Fiddle Leaf Fig: shock from being moved — what does it look like?

Leaves drop within days to two weeks of relocating, repotting, or a seasonal light change. Often the lower leaves first, often without yellowing. Usually survivable if you leave it entirely alone in bright indirect light and resist watering. The intervention kills more of these than the move does.

Fiddle Leaf Fig: root rot — what does it look like?

Dark brown or black spots starting at the leaf edge or center and spreading, plus leaf drop. Soil wet more than a week after watering. Distinguish from shock by the spotting. Brown spots plus wet soil is rot, and by the time the spots are widespread the roots are largely gone.

Fiddle Leaf Fig: insufficient light — what does it look like?

Long bare stem with leaves only at the top, small new leaves, no growth for months. Rarely kills outright but leaves the plant unable to use the water it is given, which causes the rot that does kill it.

Field Guide/Fiddle Leaf Fig

What went wrong

Fiddle Leaf Fig

Ficus lyrata

Notoriously dramatic. Will punish you for rearranging the furniture.

The fiddle leaf fig is the most-mourned plant in this catalog and it has earned the reputation. It responds to change — any change — by dropping leaves, and because leaf drop is alarming, its owner responds by doing something. That something is usually more water, which converts a survivable sulk into terminal root rot.

The cruelty of this plant is that its correct response to distress is to do nothing at all and wait. Almost nobody does nothing. It is very hard to sit and watch leaves fall off an expensive plant and simply not intervene.

Usually one of these

3 Likely Causes

Ranked by how often it is actually this.

01
Shock from being moved
The signature failure
What you saw
Leaves drop within days to two weeks of relocating, repotting, or a seasonal light change. Often the lower leaves first, often without yellowing.
What it means
Usually survivable if you leave it entirely alone in bright indirect light and resist watering. The intervention kills more of these than the move does.
02
Root rot
Very common, usually secondary
What you saw
Dark brown or black spots starting at the leaf edge or center and spreading, plus leaf drop. Soil wet more than a week after watering.
What it means
Distinguish from shock by the spotting. Brown spots plus wet soil is rot, and by the time the spots are widespread the roots are largely gone.
03
Insufficient light
Chronic rather than acute
What you saw
Long bare stem with leaves only at the top, small new leaves, no growth for months.
What it means
Rarely kills outright but leaves the plant unable to use the water it is given, which causes the rot that does kill it.

The question you actually have

Dead or dormant?

Snap a small twig from the top. Green and flexible inside means alive. If the top is dead, work down the trunk with a thumbnail scratch — many fiddle leaf figs die from the top down and resprout from a live lower trunk. A trunk that is brown and dry at soil level is done.

If it did not make it