I have heard that if you do not wait until you see prefllowers to begin flowering, the buds will not be as good. How true is this? My plant has already begun growing very small branches at the internodes. I am planning to wait another week before flowering them. If I do not see preflowers by then, is it still ok to start flowering or should I wait for preflowers? There's these little green hair looking things at the nodes on my plants, but they don't really look like pistils.

Well, that's another one of those things that guys hear about...

I guess that preflowers come with maturity, and it is best to wait until the plant is mature enough before flowering, but that doesn't mean that you have to do that. Most indoor growers don't have the luxury of waiting that long because the plant will get too big.

So you can induce flowering when you want. The only result from flowering before fully mature is that it may take longer after 12/12 to start flowering.

HTH

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its been a question on my mind for some time now, was curious to know if flowering a plant before pre-flowers show, it would affect it at all.

glad to see the question asked and answered

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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin. Answers can always be as likely to be found in the past as they are to be found in the future.

I have those little "pistil like" growths at the nodes too, but i think they are just the start of new branches. I don't know if that is true for all strains, but mine look very similar to yours, and I had been wondering about them too.

My own personal opinion is to wait another week and see if the turn into branches, if the do let them grow out a bit, as that would be 2 extra bud sites at least, for each of your nodes.

Preflowers, as opposed to full blown flowers, generally appear after the fourth week of vegetative growth from seed. Check carefully above the fourth node. Please note that preflowers are very small and and almost impossible to differentiate without magnification. A photographer's 10x loupe is handy indeed when examining preflowers.

As the images below demonstrate, the female preflower is pear shaped and produces a pair of pistils. Frequently, the female preflowers do not show pistils until well after the preflowers have emerged. Thus, don't yank a plant because it has no pistils. Pistillate preflowers are located at the node between the stipule and emerging branch.

Also, some female preflowers never produce pistils. A female preflower without pistils is difficult to distinguish from a male preflower. Thus, hermaphodite issues should not be resolved by the appearance of preflowers, without pistils, on a plant otherwise believed to be a female.

Female (pistillate)



Image courtesy of MrIto

Female (pistillate)


Image courtesy of Uncle Ben

The male preflower may be described as a "ball on a stick." However, its most recognizable feature is its absence of pistils. Sometimes, a male plant will develop mature staminate flowers after prolonged periods of vegetative growth. These appear in clusters around the nodes.

The following image shows a male plant in early flowering. Staminate flowers are located at the node between the stipule and emerging branch.

Male (staminate)


Image courtesy of PLAYn

Image courtesy of PsycoXul

really nice up close pics.