Canopy

Canopy

Canopy is a term used in cannabis and hemp cultivation to describe the upper layer of a plant, where leaves and flowers form a more or less continuous surface and receive the most light.

More about Canopy

The canopy is where the plant catches most of its light, so its shape plays a big role in how the plant develops. A tall, uneven canopy leaves the lower parts in shade, while an even canopy spreads the light more uniformly across the top of the plant. Large fan leaves make up much of this layer during the growth phase, and later the flowers and sugar leaves take over.

The term is used especially about indoor cultivation, where the distance to the light source is fixed. In that context, the word often appears alongside plant training methods such as Low-Stress Training (LST), topping and SCROG (Screen of Green), which all describe ways of shaping the plant's top layer.

Where the word comes from

Canopy is not a cannabis-specific term. It is used broadly in botany, forestry and horticulture, and many know it from descriptions of the rainforest canopy, the dense top layer of the forest. The word goes back to the Greek kōnōpeion, a bed with a mosquito net, and has come to mean a covering layer overhead.