Hey Rusty, I know what your talking about.

I've been taking various leaves off of my plants throughout the last couple of weeks and have been wondering some of the same questions.

My experience is that when you are able to gently "pull" a leaf off of the plant, the plant was ready for it to go. If you look at where the stem of the leaf connected to the main stalk, you will see that there are no tears, or "open wounds" on the plant or the leaf itself, it kinda looks like the leaf had almost been glued to the plant and fell back off......kinda hard to explain.

So I'm pretty sure that when you pull/cut a leaf before it reaches that stage, you are trying to do something that the plant isn't yet ready to do itself; therefore stressing it. So, the reason for not pulling/cutting a leaf would be to avoid stress. Not to mention, like Perp said, fan leaves are where our buds get a lot of their "energy."

As for removing a fan leaf to expose other bud sites? I agree with you, I feel that it is beneficial, not detrimental, to lose a leaf to gain a bud site. Acknowledged, I may be ass-backwards on this logic.
norkali Reviewed by norkali on . Removing leaves from plant... Many, many moons ago, I was always taught not to 'clip' the leaves, but to gently pull them down, so they virtually peel themselves off of the stem. If you didn't break any part of the the leaf's stem, (or any other part of the plant) it was removed correctly. But, I can't remember why I was taught this. I think it was all about the growth at that internode, or something like that. What are the benefits of carefully removing the leaves versus what happens when you just break-off, or Rating: 5