A hop plant is either male or female. Male hops are grown in the garden exclusively for ornamental purposes because they do not produce fruit. How to tell whether you are growing male or female hops.
How do you recognize male hops?
Male hops have showy, yellow-green panicle-shaped flowers, while female hops have inconspicuous, cone-shaped spike-shaped flowers. Male hops are grown primarily as an ornamental plant because fertilized female hop fruits are useless for beer production.
Identifying a male hop plant by its flower
Unless the hops have formed inflorescences, you cannot see whether the plant is male or female. The genders can only be distinguished by the different flower shapes.
- Female flower spike in cone shape
- male flower in panicle form
- female flower inconspicuous
- male flower yellow-green and striking
If the plant is female, flowers grow on it that have a spike in the shape of a cone. The bracts are tightly closed and the flower is small and inconspicuous.
Conspicuous long panicles develop on a male plant.
That's why no male hop plants are grown
When fertilized by male plants, the hop fruits become unusable. They change their taste. The cultivated qualities of the female hop plant are lost.
If female flowers are pollinated by male ones, the beer made from the fruit will not later produce a head of foam.
If you want to process the hop fruits yourself, you should remove male plants as soon as the gender can be identified from the flowers.
Where male hops need to be removed
In areas where hops are grown for brewing beer, breeding male hop plants is prohibited. This is to prevent male flowers from fertilizing a female plant.
There you are obliged to remove male hops immediately.
Growing male hops as an ornamental plant in the garden
If the hops are only to be grown as an ornamental plant in the garden, gender does not play a special role. Both plants are suitable as a privacy screen or when cared for in a pot.
Propagate hops
You can almost only get female hop plants in stores. Male plants only appear when you sow the hops.
In commercial hop cultivation, the plant is only propagated via cuttings, so-called Fechser, or through root division.
This prevents the creation of male hops that have to be pulled out later.
Tip
Hops is the legal brother of cannabis. Unlike hemp, the fruits do not contain THC with intoxicating effects. Hops have a calming effect due to the lupulin that forms in the fruits and are also used for medicinal purposes.
