I think were going to find many things to blame before the breeders, rna damage, hormone imbalances, ethylene gas, abscisic acid, pathogens, fungi, bacteria, bugs, environment etc etc.
Trying to relate a load of scientific mumbo jumbo to our specific grows is not easy, we just need the easy answers and what to do about it. Personally just tweaking your setup, soil and strains will get you there in the long run, theres not a lot more to it and keeps us on a base level. Lets leave all the science crap till were better growers basically.
Those leafy buds smoke like crap, its not ploidy, your plant reverted to normal growth, probably just grew enough to combat whatever was stressing it out, possibly some just mess up like that who knows.
I guess the easy route to blaming breeders or genetic mutations is why you dont see much alternative advice, weed sites can break your crop just as easy as make it. I dont have the answers whatsoever, just as many wrong threads as right too. Ive grown a lot of hermie seeds, repeatedly selfed strains, crossed plants and tried my hardest to make bad genetics, everything came out fine and the ultimate reason for a vast amount of bad stuff was just down to how good of a grower i was at that particular time. Like i use to see a lot of this stuff and tried to document what i can but over time most of these problems have just dissapeared, cant even remeber the last time i had a trifolate or whorlled bud. Seeds are like sweets in a candy shop, they all grow the same just a matter of what flavour you want.
Theres a cool strain called Dr Grinspoon (not for novices, i wouldnt even attempt it yet). Perfect conditions will give you cherry size calyxs but anything less than perfect conditions and you will never achieve her max size flowers. For me this is what genetics is more like, not some cauldron we can all get around and breed mutants and extra branches.
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