All Hail the Mothers
May 6, 2022

Here at Flora Farms, we know motherhood comes in many beautiful forms and we celebrate them all. Did you know all the marijuana we grow are clones from “mother” cannabis plants? That’s right! Mother plants make it possible for us to provide marijuana for the state of Missouri. To celebrate them, we’re diving into what goes into being a mother plant at Flora Farms.

Mother plants are one of the most important components of the cultivation process. Everything we grow begins as an offspring that is cloned from a mother. Healthy mothers produce healthy offspring. At Flora Farms, we know our cannabis mothers safeguard our genetics. We have multiple mother plants for every genetic, that way we can protect a specific strain for years to come.

We cut up to 3,000 clones weekly. To avoid wearing out the moms, we bounce from different genetics (mother plants), which allows us the time needed to regenerate healthy new clones. This is the best way to ensure consistency. Taking clones off other clones produces a phenomenon known as genetic drift, which weakens genetics and over time causes mutations that may produce unwanted effects. We avoid this problem by taking clones from mother plants. What about growing from seeds? Well, growing from seeds does not allow us to maintain the consistency we’re devoted to providing patients. However, seeds play an important role in mother health!

Seeds are like parents. Whenever a mother and a father have a child, not every child they deliver will be the same. The same is true in cannabis cultivation. If you grow all the seeds from a plant, each resulting seedling turns out different from one another. The differences in these plants are known as phenotypes.

Some of our moms have been with us since the conception of the facility and are now almost two years old. If you treat them right, they thrive. While we’ve been fortunate to not face this problem yet, mother plants do age out. When mothers start to show signs of ill-health, focus turns towards rejuvenating them. Mother plants can be encouraged to begin the process of self-pollination. After gaining seeds from the plant, the next step is to start pheno-hunting for ideal traits. Pheno-hunting involves growing plants from seeds and then selecting the ones that present the most desirable traits from the parents.

As you can imagine, we love our mother plants here at Flora Farms. Caring for them is our first step in creating our lovingly-grown marijuana for Missouri patients. So, from all of us at Flora Farms, we wish you and yours a happy and healthy Mother’s Day.

And Remember…

Medical decisions should not be made based on advertising. Consult a physician on the benefits and risks of particular medical marijuana products.

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