Plant diagnosis quiz

What is the plant doing that worries you?

Pick the thing you noticed first. If two apply, start with the one that spread fastest.

• Leaves are turning yellow
• Brown, crispy tips or leaf edges
• Drooping or wilting
• Spots, webbing, sticky film, or white fuzz
• New growth is small, pale, or stretched out
• Leaves are dropping

Push a finger two knuckles deep into the soil. What does it feel like?

Do this at the edge of the pot, not right against the stem.

• Wet or soggy Soil clings to your finger and stays compressed.
• Evenly damp, not wet Cool to the touch, crumbles when you rub it.
• Bone dry Dusty, and the soil has shrunk away from the sides of the pot.

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Now check the base of the plant and the smell of the soil.

Squeeze the stem just above the soil line and lean in close.

• Sour, swampy smell, and the stem is soft or mushy at the base
• Smells like plain soil, and the stem is firm

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Which leaves are affected?

• The oldest, lowest leaves, one at a time
• Several leaves at once, or the newest growth at the top

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Where exactly is the brown?

Hold a leaf up to the light and follow the edge of the brown with your eye.

• Only the tips and outer edges, the rest of the leaf is green
• Spreading in from the leaf base, soft or dark at the edge
• The whole leaf is crisping, and the pot dries out within a day or two

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Look under the leaves and where each leaf meets the stem. What do you see?

A phone camera zoomed all the way in works better than your eyes here.

• Fine webbing, and the leaf surface looks speckled or dusty
• White cottony fuzz tucked into the joints
• Small brown bumps you can scrape off, and a sticky film below them
• Tiny black flies hovering over the soil Nothing on the leaves themselves.

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How much light does the plant actually get?

Stand where the plant stands at midday. If you cannot read fine print there, it is a dark spot.

• More than eight feet from a window, or a north-facing window
• Within a few feet of a bright window
• Right in a hot, unshaded south or west window Leaves may feel warm to the touch by afternoon.

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When did the dropping start?

• Right after a move, a repot, or a cold snap Includes being placed under an AC vent.
• After the soil stayed wet for a while, and leaves yellowed first
• After the pot dried out completely at least once
• No obvious trigger, just the older leaves, slowly

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