Is Your Ficus Dropping Leaves?

Is your ficus dropping leaves, or is a massive number of its foliage turning yellow, or both? If that’s the case, you’d better find out the reason together with proper curing solution soon. Otherwise, delaying will weaken your tree or even kill it.

Many reasons can result in dropping leaves of ficus trees. I show popular scenarios and according solutions to solve the problems. You can consider one by one seeing which case your tree falls into.

Abrupt change in environment

Ficus are quite fussy plants, and they don’t like change. Shedding of leaves may be a reaction to excessively change of environmental aspects such as temperature, light, etc.

If you’ve recently repotted or moved your tree to a new location, its leaves dropping is quite understandable. In those cases, just take care of the tree carefully, and it’s most likely to recover in a few weeks.

In another situation, a temperature change of even 5 to 10 degrees will cause the leaves to drop off rapidly. If the plant is moved from one room to another and the leaves start falling off, move the plant back to the original area.

Ficus trees do not like air-conditioning, so make sure the ficus tree is located in a warm room with bright but indirect sunlight. A window that receives full sun in the morning and indirect light in the afternoon is an ideal location for a ficus tree.

Over-watering

Ficus trees don't like too much water, just enough to keep them slightly moist. Over-watering make root rot and leaves turn yellow prior to dropping.

Try asking yourself how much water you pour into your tree recently, and how frequent it is. Besides you, anybody else could also accidentally water your plant further so that it gets soaked?

If you are doubt about improper watering, just check moist level of the soil by sticking your finger about a half of an inch to an inch into the soil to feel it. Another way is checking the hole for drainage at bottom of the pot to see if there’s any water leaking out.

In case soggy soil is the reason, withhold watering for a few days, wait for the soil drier, and check if situation is improved. You may want to repot your ficus to make the soil dried up quicker.

Insect or pests attack

Insects that can attack your bonsai tree leading to ficus dropping leaves. In many cases, the attacking should leave a trace depending on the insect type, and you may even be able to see the little critters.

Spider-mites for instance are very small sap sucking insects that will attack trees. These are hard to see but their presence is detected by the fine webbing around the foliage they leave.

If you can identify evidence of insect infestation an insecticide is the way to go. Insecticides can be found that are not harmful to humans or animals which is important if your bonsai tree is an indoor one, or simply if you do not like harsh chemicals.

Diseases

Fungal and bacterial infections can happen, resulting to ficus dropping leaves, especially to bonsai trees that are not in good health to begin with as they are weak to attack and infection. A viral infection is most commonly detected by distorted or discolored growth leaves and flowers, growth can be abnormally stunted and the plant can die back.

Immediate treatment should include the removal of all infected growth, you will also want to keep an infected plant from infecting others by keeping them separate. When all infected shoots and leaves have been removed the healthy foliage should be sprayed with a fungicide to prevent further infections.

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