Is it okay to cut off my plant's ugly leaves?

Are you allowing abscission or going for aesthetics?

Photo by Huy Phan via Unsplash

One of these days I’ll take a picture of all the dead leaves I collect on my weekly watering round. Depending on the time of year, I’ll have a whole pile of dead leaves once I’m done watering.

Many plants, such as Pileas and Ficus, drop their dead leaves and you’ll find them on the ground or in the pot. Other plants, like Alocasia and Calathea, will hold on to the dried, shrivelled leaves for much longer.

But what about cutting off leaves that are dead or dying, that have brown spots or simply look “ugly”? Is it okay to cut them off for aesthetic reasons?

Abscission

Even though we tend not to think of them as such, our houseplants are not all that different from the trees we see outside our windows. And just like deciduous outdoor trees drop their leaves every year in fall, so do our houseplants (but: on a different schedule, usually).

This process of dropping leaves is called abscission. It happens for various reasons, not all having to do with the changing seasons. Sometimes a plant or tree will drop leaves in response to a predator, because of drought or—a big one for houseplants—because of overwatering.

Most frequently though, your houseplant drops its leaves simply because it’s done with them. A leaf has served its purpose, the plant is catching enough light with its remaining leaves, and lets the leaf go.

What’s pretty cool about abscission is that in the process of separating the leaf from the rest of the plant, useful nutrients that were still stored in the leaf are sucked back into the plant.

When in the fall you see the leaves of deciduous turn different colours, you’re actually seeing this process of abscission—and of sucking the nutrients back—in action.

Similarly, when you watch the leaf of a Pilea peperomioides develop some browning at the edges, which increases more and more before the entire leaf goes brown and drops—that’s the plant taking all of the useful nutrients out of the leaf back into the plant.

5 lessons I learned taking care of houseplants

When to cut off the leaves of your houseplant

As I said, some plants drop their leaves naturally. If a leaf hasn’t dropped but looks like it’s ready to, you can gently tap it. If it falls off on its own accord, the plant has taken all of the nutrients out.

Otherwise, you can wait until the leaf and the stem (if a leaf has one) have gone brown and crisp, before cutting the leaf off, like in the Philodendron below.

A brown and dry leaf AND stem of a Philodendron verrucosum

But I think they’re ugly!

I get it. Once we take houseplants home, they stop looking quite as manicured and perfect as they were when you bought them—for the simple reason that you don’t live in a highly controlled environment.

It can be really quite disappointing when a plant starts looking differently from when you bought it. But unless it’s changing because it’s struggling, I try to see this as the plant developing character.

It’s like buying a new bag. At first, it’s perfect, with no scuff marks. Then you start using it, and it gets dirty. Your pen might run and leave an ink stain on it. You might have to fix a small hole where you snagged it. But all of these things are also character: they show that your bag is being used and loved, it’s evidence of all the places you’ve taken your bag—much like changes in your plants show that they are living creatures, adapting to sharing a space with you.

But I really think dying leaves are really, really ugly

Okay, here’s what you do. If you can’t accept “ugly” leaves on your plants, you can cut them off. Do remember, however, that by doing so you are taking away nutrients from your plants, and making it harder for your plant to soak up light and grow.

A rule of thumb I once read in a houseplant book suggested cutting off no more than a third of a plant’s leaves. If you cut off more, you have a good chance of killing it.

Other reasons for leaf drop

Plants don’t just drop leaves because they’ve served their purpose. They can also drop leaves because you’re overwatering. Sometimes it can be hard to spot whether that is the case. A good thing to look out for though is what the leaves look like once they’re dropped.

Are they crisp and brown? Then you’re probably dealing with “natural” decay. If they’re soggy, and sometimes more yellow in colour, however, you’re most probably dealing with overwatering.

Finally: when you have pests on your plant, please do cut off the affected leaves. If you wait for them to fall off on their own accord, you’ll also give the pests more time to spread. Try to quarantine your plant, and keep a close eye on it.

Do you cut the leaves off your houseplants or do you wait until they drop off? And how do you feel about your houseplants developing character?

Currently

Continuing to experiment with watering globes, and developing a theory about the link between watering and whether or not leaves (of Philodendron and Strelitzia, for instance) unfurl.

Noticing the effect of cooler temperatures on my plants after the heatwaves we’ve had (they need less water, for one).

I loved reading Dan’s post on overwatering houseplants, especially his reflection that houseplants “are reluctant guests here, and most of the time are at their happiest when left well alone”. Read the entire post here:

Killing with kindness