ehhh, ive got some hairy hairy beasters that totally sucked.

Chaos, I think you're looking at plants in two different stages. First the plant grows under 18 (or more) hours of light per day, and it just grows tall with lots of leaves, branches etc. This is called the vegetative stage. Then, when you cut back to 12 hours of light per day, it starts growing buds. This is the flowering stage.