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Aug 22, 20202 min read

Spotted Lantern Fly and Ailanthus Trees

Spotted Lantern Fly is yet another threat to our local trees. It is an invasive species from Eastern Asia. Its main attraction is to the Ailanthus tree or " tree of Heaven or Paradise". This tree is so miscommonly identified as Sumac that a common name for it has become Chinese Sumac. 90% percent of people I run into think they have a Sumac tree. The problem is that these tree spread some many seed pods so rapidly and that they grow so fast. They in turn get into our natural hardwood growths and overcast them at a quicker rate than our native trees can grow. They are very hard to kill and unfortunately requires chemicals applied to the root system to completely kill them. The only known solution is to try Quarantine this species of bug to stop the spread. Removing Ailanthus trees has always been a good move but now more than ever. This is not a new problem but people in Winchester have been made more aware of this since The Winchester Star printed an article about it. If everyone removed their Ailanthus trees it would definitely help curve the spread. This is not a reality since not everyone is aware, unwilling to pay for "unnecessary" tree removal or simply don't care. Even if everyone removed these trees it would still fall on the state to remove hundreds of thousands of these trees. Ailanthus are super prvelant along highways and unmantanned areas. Bottom line is the Winchester Virginia area will have a lot of tree suffer as a result of the Spotted Lantern Fly. Here of some useful links to help identify Ailanthus trees and the Spotted Lantern fly.

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