What Are the Orange Hairs On Weed?

Marijuana plants can be male, female or hermaphrodite (both male and female). To start seed production, male plants will pollinate the females. That said, the strong flowers we consume as marijuana originate from the seedless female plants, the sinsemilla, which grow large buds full of potent psychoactive chemical compounds that give weed its kick.

Pistils are basically the female sex organs of the plant, containing an ovary that, when pollinated, produces a seed. These pistils come in different sizes and shapes and are usually coated with sticky resin that captures pollen from insects, birds and the wind. The red-orange hairs that we see on many strains of the marijuana we consume are called pistillate hairs or stigmatic hairs.

When the female plant isn’t pollinated, it produces great amounts of resin, with a layer of the trichomes that are the source of marijuana’s psychoactive and medical properties. (So an unpollinated female flower is much more potent than one that has been pollinated.)

At first pistils are white. As the plant matures they darken to yellow, orange, red and brown. While the pistils are essential to the cannabis plant’s maturation, they do not play a major role in how strong the flower is and its taste. (The most resinous part of the plant is the calyx, along with the sugar leaves which peak out of the cola.) Though it varies, for most strains of cannabis the pistils begin to turn orange and red between the seventh and eighth weeks of flowering.