Help! My Plant is Dropping Leaves

Help! My Plant is Dropping Leaves

I walked into my living room last Tuesday and found seven ficus leaves scattered across the hardwood floor. My heart sank. That panicky feeling of “what did I do wrong?” hit me immediately, and I know you have felt it too if you are reading this right now.

Leaf drop is honestly one of the most stressful things for houseplant people. It feels personal, like you failed somehow. But here is what I have learned after losing way too many leaves over the years: plants drop leaves for specific reasons, and once you figure out which one applies to your situation, you can usually stop the bleeding. Sometimes the plant just needs time to adjust, and sometimes you need to change something fast.

Let me walk you through the five most common reasons your plant is dropping leaves and what you can actually do about each one.

Transplant shock symptoms

I repotted my pothos about a month ago because it was completely rootbound, and within three days it started dropping perfectly healthy-looking leaves. I freaked out. Turns out this is completely normal, and I wish someone had warned me.

When you repot a plant, you are messing with its root system. Even if you are careful, some of those tiny root hairs get damaged. The plant suddenly cannot support all its foliage with a compromised root system, so it does what any smart organism would do. It drops the leaves it cannot maintain and focuses energy on rebuilding those roots underground where you cannot see the progress.

The thing that makes transplant shock tricky is that it does not always happen immediately. Sometimes the leaf drop starts a week after repotting, which makes you think it must be something else. I have seen it take up to two weeks for the shock to show up in my own plants.

What does transplant shock actually look like? The leaves usually turn yellow first, starting from the bottom of the plant and working upward. They might feel a little thin or papery before they fall off. Some plants like ficus will just drop green leaves without any warning yellowing, which is even more alarming but still normal for them.

If your plant is dropping leaves after a recent repot, here is what helped mine recover. First, I stopped fussing with it. No fertilizer, no moving it around, no checking the roots every other day. Just consistent care and patience. I made sure the soil stayed lightly damp but not wet, because damaged roots are more vulnerable to root rot. I also held back on watering a bit more than usual since the plant had fewer roots to drink up moisture.

The good news is that transplant shock is temporary. According to the University of Maryland Extension, most plants recover within four to six weeks if you give them stable conditions. My pothos bounced back and actually started pushing out new growth after about five weeks of looking sad.

One more thing I learned the hard way: do not repot in winter unless you absolutely have to. Plants are already stressed from low light and dry air, and adding transplant shock on top of that is asking for trouble.

Cold drafts and vents

My fiddle leaf fig sits near a window, and last January it started dropping leaves like crazy on just one side of the plant. The side facing the window. I could not figure it out until I put my hand near the glass one cold morning and felt the freezing air leaking in around the old window frame.

Tropical houseplants hate cold drafts. Most of our common houseplants come from warm, stable environments where the temperature does not swing wildly from day to night. When cold air hits their leaves, it can cause damage that shows up as sudden leaf drop.

The sneaky thing about draft damage is that it often looks like other problems. The leaves might turn brown at the edges first, or they might just yellow and fall off. Sometimes you will see brown spots that look like a disease but are actually cold damage.

Air conditioning vents cause the same problem in summer. I made this mistake with a calathea that I placed directly under a ceiling vent because that corner needed a plant. Within two weeks, the edges of the leaves were crispy and brown, and then they started dropping. Calatheas are already dramatic, but cold air blasting them made it so much worse.

Here is how to figure out if drafts are your problem. Pay attention to which leaves are dropping. If it is mostly on one side of the plant, especially the side near a window, door, or vent, you have found your answer. You can also do the hand test. Put your hand near where the plant sits and feel for cold air in winter or strong AC flow in summer.

Fixing this is straightforward but sometimes annoying. Move the plant away from the draft source. I know this is frustrating if you have limited space or if that spot has perfect light, but you might need to compromise. I moved my fiddle leaf about three feet away from the window and the leaf drop stopped within a week.

If you cannot move the plant, you can try blocking the draft. I have used rolled-up towels along window sills (very attractive, I know) and even repositioned furniture to redirect airflow. For AC vents, those magnetic vent covers from the hardware store actually work pretty well.

Research from the University of Georgia suggests that most tropical houseplants do best with temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees, and they really do not like sudden temperature swings of more than 10 degrees. Keep that in mind when placing plants near exterior walls or heating vents.

Above: A close up look at the symptoms.

Sudden changes in light

I bought a beautiful monstera from a local nursery last spring. It had been living in their greenhouse under 70% shade cloth, getting perfect filtered light all day. I brought it home and stuck it right in my south-facing window because I thought more light equals happy plant. Wrong. It dropped four leaves in ten days.

Plants are weirdly sensitive to light changes, even changes that seem like upgrades to us. Going from medium light to bright direct light is actually stressful. The leaves that grew in lower light conditions are not built to handle intense sun. They do not have enough protective pigments or thick enough cell walls, so they get sunburned and the plant drops them.

The opposite happens too. If you move a plant from a bright spot to a darker corner, it will often drop leaves because it cannot support that much foliage with less light energy coming in. It is doing math you cannot see, calculating how many leaves it can maintain with the available light.

I learned this the hard way when I rearranged my living room last fall. I swapped the positions of my rubber plant and my snake plant, thinking I was being smart about their light needs. The rubber plant was not happy about going from the bright corner to medium light and dropped three lower leaves over the next month.

The frustrating part is that you cannot always undo a light change. Sometimes you have to move a plant because of life stuff like new furniture or seasonal light shifts. What I do now is make light changes gradual when possible. If I need to move something to a brighter spot, I do it in stages over a couple weeks, moving it a few feet closer to the window every few days.

