Aloe vera: lower leaves turning yellow

What it is likely to be on aloe vera

1. Root rot

   Candidate 1very common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Succulents — cultivation

   Checked 2026-08-13

   The consequence of prolonged waterlogging rather than an independent event: water moulds that are present in most soil and compost become active when roots are deprived of air, and colonise tissue that is already dying. The treatment is therefore the watering, not the fungus.

   Points towards it

   • · an aloe holds weeks of water in its own leaves, so wet compost is surplus to anything the plant can use
   • · the lowest leaves sit against the wet surface and go first
   • · an aloe on a windowsill in a decorative pot is the usual case

   Argues against it

   • · the compost is dry, so the roots are not drowning — a dry aloe is thirsty, and withholding water would make it worse — this rules it out entirely.

   Check this next

   Squeeze a yellowing leaf near where it joins the plant, and judge by what it feels like rather than what it looks like. Aloe tissue that is soft, translucent and gives under the thumb — sometimes with a sour smell at the base — is rotting from too much water; the same leaf yellow but still firm has not.

   What to do now

   Stop watering immediately and move it somewhere bright and airy so the compost can dry right out. If the base of the plant is already soft, cut the healthy top off above the damage, let the cut surface dry for a few days until it has sealed, and set it on fresh gritty compost — an aloe roots readily from that and will not recover with a rotten base.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancehigh confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Succulents — cultivation

   Checked 2026-08-13

2. Underwatering

   Candidate 2common on this plant

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Succulents — cultivation

   Checked 2026-08-13

   Easier to correct than overwatering and easily confused with it, because a plant short of water and a plant drowning both wilt. The distinguishing observation is not the plant at all — it is the compost, and it takes two seconds to check.

   Points towards it

   • · the compost has been dry long enough that the plant has begun drawing down its own reserves
   • · a succulent living off its reserves thins everywhere at once rather than losing one leaf

   Argues against it

   • · the compost is wet, so the plant is not short of water — this rules it out entirely.

   Check this next

   Look at the cross-section of the leaves from the side. A thirsty aloe goes thin, dished and slightly wrinkled with the edges curling inward, and the yellowing comes with that shrinkage — the plain fact that the leaf has lost volume is what separates it from every other cause on this list, all of which leave the leaf the same size.

   What to do now

   Water it thoroughly until water runs from the base, then let it dry out completely before doing it again. An aloe that has been dry for months takes a few weeks to plump back up, and the oldest yellowed leaves will not recover — judge the recovery by the firmness of the newer leaves in the centre instead.

   ·source

   Sourced guidancemoderate confidence

   • Royal Horticultural Society: Watering houseplants

   Checked 2026-08-13

Narrow it down

This page lists everything at once, which is the right shape for reading and the wrong shape for deciding. The interactive tool asks one question at a time, starting with whichever would separate these causes fastest, and stops as soon as further answers would not help.

Opens with the plant and the symptom already set. Nothing you answer is stored or sent anywhere — the answers live in the address bar and nowhere else.

What this does not cover

These are the causes GrowingHQ holds rules for on aloe vera — not every cause there is. Where several problems look alike, the honest answer is often that they cannot be told apart by eye, and a page that named one would be guessing. If none of the above fits, the general lower leaves turning yellow page lists causes across all plants, and the Aloe vera profile lists the problems it is prone to.