Check these first
- What colour are the spots, and do they have a yellow halo?
- Are there concentric rings or a mosaic pattern?
- Are the spots only on leaves, or also on stems and fruit?
Most likely causes
From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.
Rust
Small raised orange-yellow to red-brown pustules form on both leaf surfaces, then rupture and release powdery spores. Heavy infection yellows the leaves and kills them early.
How to identify and treat: RustAnthracnose
Light brown to dark brown round lesions with sharp margins form on leaves and fruit, slightly sunken in the center. In wet weather salmon-pink slimy spore masses ooze out on the lesions.
How to identify and treat: AnthracnoseLeaf Spot
Small round brown to gray-white lesions appear on the lower leaves, the centers turning gray with tiny black specks. As they multiply the leaf yellows and drops early.
How to identify and treat: Leaf SpotOther possible causes
- Late Blight — Dark green water-soaked lesions appear on the leaves and expand quickly into brown dead ti…
- Brown Leaf Spot — Small light brown to gray-brown spots form on the leaves and enlarge into irregular lesion…
Other symptoms on this plant
What other growers did about it
A page like this one can tell you what shiso leaf spots is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.
Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.
- Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
- Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
- Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.
Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.