If you already made a sudden change and the leaves are dropping, just give it time and keep everything else stable. Do not also change your watering schedule or fertilizing routine. Let the plant adjust to the new light level, and it will stop dropping leaves once it acclimates. This usually takes three to six weeks based on my experience and what I have read from various houseplant resources.

One thing that helps is knowing which plants are more sensitive to light changes. Ficus varieties are famously dramatic about this. So are most calatheas and prayer plants. On the flip side, pothos and snake plants tend to roll with light changes pretty easily.

Underwatering drop

Okay, I have killed plants from underwatering and I am not proud of it. Last summer I went on a two-week vacation and asked my neighbor to water my plants. She forgot. I came home to a peace lily that had dropped half its leaves, and a spider plant that looked like a sad mop.

Underwatering leaf drop looks different from other types. The leaves usually get crispy or papery before they fall. They might curl up or feel brittle to the touch. The plant often looks wilted overall, not just dropping individual leaves. With my peace lily, the whole thing was drooping dramatically (they are good at drama) before the leaves actually detached.

The tricky thing is that underwatering and overwatering can sometimes look similar at first because both cause leaf drop. The difference is in the texture. Underwatered leaves feel dry and crispy. Overwatered leaves usually feel soft and mushy and might have brown or black spots that look wet.

Here is what I did to save my underwatered plants, and what actually worked. First, I watered them thoroughly but not frantically. I did not drown them trying to make up for lost time. I just gave them a good drink until water came out the drainage holes, then let them be. The next day I checked if they needed more and watered again if the soil was dry.

For severely underwatered plants, bottom watering helps because the soil can get hydrophobic when it dries out completely. Water just runs off the surface instead of soaking in. I put my peace lily pot in a tub of water for about 30 minutes and let it soak up moisture from the bottom. You can see the soil darken as it rehydrates, which is oddly satisfying.

After rehydrating an underwatered plant, do not expect it to bounce back overnight. My peace lily took about a week to perk up and stop dropping leaves. Some of the damaged leaves never recovered, and I eventually trimmed those off once the plant was stable again.

The key to preventing underwatering is honestly just checking your plants regularly. I know this sounds obvious, but I have a bad habit of assuming they are fine. Now I do a quick round every few days where I stick my finger in the soil of each plant. If the top inch or two is dry and the plant likes consistent moisture, I water it. I keep a little notebook (okay, it is a note on my phone) tracking when I last watered each plant because my memory is terrible.

According to research I found from Iowa State University Extension, most houseplants do better with consistent moisture rather than wet-dry cycles, though there are exceptions like succulents and some cacti that prefer to dry out between waterings.

Above: The tools you need to fix this.

Acclimating new plants

Every time I bring a new plant home, it drops at least a few leaves in the first month. Every single time. I used to think I was doing something catastrophically wrong, but now I understand this is just what happens when you move a plant from one environment to another.

Think about what a new plant goes through. It was probably growing in a commercial greenhouse with perfect humidity, consistent temperatures, and ideal light. Then it got shipped to a store, sat under fluorescent lights or in a random corner for who knows how long, and then came home with you to your dry apartment with different light and temperatures. That is a lot of change.

My calathea dropped about eight leaves when I first brought it home, and I was devastated. But then I talked to someone at my local plant shop who told me this is completely expected. They called it the “adjustment tax” which I think is a perfect way to describe it.

New plant leaf drop usually happens within the first two to four weeks. The leaves might yellow first, or they might just detach while still green. It often starts with the older, lower leaves because the plant is prioritizing the newer growth that is better adapted to your home conditions.

Here is my system now for helping new plants acclimate, which has definitely reduced the amount of leaf drop I see. When I bring a plant home, I put it in quarantine away from my other plants for at least two weeks. This is partly to watch for pests, but it also gives me a chance to observe how it reacts to my home without immediately stressing it further by putting it in its permanent spot.

I try to match the conditions it came from as closely as possible at first. If I bought it from a greenhouse, I know it is used to high humidity, so I might put it in my bathroom for the first week where the humidity is higher from showers. Then I gradually move it to where I actually want it to live.

I also resist the urge to repot immediately unless the plant is in truly terrible soil or the pot is broken. I know the nursery pot is ugly, but that plant is already stressed from moving. Adding repotting on top of that often causes more leaf drop. I usually wait at least a month, sometimes two, before repotting a new plant.

The most important thing is to not panic when a new plant drops leaves. As long as it is not dropping ALL its leaves, and as long as you are providing decent care (appropriate light, not overwatering, reasonable temperatures), it will likely settle in and stop dropping leaves once it adjusts. My calathea that lost eight leaves in the first month has been perfectly stable for the past year and has even grown new leaves.

One last thing I learned from the Missouri Botanical Garden resources: some plants are more sensitive to change than others. Ficus trees are notorious for dramatic leaf drop when moved. Crotons and gardenias are also sensitive. Meanwhile, pothos, philodendrons, and snake plants usually transition easily with minimal leaf loss.

Give your new plant at least six weeks to settle in before you decide something is seriously wrong. Most of the time, the leaf drop will taper off on its own, and you will see new growth starting up once the plant feels at home.

References

University of Maryland Extension. “Transplanting Trees and Shrubs.” https://extension.umd.edu/resource/transplanting-trees-and-shrubs

University of Georgia Extension. “Growing Indoor Plants with Success.” https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=B1318

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. “Houseplant Care.” https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/houseplant-care

Missouri Botanical Garden. “Houseplant Care Guide.” http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/help-for-the-home-gardener/advice-tips-resources/visual-guides/houseplants.aspx