Is this pot?

July 4, 2008 5:27 AM

Hey man, is this plant what I think it is?

I found it in the big planter right outside of our front door. I know there are other plants that look similar to cannabis, but I don't have a lot of experience with it in the, uh, pre-harvest stages. Pictures online are inconclusive. It is about a foot and a half tall and there are no buds on it as far as I can see (does this mean it is male?). It does have an odor but it is not a strong one which I would identify as cannabis.

posted by chillmost to home & garden (16 comments total)

Yep, that's what it is.

Could be male or female (or both) - you'd have to wait for the buds to be sure. Both have flowers and some plants produce both kinds.

The lack of female flowers explains the lack of a strong smell.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 5:38 AM on July 4, 2008

Many, many species of hemp resemble pot. Only one of them is cultivated to get you stoned.
Where I grew up hemp was absolutely everywhere. It looks like pot (pot is, after all, a type of hemp plant.) It will not make you high.

No, it's most likely not what you think it is.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 5:41 AM on July 4, 2008

No, it's most likely not what you think it is.

Well, it really depends where the seed came from. The three most likely sources (given your location) are probably:

a) someone's bag of pot
b) seeds used as fishing bait (for carp etc.)
c) an agricultural variety grown as a fibre
d) a 'wild' plant

Sources a) and b) would be classified as 'hemp' rather than 'pot', and would have little or no 'medicinal' value.

Which of these sources is most likely depends really on your location. Given that from your profile you seem to be in Germany, I'd think a) would be the most likely, particularly if you don't live in an area where hemp is farmed. I don't think I've ever seen any variety of hemp growing wild in western europe, although I'm sure it does.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:14 AM on July 4, 2008

four, dammit.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:15 AM on July 4, 2008

Hmm. There is a bench right next to this planter and on occasion we find people chilling out there and what not. Also, there is at least one dealer in our street, so maybe a customer was testing out his recent purchase and cleaned his or her bag while sitting on the bench and disposed of the seeds and stems in the planter.

I'll pull it up when I get home. It disturbs the garden's "feng shui".

So, if I understand you correctly, if the seeds came out of someone's bag, the resulting plant doesn't have THC? How does that work?
posted by chillmost at 6:37 AM on July 4, 2008

le mort's answer makes more sense if it the second to last paragraph started as,

"souces c & d would be "
posted by nomisxid at 7:15 AM on July 4, 2008

Somebody found a seed in their pot and tossed it there and it sprouted.
Random seeds have about a 50-50 chance of being decent plants themselves when it's truely a random seed and not forced crossing of plants for seed stock.

Force(Make it flower) the plant by having 12 hours of complete darkness at night, and in about 2 weeks you'll know if it's a boy or a girl. If it's a boy, kill it, if it's a girl, wait roughly 6 weeks more, then you can harvest it.
It will roughly double in height when you start it flowering it.
About week 4 the smell will really come on strong, be ready.

Have fun and transplant it somewhere else first for sure.

I don't know German laws, but I obviously don't recommend doing this until you are sure of the consequences if you are caught. Cultivation penalties are usually much, much, much more severe than posession/dealing penalties.
posted by whoda at 7:59 AM on July 4, 2008

"So, if I understand you correctly, if the seeds came out of someone's bag, the resulting plant doesn't have THC? How does that work?"

1. (Assuming it's a female)-It will have plenty, it won't be a low/non-THC hemp plant, unless they got sold hemp to smoke. It's taken decades to get commercial marijuana breeds to where they are. One bad crossing won't turn a plant into a hemp plant.
2. It may not have the qualities people try to breed into cannabis, and it may have some of the negative qualities they try to breed out.
3. You may score a jackpot and have a seed that produces better stuff than it's two parents.
4. It could be a seed from a hemaphrodite which means it's an exact match of it's single parent, and the plant is guaranteed to be a female

Millions of people only have the seed stock that comes in their baggies. Lots of them grow high-quality pot with them. Some of them end up with scraggly plants and have to try again.
posted by whoda at 8:14 AM on July 4, 2008

Yep, that looks like a pretty good example of a young Cannabis Indica plant. You can tell it apart from a Sativa plant by fatter and darker central leaves. It will also be relatively shorter and bushier than a Sativa. Most likely came from the crumbs in the bottom of a bag that somebody dumped there (or someone is playing a joke on you).
posted by thewalrus at 9:28 AM on July 4, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not an expert on the subject but doesn't pot only have 5 leaves? This has more.
posted by Melsky at 1:40 PM on July 4, 2008

Definitely cannabis, though whether it's from millet (at which point no danger of it having anything near a THC content) or not is another question. Give it a bit of time until the days shorten and you'd see either fine hairs coming from the stem/leaf joint, or the start of the male flowers.
We found one in our front garden a few years ago, and it grew to a fair size, but was clearly from bird seed, and did nothing.
posted by opsin at 2:50 PM on July 4, 2008

Yeah, looks like a smoking variety pot plant - the fibre ones have more spindley leaves. Will start flowering a little before tha autumn equinox (21st of september) unless it's an early flowering variety (Russian strain), or if there's a lot of street lighting around your front door which will delay flowering.
posted by singingfish at 3:44 PM on July 4, 2008

Thanks. My sweetie removed it from the planter. As much as I would love to grow my own, this is growing right out on the street and that is still illegal in Germany. Unfortunately, I don't have a garden to replant it in. Since I'm a foreigner here, I like to keep my encounters with the Polizei to a minimum.
posted by chillmost at 4:17 PM on July 4, 2008

You just harshed our mellow
posted by spork at 11:23 PM on July 4, 2008 [3 favorites]

Many, many species of hemp resemble pot. Only one of them is cultivated to get you stoned.

There is (arguably but officially) only one species: Cannabis Sativa, with many subspecies. Hemp does not "resemble" pot, they are the same species. Many varieties are cultivated for drug and medicinal use.

All varieties contain some THC and other active cannabinols, but agricultural and wild varieties contain them in minute quantities. The leaves of the plant contain THC etc., but the most active constituents are contained in the female flowers. Generally the flowering of the plant is triggered by the length of its night period (longer evening = flowering), and too much ambient light in the evening could inhibit flowering, but that looked like a pretty juvenile plant anyway. It's difficult to sex the plant until flowering is underway. The strongest odor does comes with the flowering, when the plant produces resin glands in abundance.

If I had to guess I'd say it was a psychoactive variety that was either carelessly or purposely stuck in the planter (potsmokers are a mischievous bunch) by some passing stoner. Growing it for personal use isn't worth it unless you've got a thorough understanding of the local laws and a tolerance for whatever legal threat you're risking (I wouldn't even consider it these days, for example, with a child in the house) - but it sounds like you already figured that out. I haven't seen a live one in a long, long time. That was a pretty specimen you had there - pity we're all living under the onus of these idiotic laws.
posted by nanojath at 1:57 PM on July 5, 2008

I came by to say what 'thewalrus' said. Fat leaves = indica. Pity you had to kill it!
posted by Goofyy at 5:23 AM on July 8, 2008