Whenever a beginner starts to grow for the first time, their main objective is generally to try and get as many flowers on the plant as fast as possible. Many people don’t realize that in order to increase flower yield, you need to pay attention to other aspects of the plant such as the amount of leaves it has or how thick the trunk is. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of leaves on cannabis plants; without leaves, plants wouldn’t be able to food, meaning that it wouldn’t grow at all, ruining a perfectly good plant.
What do leaves do?
Leaves are the most important organ in plants, and not just cannabis plants – any living thing that needs to photosynthesize needs them to live. They have important jobs, just as important as the roots and trunk although many people take them for granted.
Another factor that you need to keep in mind is that you must not remove leaves from your plants under any circumstance, as you’ll be taking away the part of the plant that absorbs light. A newbie mistake that many people make first time around, is removing leaves that are covering flowers because people have the misconstrued idea that the buds get bigger and better in sunlight – the leaves actually absorb the light and bring them straight to the buds. Think about it – if your plant gets an infestation of insects that start eating the leaves, every little hole made in each leaf gravely affects your plants energy absorption, so if you don’t want insects taking them away, why would you do it yourself?
The process that plants use to absorb light is called photosynthesis, which basically consists in making chemical energy by transforming solar energy.
Leaf Parts
To know exactly what you need to know about cannabis leaves, you’ll need to understand what each part of the leaf looks like and does.
Petiole
This is the small little stem that connects the branch and the leaf. Its job is to basically hold the leaf to the tree, allowing food, information and energy to travel between the branch and the leaf.
Ventral surface
The ventral surface is what the upper side of the leaf is known as, which is where plants absorb light which is why it’s one of the most important parts of the plant. It’s extremely important to keep the ventral surface healthy, making sure it’s the right color at all times – a change in color might mean your plant needs more nutrients, that it’s stressed or that you have an infestation on your hands.
Dorsal surface
This is the lower side of the leaf, and the plant uses this space to store small amounts of water in order to survive during bouts of drought. This is how some indicas from hot climates survive and still produce good yields.
Apex
This is the name of the tips of the leaves. The first leaves on a cannabis plant only have one apex, in a sort of long oval shape. Next, you’ll begin to see leaves with three apexes, and of course once the plant begins to look a bit more like a plant, its leaves will grow with 5 apexes. If you ever accidentally overfeed your plants, you’ll see the first signs on the apexes, as they’ll begin curling and then going yellow if you don’t set out to fix it.
