Here's a better example of the different stages.

On the left is "flower", center is "stretching" and on the right early pre-stretch, but with tell-tale signs of (feminine) preflower..

Lastly, this photo was taken of the smallest plant, it's pistils are apparent, but very small, after looking with my loop, it's clearly identifiable and not a mistaken stipules or calyx

Frankster said:

alright, most auto's I've come across start to flower between say 21 and 30 days. It looks to me that they start to stretch slightly before female pistols become apparent, but slightly after the males become apparent.

Males tend to flower before the females do.

I've got several here right now in various stages of development, some about 10 days to 2 weeks above the others, and it's really opening my eyes to the plant morphology before, during and after flowering starts. I think I'm going to top one or two of them just for compairson, as this would be the time to do it on some of the younger ones.

Does this look clearly identifiable?

Click to expand...

i personally top plants at a young age so they have time to respond before flowering. you really dont know when that plant will decide to flower, maybe its even starting to stretch for all i know. with a photo plant its not a big deal because you can veg for 3 weeks after you top it. if you top an auto to late you just void your top cola as vegetative growth stops in the flowering stage.

i miss read your original post but im going to leave this info up for others

Frankster said:

alright, most auto's I've come across start to flower between say 21 and 30 days. It looks to me that they start to stretch slightly before female pistols become apparent, but slightly after the males become apparent.

Males tend to flower before the females do.

I've got several here right now in various stages of development, some about 10 days to 2 weeks above the others, and it's really opening my eyes to the plant morphology before, during and after flowering starts. I think I'm going to top one or two of them just for compairson, as this would be the time to do it on some of the younger ones.

Does this look clearly identifiable?

Click to expand...

to anser your clearly identifiable question their is no doubt thats a female!

thehighguy said:

to anser your clearly identifiable question their is no doubt thats a female!

Click to expand...

Yea, I mini topped the earliest 3 looking plants, I'll see if I was too late or not, but there's so much here going on I'll probably end up either giving some of them away, or putting outside. I've also got a bunch more important group coming in behind them, so these were only some that I was doing for "verification" purpose to see how the seed stock turned out. Make sure everything actually flowers like it should, uniformity, undesirable traits if any, ect...

I moved them out, and put some photo's in there to flower, (only place I have to do this) and going just flower the (autoflowers) in the open. I supra-cropped some of the 6 footers to get them in there all under 4 foot, and cranking the light up to the top, LOL, these have some really interesting bud sites, even though they are tall. (and scraggly underneath) I suspect they will still produce well. Various Kushes that been growing for since spring.