Ficus disease identification and treatment

[jesse_Wg]

Hi there, I've got a ficus ?retusa? that I've had for a number of years now and generally has been going well. Over the last 6-12 months it appears to have developed an issue, maybe a fungal infection. I first noticed leaves turning yellow and dropping, then realised on the underside of many of the leaves was some brownish discolouration. After some extensive googling I was unable to find what may be the cause and was hoping someone might be able to help. Please see photos for reference.

[image]https://www.flickr.com/photos/38628281@ ... ed-public/[/image]
[image]https://www.flickr.com/photos/38628281@ ... ed-public/[/image]

[legoman_iac]

Mine often drop an old odd leaf here and there, I wouldn't be worried about a random yellow leaf falling.

Re: spots underneath ... bit hard to see from the pic. Tree looks generally healthy to me. But I'm a ficus newbie really.

Keen to hear what others say

[jesse_Wg]

Thanks for your reply. I've had it for a number of years and generally had yellowing leaves here and there so totally aware that's generally normal, but this is definitely more than a few random leaves here and there, with some branches almost fully stripped now. Still seems to be reasonable health and a couple of branches I've been growing out were going okay, but still had a milky colour under leaf though which didn't appear normal. Can take some more pics if needed.

[Keep Calm and Ramify]

Hey jesse_WG,
Around 7 years ago I had what I believe to be a fungal attack on one of my large figs. Leaves turned patchy black to brown & yellow & eventually fell off. More so than normal seasonal leaf loss. Pic below.

DSCF3582.jpg

Unfortunately then branch ramification was lost as branches seemed to then shrivel and die off completely.

fig2.JPG

I had to cut all the effected branching off back quite hard

DSCF3584.jpg

DSCF3586.jpg

The only thing that eventually helped the decline was a good drenching of lime sulphur spray - fully covering complete tree but not allowing to get into the soil too much. (It took quite a while for healthy shoots to form back on the older wood - even some of the new buds seemed to be damaged at first)

DSCF2503.JPG

I feel this problem may have been caused from too much water / moisture being held in the potting mix. It was through the winter months. Hope this is of help.

[jesse_Wg]

Thanks KCaR that's helpful. Looks potentially quite similar and I might try a similar approach. Only difference with my experience is I don't think it's from over watering, especially as it's ongoing and middle of summer now. But I'll maybe use a bit of lime sulphur and cutback of most affected limbs and see how it goes.

[tgward]

as above but also check the drainage - lots of hassles start under the surface

[Sno]

It looks like it has spider mite .

[dansai]

A suggestion to help with future posts, upload pictures directly to the site. They need to be under 1Mb so usually need some form of compression. My photo app lets me export as Jpeg and I put it at high quality and large size and they get under the 1Mb limit. Others email them to themselves. Email programs usually have sn option to compress images to keep file size down.

As to your issue, lots of leaves yellowing and falling off can be an overwatering issues, usually seen by the end of winter. This definitely looks like something else. I haven't seen spider mite on Figs, but it looks like something to consider. I would consider a pest issue as the first thing to investigate and treat for. At this time of year you can fully defoliate a fig and get a good response back. Its not usually considered good to do on an unhealthy tree, but the leaves look like they won't be contributing much to the health of the tree anyway.

[jesse_Wg]

Thanks for the further input. Re: images I had tried to insert into the post itself but was having issues and wasn't able to. Maybe because the images were too large...?

Interesting re: spider mite. Looks possible. Might give it a bit of a hit with lime sulphur and see how that goes but otherwise defoliate if no success. Annoyingly was previously in a house where the possums did that for me about a year ago! Will definitely glove up if doing that though as I know there's a few spiders who have made homes in it!

[paul d]

Have you checked for scale. After a while they will leave black sooty mould. A indication would be ants.

[jesse_Wg]

Have had scale on some other plants but generally seems clear of scale and no ants either, but gee it can be annoying!