It was my first avocado tree’s first winter when a couple leaves started getting yellow veins. Oh no, what disease was this?

I sent a photo to a seasoned avocado grower and he wrote back, “This is leaf senescence. The leaf is just dying naturally.”

With this post, I hope to calm your worries or clue you in when the leaves on your avocado trees take on unexpected appearances.

This is a small gallery of photos of avocado leaves along with explanations of why they look the way they do. Many of the photos were taken in my yard but some were taken elsewhere.

Learning to read the leaves of your avocado trees can help you care for them, and it can help you just relax and appreciate their stages of life.

Let’s start from the beginning.

New, red avocado leaves

red new avocado leaves

Don’t let the red shock you. While these are among the reddest new avocado leaves I’ve ever seen (they’re on a seedling tree), all new avocado leaves are reddish. That’s just the way they grow (even in the wild).

Adolescent, lime green avocado leaves

healthy adolescent and mature avocado leaves

. . . with mature, forest green avocado leaves

As the new, red leaves age they become light green and then deep green once mature.

If all is healthy with the tree and the soil below, then the leaves’ color will be uniform, not blotchy.

Old, yellowing avocado leaves

yellowing dying leaves Fuerte avocado

But at the end of their lives, avocado leaves begin to yellow, starting with their veins. The look could alarm you, as it alarmed me. The above photo shows dying (“senescent,” say the botanists) leaves on a Fuerte avocado tree.

yellowing dying avocado leaves Reed

These leaves on a Reed avocado tree are farther along in the aging process. They will drop any day now. This is their natural end.

So . . . from red to lime green, to forest green, to yellow: that’s the colorful cycle of life for an avocado leaf.

Here’s video of avocado trees in my yard in May of 2021, showing leaves in all natural stages:

Yet things can go wrong along the way. And when they do, avocado leaves sometimes turn color but other times pattern, shape, or size.

Avocado leaves damaged by mites

That’s the speckled look of avocado leaves when the tiny critters called mites have been feeding on them. Depending on the type of mite, the dots can be distributed across the whole leaf or concentrated near the veins. Flip a leaf over to find the mites underneath doing the chewing.

persea mite damage avocado leaf underside
Feeding on the leaf veins like this indicates persea mites.

Sometimes you can even see their silvery webbing. (See this page for information on identifying and managing avocado mites.)

Mite damage can mimic damage from other leaf stresses, such as when temperatures get too cold.

Mottled, cold-damaged avocado leaves

mottled bronzed avocado leaf from cold damage

Cold damage forms little dead spots between the veins and all over the leaf. There’s no yellowing, and the spots are dark brown. Some people refer to it as bronzing. It’s a mottled, pixelated look that comes from nights that are too cold for comfort but not so cold as to kill the whole leaf.

Avocado leaves killed by cold, frost

avocado leaves frost cold damage

If the temperature gets low enough, then leaves start to die. Young leaves like these are most vulnerable. After a frost kill, they appear black and curled; they look burned, ironically.

(For tips on preventing this, see my post “Protecting avocado trees from cold.”)

Bleached, sunburned avocado leaves

sunburn damage leaves Pinkerton avocado

These leaves have actually been burned. At first they bleach to a yellow like the leaf in the lower right, but if the sun and heat is too intense, then they brown and die. Temperatures usually need to be well over 100 degrees to cause damage to the leaves of a healthy, well-watered avocado tree, in my experience.

Avocado lace bug

If sunburn is mild, then it can appear spotty on the leaves, especially young leaves. However, if avocado leaves have brown, dead spots — about the size of your thumbnail — on leaves throughout the tree’s canopy, then they are likely caused by the avocado lace bug.

(Note that this leaf also has mite damage.)

Look at the underside of such a leaf and you’ll likely find black specks.

The black specks are the lace bugs’ eggs, plus they excrete a black substance over some of their eggs. The lace bugs themselves can also be black or more tan or white colored. (See this page for more photos of avocado lace bugs and their damage. And see this page for details on avocado lace bugs, as well as management strategies. The latest research on avocado lace bug in California is posted by UC Riverside entomologist Mark Hoddle here.)

Wilting, dull, thirsty avocado leaves

drooping dull thirsty leaves Sharwil avocado

When avocado trees are thirsty or stressed because of extremely high heat their leaves droop, sag, wilt. (Note: The leaves of citrus trees cup upward when thirsty, but avocados do the opposite.)

