If you have a jasmine plant, you may have noticed that the leaves are starting to turn red. This can be alarming, but it’s actually quite normal. Here’s why your jasmine leaves are turning red and what you can do about it.
Although most jasmine plants will maintain a uniformly dark green leaf color throughout the growing season, certain plants may experience problems associated with a disease or nutritional shortages that cause the leaf color to change to a dark red. Below, we list each of these.
But there is a good-to-know exception to this rule, except for the Confederation jasmine plant, sometimes called Star jasmine. During the growing season, its leaves naturally transform into deep crimson or sometimes even maroon hues. This is a natural occurrence for our Star jasmine, and you should not worry.
Even when young, Confederate or Star jasmine Tricolor plants have pink to deep crimson foliage, which gradually changes to intense green with white spots over time.
Red leaves can be seen on fully grown plants, reflecting seasonal changes in climate. Its leaves may revert to their original dark red color by the end of the year.
In contrast to other varieties of jasmine, this one keeps its leaves and flowers intact all year long. If your Star jasmine has crimson leaves, don’t worry; this is normal.
Red leaves on your jasmine plants can be caused by a variety of factors.
In this article, we discuss several causes for the red leaves of jasmines besides Star jasmine. Temperature, nutritional deficits, soil pH imbalance, illness, insufficient water, and fungal infections are common reasons. We’re taking it one step at a time with these.
Lack of Nutrients
The reddening of your jasmine’s leaves may be attributable to factors besides temperature, such as a lack of nutrients, and may necessitate your action to remedy it. Low phosphorus levels are the most prevalent nutritional deficit.
Phosphorus is essential for the growth of roots and flowers, but if it is absent or insufficient over time, it can appear in leaves. A nitrogen deficit often doesn’t induce leaf reddening, so that’s a big difference.
One solution is to begin applying phosphorus-rich fertilizer at the close of summer or the beginning of autumn. In this approach, we may get our plants ready for the cold season.
Cold Temperature
It’s possible that the cold weather that often occurs in the spring is the reason why the leaves become crimson. Assume it is early spring and the evenings are starting to cool off, not to the point of freezing, but still in the low 40s to low 50s Fahrenheit (4-10 degrees Celsius), which is too chilly for your jasmine.
You have to understand that jasmines, being of the tropical or subtropical kind, like relatively constant temperatures of around 70 degrees Fahrenheit with moderate humidity. The temperature is one of the most crucial factors in their growth circumstances.
This means that cold weather is a major environmental stressor that affects how leaves retain their form and color. To survive in colder weather, when photosynthesis is less effective, jasmine plants adapt to temperature stress by shutting down or lowering energy consumption.
This is the plant’s attempt at a defensive posture.
After 2–5 days of temperatures more in line with the jasmine’s preference, the cold stress should subside and the leaves should return to their regular green color.
A lack of water
We’ve all been there. Perhaps we should have given our jasmine plants a good soaking before we left, but we were too busy getting ready for our trip. Perhaps our buddy was too busy to stop by while we were gone to water the garden as planned.
The weather may have turned extremely dry for a few days or weeks, cutting off the plant’s access to enough water. For the same reason that the earth dried out rapidly, so will the leaves, eventually becoming a crimson color.
It is crucial that you take measures to avoid this, such as checking the soil’s moisture content by placing your finger in it or investing in a humidity probe, both of which can be found online. Keep in mind that jasmine plants don’t fare well in soil that is too compact or too damp; this might cause the roots to rot and kill the plant.
If you come back from a trip to discover your jasmine plant with crimson leaves withering, give it a good, steady soaking, but don’t let it sit in water for too long at a time. Always check for moisture levels and make sure there are no puddles where water may sit.
pH imbalance
In the spring, when we often rework the soil beds by mixing in new compost that is either more acidic or has a higher concentration of clay, we frequently create a pH imbalance in the soil.
The soil’s pH may become somewhat unbalanced, becoming either too acidic or too alkaline. If the soil is too acidic or alkaline, your plant won’t be able to absorb the nutrients. Even if your new bedding has all the necessary nutrients, we still have a nutrient problem if your plant isn’t able to absorb and utilize them as efficiently as it should.
A pH strip, available from any testing facility that deals with swimming pool pH and the like, can help you keep an eye on the level of acidity in your water and spot problems before they become serious.
Soil pH may be readily determined by taking a small sample, mixing it with water and stirring, then dipping the sample into a pH strip test and comparing the resulting color to the color bar on the box. If your soil is either too acidic or too alkaline, you now know how to fix it.
Don’t panic if you find that the soil is indeed acidic. All that’s needed is a little bit of acidification with some elemental sulfur, aluminum sulfate, or diluted sulfuric acid. The key to success with this method is to take a minimal approach.
Water with a pH of 2 is the standard delivery medium for aluminum sulfate. One can either make do with a weak solution of sulfuric acid or dilute it more. Direct, trace amounts of elemental sulfur would be introduced to the soil.
To quickly reduce the soil pH, combine a small amount of sulfuric acid or aluminum sulfate into a large container of water (about a gallon), then pour the resulting solution over the soil surrounding your plants.
Whether you’re not sure how much of an effect it will have on the soil’s acidity, start with a smaller amount of water and keep measuring the pH to determine if you need to do it again. We’re shooting for a pH of 6.5 to 7, which is slightly acidic to neutral.
You might also counteract the alkaline pH of the soil by adding new compost with a pH 7 which is roughly what we are aiming for. Test the soil pH by combining it with some neutral soil and measuring it again. If it is between 6.5 and 7, return the mixture to the plant.
Disease
Several diseases might be damaging your plant, but root-knot nematode is the most prevalent cause of red leaves. Meloidogyne hapla and Meloidogyne incognita are two species of root-knot nematodes.
An example of one of these nematodes is a type of soil parasite that thrives in damp environments. Nematode larvae will infest your jasmine plants’ roots, causing knot galls and starving the plant of nourishment. If there is a nematode problem, the leaves will begin to turn red, and the flower output will drop drastically.
This, essentially, will manifest as many root knots at the plant’s base. The roots of your plant will appear to be tangled when you lift it out of the ground.
As a result, the plant’s normal mechanisms for taking in the necessary nutrients are stymied as the roots get clogged and damp. Phosphorus, once again, will be the key nutrient to be impacted by this illness.