lol this is normal, and when i say this im not joking. Within my biology class at school my professor refers ot this as "Death" a cycle plants go through do to light limitations to lower foliage. When the plant grows vertically and starts to produce large fan leaves it shades the lower branches and leaves (round ones you talk about). This cause's the photosynethesis within the lower leaves to be trastically be reduced, cause of shading from higher leaves/branches. And as well all should know leaves do both photosynthesis and cellular respiration to produce food and growth respectively, and when the lower leaves are not photosynthesising enough to keep up with cellular respiration demand they begin to degrad and die. this is known as the Death Cycle in plants, when lower leaves cant photosynthesis (make sugar) enough to keep up with cellular respiration (growth using sugar). sorry for repeating not sure if this makes sense to someone reading lol. This is why lower growth dies. Actually there is a system of measurement for the ability of a plant to have more of a death cycle than others by having larger top foliage surface area then the surface area the plant is taking up. When this is mathimatically figured out a ratio of 5-7 is usually found, every agriciltural plant is based on this ration, a plant with a ratio of 7 means it has a good overall growth with very minimal death cycle, this is good for agriculture so the whole plant developes. Using this system of measurment i have found weed to be near 8-10 with a 4gallon pail and full grown plant. This means that it will have good overall growth but be slightly higher on the death cycle than the 7's. Anyway back to your question, the degridation of the lower circular leaves is totally normal, those are usless leaves onces you get the 3/4 leafs forming. Why keep small usless leaves alive when a plant could shed them to make bigger leaves and produce more sugars to keep up with the cellular respiration demand. If no one knows what im talking about when i say cellular respiration or photosynthesis (blasphemy if you dont know) then please look this up and stop growing till you do you wont regret it
Mcnea
ask for more info if you need on death cycle and ratios
sorry for spelling