What am I seeing here?

First time grow, using autoflower Snowryder. These were my "free with purchase" seeds, so I'm experimenting like mad just to understand the grow variables. (And reading forum after forum for ideas, thanks all.)

My 5 seeds all germinated fine, 3 in soil, 2 in paper towels. No real difference there.

I ended up with 2 females, 2 males and 1 runt that I pulled.

Males have been separated since identification and I've been collecting pollen for future experiments.

One of the males showed signs of hermie development, putting out some white hairs after it had already presented pollen that appeared just like the "normal" male. Great, I figured I would pollenate the hermie (trying both self-pollination and pollen from the normal male.)

Now, at about 5 weeks total, I'm getting lots of terminal "buds" putting out hairs, but the bulk of each "bud" is clusters of these "nanners." At least that's what they look like after a lot of Googling around.

But what the heck ARE these things? Are they going to open to put out pollen, just like the normal, round and full pollen sacs that were farther down the plant? So far it doesn't seem so. A couple of the clusters have a regular pollen sac interspersed, generally either already open or soon to be.

The two hairy "buds" I attempted to pollinate over a week ago have very little left in the way of white hairs now, just lots of clusters of these "nanners." There's a ton of pollen in this little secluded grow area, mostly from the adjacent normal male: has it just pollinated all of the hermie buds, beyond my selective breeding attempts? (I've also selectively pollinated a couple of the female buds, and those clearly have "taken," but I'm not sure if there's any action on my pollinated hermie.)

I was hoping for some late-season pollen off of my females, as I recognize that's great for growing future all-female seeds, but this male-to-female-to-??? thing is a complete curve ball to this noob!

A hermie will pollinate itself and produce unknown seeds with either sex.chances are all future plants from said seeds will be hermies but it depends on alot of variables.Like if it was a forced hermie or just a natural mutation.if you force a hermie and then pollinate a female plant with it the seeds will be feminized.The "nanners" you see are male pollen sacks so you have a true hermie.heres a good read on it.but your best bet is always to clone a female(less work lol)

Update: Indeed MOST of those "nanners" are opening up and dropping pollen finally, long after the original, normal round ones did.

Still, here's an image from one of the hermaphrodite's branches I attempted to pollinate. Am I looking at seeds developing now? You can see the last vestiges of the withered pistils on the end. The outer layer or pod covering these (you can see the backside of one behind the subject of this image) has trichomes on it, sticky and fragrant. These aren't the only ones, but none are developing into what would be recognizable as a real "bud." (This plant's 2 sisters are thriving, though, about a week to harvest.) You can still see one adjacent "nanner," opened up and having sprung a bit of pollen.

Dude, You sure you just aint real good at photoshop? I have never seen 'nanners that actually looked like bananas. "Course, I've never let them get very far along either, but MAN. If those are in fact pollen sacs, and that's about the only thing they could be, I'd trash those genetics. Thats a real, sure enough hermie if I ever saw one. That is freaky.

Real good job on the pics, BTW. Nice.

Yeah, they're pretty freaky. It's kind of hard to see, but what happens is those nanners start out with a more or less round cross-section, then they do a "nanner split" opening out along the long axis. Thanks for the props on my photos... BTW, my photography secret? iPhone 4 using Camera Plus Pro, on full zoom, handheld. And a lot of really bad pictures weeded out!

Happily my other male is normal, and I carefully collected pollen separately from each plant. I selectively pollinated the 2 girls, one from the regular male and one from the hermie. It's not clear if the hermie pollination actually took, but I'll be keeping everything separate. Here's a pic of the fertilized bud from the normal male/female cross. I think I'm about a week out from harvest:



I don't think the hermie is necessarily genetic. I was stressing the plants soon after I separated them, testing things on them before I committed to trying the same things on the girls. So I did a lot of bending and binding a little late into development (so-called "Low Stress Training," but only after the main stems were already stiffening); I was also letting them get extremely dry before watering, both to see how their growth responded. This one clearly went hermie after starting very clearly male. I pollinated some early pistils on a couple branches, but then the entire plant soon stopped sprouting pistils, then we entered nanner land.

I want to keep the genetics around only because there's one cannabis cultivating expert who believes there may some under-appreciated, at least under-explored, breeding advantages to introducing these genetics. If indeed those are seeds developing, I'll grow them out just to see what happens. WAY off the other side of my place!