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For the past two weeks my yucca has been looking sad. It's drooping and hanging over. I have given it a reasonable amount of water and it's pretty sunny out there.

What should I do?

sad yucca

Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
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nowox
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2 Answers2

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These are pretty tough plants and generally only two things go wrong:

  • not enough light: foliage can grow too heavy for stem and flop over
  • too much water: roots rot and the stem dies from the bottom up

The foliage still looks good but you should check the stem. Grasp it firmly and check at a few places to see if the bark is still attached. This plant can die from the roots up. When it does the bark detaches from the main stem while the leaves are still green.

The stems that have flopped over are not going to return to an upright position.

With either problem you should cut the green offsets off near the stem. Let dry for a few days and put the stems in a mix of potting soil and sand or perlite. Keep the medium moist and they should be ready to pot up in four to six weeks.

With the main plant if the problem is over watering then it will dry up and can be gotten rid of. If the issue is not enough light you can move it closer to a window and wait for three or four weeks for it to bud out new growth.

kevinskio
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  • Eventually I cut the stem and kept the small ones. The center of the stem was greenish at the top and circularly brown at the bottom. This confirm your hypothesis, the plant had too much water :( – nowox Sep 05 '16 at 13:57
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Get it out of the house and plant it outside. Give it plenty of sun and water in the spring and summer. Yuccas are not really houseplants. If it freezes where you are, bring it in for the winter then back out in spring. I live in N. Calif. and mine are sending up tall bloom stalks right now, Oct. 5, 2018. They get about 7-8 feet tall and have white bell-like flowers that hang down. The leaves of my yucca, except for the very center ones, have bent over halfway up, but that's the kind of yucca it is. I'm trying to remember the name of that particular yucca that I have. Started with one but now have many large clusters. I believe they are blue yucca gloriosas (perhaps "pendula")