I don't think that's how they start vaped.
to me it looks like that is the start of a new shoot/branch that probably wont make it.
bud leafs come out and sit down to form a bud on the leaf. that has a stem that could at some point be cloned if you were so inclined/lucky
I've had a garden full of oddities this leap year as well. My beliefs are that many breeders are using a chemical at some point which opens the plants up to genetic mutations. Add to that the fact that this leap year was special in itself and all things born now are new age.
now back to your/our predicament
this is c99 i think and as you can see that pod type thing is where my leaf bud came from on another plant (riri).
riri is a dominator pheno that displayed whorled phyllotaxy triplodism and with a little stress she shot out a leaf bud that turned herm and got plucked just like the pod on this c99.
not saying either strain is unstable but the only thing i did to encourage/promote/cause the leaf bud was supercrop one time two weeks into flower and place support stakes in the pots.
From my perspective that is not a lot of stress considering they were vegged to near perfection from seed.
We both know that I'm no plant so I can only surmise that the stress sparked a negative reaction on my behalf as I do not want a plant that will easily herm. to date i have only seen the male flowers on the leaf bud of riri but i expect her to put out more male flowers just because she has done it once that I've seen.
i hope you can wade through that mess and find your answer