The above photo shows a young Sharwil avocado tree that is signalling thirst. I took the picture, then I watered it, and then I returned fifteen minutes later and took this photo:

turgid shiny hydrated leaves Sharwil avocado

Scroll back up and down to compare. After watering, the leaves rapidly became turgid, stiff, and shiny. When you read these leaves, you read hydrated, happy.

A little drooping from momentary thirst is no big deal. Worse for avocados is leaves drooping from constant soil saturation.

Pale, overwatered avocado leaves

This little Fuerte tree has been watered too much too often, and because of that its leaves are showing this sign: pale green leaves.

If this tree were to continue to be watered too much too often, such that the soil stays constantly wet, it would end up looking like this next Fuerte tree.

Notice that the leaves are few, and the leaves are pale green and small. These are classic symptoms of a tree that is growing in heavy soil and that is watered too much too often. Its roots are rotting.

In heavy soil, an avocado tree should be planted on a mound, and the mound should be covered with a thick mulch. This helps provide the airy environment that avocado roots need. (See my post, “How to plant and stake an avocado tree.”)

Drooping old avocado leaves during bloom and new flush

Another reason that avocado leaves droop is during flowering, which is mainly in spring and which is also accompanied by the growth of new avocado leaves. I’ve always thought of it as looking like the old leaves are getting out of the way of the flowers and new leaves.

Here is a Reed avocado tree with droopy old leaves during spring flowering and flush:

Avocado leaves with tip or margin burn from chloride salt in irrigation water

tip and margin burn of avocado leaf from chloride in irrigation water

You shouldn’t see many of these leaves on your tree in spring through summer. They appear in fall once the chloride in the irrigation water that we use in Southern California has accumulated in the soil and tree. (It can also be partly due to not watering enough.) The leaf burn gets worse through winter, and then the tree sheds the burned leaves and replaces them with new ones in spring.

(More on this: “Avocado leaves turning brown? Here’s why and what to do.”)

On the other hand, here in the spring you’ll see . . .

Avocado leaves chewed by bugs

avocado leaves eaten by earwigs or June bugs
These Carmen leaves were chewed by earwigs.
June bug eating avocado leaf
These Gwen leaves are being chewed by a June bug.

To find out who is doing the munching (it might also be slugs, Fuller rose beetles, grasshoppers, and more), check the tree with a flashlight at night. That’s when most critters chew avocado leaves.

(Also see my post “Who is eating holes in your avocado leaves?”)

But if you see the tips of leaves curled:

Then unfurl. You might find aphids in there or you might find a caterpillar and its frass:

Three kinds of caterpillars that commonly do this on avocados are the leafroller (amorbia), looper, and orange tortrix. No matter which you find, as long as you’re not spraying poisons on or near your tree then natural enemies such as birds, spiders, flies, and lots of other bugs and parasites should keep these caterpillar numbers down.

Some avocado leaves can look as if they’ve been affected by a pest or disease or stress when the fact is that they can’t help it — they look funky by nature.

Wavy leaf margins on avocado leaves

wavy margins of leaves Pinkerton avocado

The leaves of all avocado varieties look as unique as their fruit. The above leaves with undulating edges belong to my Pinkerton tree, but Sir-Prize and Nimlioh can have similarly wavy margins.

Upturned, cupped, taco-shell shaped avocado leaves

Another set of avocado varieties has leaves that are often folded up like a taco shell. The above photo shows leaves on a Holiday, but you’ll find the leaves of Lamb doing the same pose.

What could it mean if leaves in one part of the tree look different from leaves in another?

Rootstock leaves

Look closely at this photo and you’ll see that the larger, greener leaves on the left all emanate from a branch that is attached to the trunk way down low — below the graft union.

(See my post “Your fruit tree is grafted — Why? And so what?”)

Usually, you’d want to cut off such a rootstock sucker immediately, but this is a friend’s young Fuerte tree, and I proposed using them to graft on additional avocado varieties instead. The tree now has branches of Reed and Lamb growing on it. It has become a three in one. It will have three sets of different-looking avocado leaves on the tree plus three sets of different avocado fruit. Is that making lemonade out of lemons?

Final Exam

There are many other looks to avocado leaves, but let’s end with the reality that most of the time leaves show a combination of characteristics. Here’s an example you can quiz yourself on. What is happening with this avocado leaf?

Why the yellow? Why the dots? Why the burned tip?

Here’s a video showing some of the above types of avocado leaves:

You might also like to read my post:

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