Skip to Content

How To Tell If Your Yucca Plant Is Dying: 4 Things To Watch Out For

Sharing is caring!

None of us can forget the timeless beauty of the yuccas that grew in our grandmothers’ gardens, thanks to their pointed foliage and dramatic flower spikes. In fact, plant parents across the world today still love yuccas for their sense of style and hardiness.

That said, while Yucca plants are typically one of the easiest landscaping plants to take care of, they also do run into occasional problems. To ensure nothing serious could be happening to your yucca plant, you’ll need to learn how to tell if your yucca plant is dying or whether it’s simply going through a temporary phase it’ll grow out of.

How To Tell If Your Yucca Plant Is Dying 1
Dying Yucca – via Reddit

How to Tell If Your Yucca Plant Is Dying

Read on to find out several tips and tricks you can employ to ascertain whether or not your yucca plant is dying. I’ll also share solutions you can use to rectify the “dying” symptoms and get your yucca plant back to its thriving stage.

Sudden Decline

Did your yucca plant suddenly start declining in terms of its healthy and vibrance? If yes, chances are your plant has gone into shock because you took it through a sudden change in its growing conditions, either through transplanting or repotting. The shock could also be from a sudden and extreme change in the environment, which is usually the case if you just moved to a different place.

Thus, to avoid your plant dying from shock, you’ll need to avoid any drastic changes whenever possible. With that being said, in some cases, you’ll have no choice but to take your plant through extreme changes, such as when you realize that the plant has outgrown its container and needs to be transplanted outside.

In these cases, you’ll need to be careful when handling the plant to ensure you do not accidentally damage the roots. Furthermore, after transplanting the plant, you’ll need to give it all the love and care you possibly can to ensure it doesn’t completely die from the shock.

There is a Chalky Dust On Your Yucca Plant

If you notice any chalky textured dust coating your yucca plant while its health seems to be declining, chances are your plant is dying from an infection known as powdery mildew, also referred to as the most common fungi that strike indoor plants.

Even though your plant is already dying, panic not! Powdery mildew is arguably one of the easy to treat fungi once you have accomplished the essential step of identifying it.

After noticing the infection, the first thing you must do is change the growing conditions of your yucca plant since this is most likely what resulted in the problem in the first place. Perhaps what made the conditions conducive to fungal growth is you moved the plant to a location that did not receive sufficient ventilation or natural light.

With that in mind, relocating your yucca plant to wa well-ventilated area where it receives some direct sunlight is the first step to killing the fungus and speeding out the plant’s recovery process. Subsequently, please get rid of any dying, dead, or infected leaves on your yucca plant and get rid of them right away. Use scissors or pruning shears to cut off these leaves.

Getting rid of all infected and dead leaves helps you get rid of a significant source of fungus growth.

Next, ensure you disinfect and clean any leaves remaining on your plant by mixing one part mild hand soap with nine parts water. Use the solution to wipe down every individual leaf on the yucca plant. Feel free to follow this up with a cloth soaked in water to remove any other soap, residue, or debris.

Lastly, to confirm beyond a reasonable doubt that all fungal issues have been completely eradicated, repot the yucca plants into sterilized containers with fresh new soil.

How To Tell If Your Yucca Plant Is Dying 2
Yucca(?) plant dying – via Reddit

Wilting

As a plant native to the desert Southwest and southern Mexico, all yuccas need sufficient sunlight to thrive, and this usually implies no less than five hours of full, bright sun. Giving your plant an insufficient daily sun dose eventually causes the plant to start wilting, as it gradually declines in vitality and health. If you do not act right away, expect your yucca plant to die off entirely in the coming weeks.

With that in mind, if your yucca plant is wilting and you’ve been placing it indoors in low light or dim areas where it never received any direct sunlight exposure, try moving the plant close to a well-lit, bright window and see if the plant improves over the coming weeks.

Windows with southern exposure are the best for these sun-loving plants.

Droopy, Yellow Leaves

A point worth keeping in mind regarding planting yucca plants is that they thrive in dry conditions. If overwatered, these plants get root and stem rots which more often than not implies there is nothing you can do to revive the pant. The first sign that you’re overwatering your yucca plant and root or stem rot is starting to set in is usually yellow, droopy leaves or soft trunks.

So, if you notice any of these signs and suspect that your yucca plant is dying from root rot, here’s a guide you can follow.

If the roots are already rotted or damaged, your best bet will be to keep the yucca plant as dry as possible and see if the roots will begin to recover over the coming weeks. During this period, keep your watering sessions to a minimum until the yucca plant has sufficiently recovered and its roots have established themselves once again.

>> Related Post: How To Make Yucca Extract For Plants in 7 Easy Steps


Final Thoughts

Whether your yucca plant is bending over, wilting, drooping on its leaves, turning brown, or showing signs of drought and shock, there are good chances that the plant is dying. As such, I hope the tips, tricks, and solutions I’ve shared above can help you turn back your plant’s progress and get it back in its best shape.