Marijuana Colors and What They Mean

Ever wondered about the difference in the colors of marijuana? Marijuana is green, but if you look close enough, the leaves will be different colors such as red, yellow, purple and blue. These colors are actually pigment molecules.

What are pigment molecules?

Pigment molecules come in many varieties from molecules such as porphyrins, carotenoids, anthocyanins, and betalains. These pigments come from reaction to light and physiological and biological functions. It sounds complicated, but an easy way to put it is if you see yellow leaves on your marijuana it is correlated with the same pigment molecules in sunflowers, which in this case would be carotenoids.

How Does Marijuana Choose What Color It Wants To Be?

Marijuana doesn’t really choose its color, but it cultivated by the season and temperature it is being grown in, specifically the flowering stage. People who grow marijuana can tamper with colors by adjusting temperature and light exposure, also known as the pH environment.

Marijuana grown in the fall or grown under “fall” conditions will have a yellow, orange, or gold color just like regular leaves and plants in the fall. For the famous purple color, marijuana has to be grown in neutral pH environments.

Other colors include red, pink and citrus. Marijuana will get citrus color from alkaline conditions which is a very high pH environment. Another cool color that you probably don’t see much of is black, which originated from fields of Vietnam, where there are extreme weather conditions.

There are other ways besides pH environments that marijuana gets color from and that has been accomplished by the introduction of LED lights. Used in the growing process, these lights create a more visually appealing color than normal.

There you have it. The different colors of marijuana is basically simple science.