The male flower
The male flowers are pollen sacs that hang down, as seen in the picture. At the beginning of the male flower looks like a small green pod. Later the flower becomes yellow, space up and the pollen comes out.
If you do not plan to grow seeds yourself, male plants should be sorted out as soon as they are recognized as such. The aim is to avoid the male plant pollinating the female and thus hindering its further maturation in terms of grass emergence. A male plant can pollinate an entire plant in a very short time. This has the advantage that you then get oodles of seeds, but otherwise unfortunately no further yield. The plant then also hardly produces any resin.
The female flower
The female flower first shows itself by small white hairs on the leaf axils or stem.
Only the female plant is used to produce hashish or marijuana. This is because the female unfertilized cannabis plant produces the most resin and THC. This fact also explains the effort to cultivate Sensimillia (Spanish for seedless). In an unfertilized plant, all the energy is spent on producing new flowers and resin. A fertilized plant also develops new flowers and some resin until it is harvested, but to a much lesser extent.
Hermaphrodite
Due to bad environmental conditions (e.g. bad light conditions) or bad genetics, it can happen that plants start to form both sexes. This is called hermaphroditism. As long as only one male flower appears on a female plant, you should not panic immediately and remove it carefully and completely (with tweezers). But you have got bad seeds or even a purebred hermaphrodite if an initially female plant starts to produce several and constantly new male flowers. There is nothing to wait for. Such a plant must be eliminated immediately, otherwise it will pollinate all other plants and, accordingly, will have a strong negative impact on the harvest. High-quality seeds from well-known manufacturers such as we sell at 1000Seeds, hardly or very rarely produce hermaphrodites.
The large seed banks are now so stable with their genetics and highly developed in terms of the individual methods that you do not need to worry. However, optimal environmental factors such as light cycle, light quality, fertilizer, planting medium, etc. are always part of a perfect result. A plant that is constantly disturbed in its 12-hour light cycle, for example, with light shining in, no matter how good its genetics are, it has an increased risk of hermiting.