Please be careful with your Tree of Heaven as it seems to be a host plant for the spotted lantern fly. Spotted lanternflies feed on the sap of a plant and when there are high populations of them, they can cause significant damage. They feed on over 70+ plants, including important forestry and agricultural crops. Spotted lanternfly was first discovered in the United States in Berks County, PA in 2014. It has since spread throughout 13 counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, which the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has designated as a spotted lanternfly quarantine zone. In 2017, spotted lanternfly was also found in Frederick County in Virginia. In 2018, three New Jersey counties (Mercer, Warren, and Hunterdon) were quarantined for spotted lanternfly.Both the U.S. and Pennsylvania Departments of Agriculture are working on control and eradication measures in the quarantine zone. Primarily, this involves removing their preferred host (an invasive plant called tree-of-heaven), and leaving “trap trees”, which are trees baited with insecticides to kill the spotted lanternflies.
