at this point. About 2/3s of the ones that I picked today had roots that were about 1/8 inch (3.5mm) in size. This is day 5 or 6. The WWs seem to never have roots till day 7 to 9 in the best of cases. Though the roots are definitely coming first on the LOJs.

I will throw in pictures and updates over the next couple of weeks. Maybe we can get someone else who is running their clones through to post pictures and provide updates as well

We might learn something... It has happened before.

 

[Dewey Beach]

Yes, my strange questions.

I didn't control the cloning box this time - my buddy did all the work.

I was trimming all the plants... he is a bit squeamish about this step.

To be honest, I hadn't even thought about this question till I saw this in my "Subscribed Threads" section.

Here is a picture of the clone box that I previously posted. For convention, let's treat everything as a 5x5 matrix - thus the upper left corner is Plant 1-1. We have 5 rows and 5 columns.

All of column one came off the largest LOJ. All the clones there have 5 leaves (hard to see because of trimming). They are all still very healthy and have minor roots now.

The second column of five came from the smaller LOJ (1,2), (2,2) in the flowering tent. They all have five leaves and are very strong clones. I haven't checked their roots as I do a sort of random check. These clones are smaller in size - the same size as the WW clones. The last three in that column are Super Silver Haze - they all have five leaves.

The next two columns all come from four plants - they are all cuttings or cuttings of cuttings from a single WW plant raised from seed four generations ago. As I mentioned in my Grow Journal, these plants were a little small, but I bum rushed them into flowering anyway. Still testing stretch basically. Back to topic.

Because the moms were small, the clones are small. Some of them do, in fact, have three leaves. I'll update this later if I am wrong, but from the picture I count 4 that have 3 leaves (Plants (1,3), (2,3), (4,4), (4,5)). Plant (1,4) looks to have three leaves - no way to verify since it is dead.

Ok, so far I have suffered two deaths. The plants in positions (1,3), (1,4) have both died. The plant in position (1,4) looked very healthy till she toppled. Her stem was crushed by the neoprene collar right where she entered. There were no roots below, everything on top looked good and green. Definitely not related to leaf count.

Ok, that leaves plant (1,3) without an explanation. I am not sure what happened to her. She simply died. She wasn't the shortest - but very close to it. I don't typically have good luck with short ones. And even the ones that make it out of the clone box typically get culled. Probably more related to size than the number of leaves (but these two are related, I am confused right now).

Everyone else looks healthy at this point. About 2/3s of the ones that I picked today had roots that were about 1/8 inch (3.5mm) in size. This is day 5 or 6. The WWs seem to never have roots till day 7 to 9 in the best of cases. Though the roots are definitely coming first on the LOJs.

I will throw in pictures and updates over the next couple of weeks. Maybe we can get someone else who is running their clones through to post pictures and provide updates as well

We might learn something... It has happened before.

Well?

 

[The303Stoner]

I have found I have better success with older woody stems. As far as leaf size or number with clones less on top and more of the stem on the bottom is always better.