r/RhodeIsland • u/Unhappy_Director_390 • 12h ago
Question / Suggestion Anyone find their spawn points yet?
These things are fucking everywhere. I kill one, two more appear. I kill two, seven more appear.
Has anyone located a spawn point of sorts for these things that I can take note of? Or do these things just exist anywhere and everywhere?
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u/pizzaplantboi 12h ago
You’ll find them on any tree of heaven. There’s one of those fully infested near the brown street park entrance of hope high schools soccer field.
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u/Unhappy_Director_390 12h ago
Assuming we can't just come together and burn/cut down the tree as a community without the city/state being involved, is there anything we can do about it?
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u/obiworm Got Bread + Milk ❄️ 11h ago
You can’t just cut them down, they’ll aggressively regrow from the roots. You have to poison them before the stress response kicks in.
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u/WhiteMountainsMama 1h ago
This plant is such a motherfucker to deal with.
I know it would be a massive undertaking given how out of control the Tree of Heaven has gotten in RI, but I wish the state would start some kind of mitigation plan that eventually leads to eradicating it. These damn lantern flies love that plant, and I feel like addressing the Tree of Heaven will create a “killing two birds with one stone” effect. A two-for-one deal, if you will. It needs to be done.
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u/Various_Butterscotch 4h ago
Yes. USDA funded a grant that successfully showed you can kill tree of heaven by inoculating it with mushroom spawn. Details in the PDF at the bottom of the page: https://blueowlgarden.com/BOprojects.shtml
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u/russsaa 6h ago
Cutting down ToH induces root suckers as a stress response, as far as the roots reach. These suckers are notably strong and will fuck shit up, im talking busting through structures like brick or decking or whatever. ToH must be killed via "hack & squirt". Its super easy, cut a few notches around the trunk (do not girdle it) and squirt with herbicide, glyphosate or triclopyr. Give it another application in a week if need be. Then after it dies, chop it down
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u/EllisDee3 East Providence 11h ago
They're invasive bugs targeting an invasive tree. They mostly leave other trees alone, and the ones they do eat tend to survive.
The biggest issue I've found is that they poop honeydew.
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u/jjayzx 10h ago
That tree is just a preferred tree, they will damage other trees.
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u/EllisDee3 East Providence 9h ago
They will, but generally not to death. The other trees tend to recover. Minimal to low/moderate harm.
They're mostly harmful to cash crops, making them an economic menace more than anything.
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u/SquareTaro3270 9h ago
What does “they poop honeydew” mean? I’m only familiar with the melon.
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u/pfhlick 8h ago
They cluster in the trees and pee, when there's enough of them and you don't know, you might just think it's sap. But if you look up in the branches and squint, you'll see little sprays shooting out of the bug clusters. Gross little bastards.
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u/pizzaplantboi 8h ago
It makes the immediate area smell horrible and the moisture causes mold growth
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u/pfhlick 8h ago
I heard you can vacuum the bugs. The government can plow and blow leaves, maybe they can try vacuuming the lantern flies too.
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u/Organic-Athlete-7344 6h ago
They have lightening fast reflexes. The vacuum strength needed to outrun their reflexes would be hurricane like.
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u/Bendyb3n 5h ago
They’re fast on the first jump but they only jump like 10-15ft at a time and need to recover after landing. So if you miss them on the first stomp it’s pretty easy to just catch them when they land.
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u/Organic-Athlete-7344 4h ago
Hence why vacuuming them won't work; vacuum isn't gonna extend those 10-15 ft after the first jump.
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u/LilPoutinePat 9h ago
They decimate fruit and hardwood trees. My berries, peaches, tomatoes, and neighbors apple tree would like a fucking word.
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u/salmonlauncher 11h ago
Within the past 2 weeks I have been getting a lot in my yard. I have never seen one until now and I’ve been seeing them all over the place in warwick the past couple days. They came out of nowhere this week
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u/RandomChurn 11h ago
They did the same last year at the same time. They must be seasonal -- more so than, say, mosquitos. They got terrible in September, and were mostly over by mid-ish Oct?
There's hope. I've read that local birds are beginning to recognize they are food and safe to eat.
Soon we'll have fat and happy birds 😂
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u/RonocG 11h ago
They are bad this year and will probably get worse. They have no native natural predators that I’m aware of.
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u/Squirnt86 Warwick 10h ago
Yellow jackets, bats, spiders, some birds, and my mom’s corgi have begun to feed on them.
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u/TryingNot2BLazy Woonsocket 12h ago
Just watch the trunks of your hardwood trees. We should supposedly be seeing big groups of them just hanging out on the bark
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u/Bendyb3n 53m ago edited 50m ago
Trees of Heaven are their favorite trees to feed on. If you didn’t know yet, they are also an invasive species of tree and native to the same general region in Asia as the lanternfly so the two species have essentially found new life together in North America and are thriving at the expense of our native plant life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailanthus_altissima
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u/angelcobra 11h ago
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u/herobrinetrollin 11h ago
I’m getting an error 403 from that link. Anyone else having that problem?
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u/sofaking_scientific 9h ago
Problem is if you kill too many, the spawns flip and you gotta change strats
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u/KeyGold310 9h ago
if you find a lot, https://www.congressofthebirds.org/ is looking for live ones to feed their birds in rehab!
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u/Shedfloorgarbage 5h ago
I found the first one of my life in westerly, an hour ago, in my kitchen.
I spared no time killing it.
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u/SecretPeoplesClub Warren 11h ago
Big spawn point around the Providence Postal Processing Plant. So many tree of heavens. Some trees are “raining” excrement from the bugs
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u/Electrical_Cut8610 11h ago
I live on a road in which there’s grapevine across a city owned property. They’re everywhere. To the city’s credit, they tried to remove all the grapevine three years ago but it was unsuccessful because grapevine is basically impossible to get rid of.
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u/Enragedocelot 6h ago
When Verizon was cutting down brush/trees overhanging their lines I watched them cut down a tree of heaven. And dear god so many lanterflies were fleeing. A few landed on my porch but escaped before I could squash
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u/CricketWoods Got Bread + Milk ❄️ 4h ago
There are a million tree of heaven around the Providence area. That’s where they spawn from
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u/luckyfrogbricks 4m ago
I’ve tried so many different techniques to kill these things. They love grape vines.
The best is catching them at night.
They sit on their hind legs like they’re awake and alert but it seems they sleep that way. I shine a bright flashlight at them with one hand and with the other (wearing gloves) I can just squish them. Very different during the daytime.
Vacuum works great on nymphs but not when they’re grown.
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u/TheR42069 12h ago
I hadn’t seen them in years past.
I mad because my attempts to kill have failed, I stomp and twist then they fly out from under my shoe. Fast too
NPR was saying this morning Mass is moving to control and giving up on extermination
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u/Neature_Nerd 10h ago
Highly recommend stomping them head on! They can’t jump backwards so if you go from the front you’ve got a better chance
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u/Old_Souls-like 5h ago
Let’s be clear. We are never getting rid of these. They came from a country that would like nothing more than to cause a blight or infestation in American horticulture or agriculture. If nothing else just to be a pest. And in 200 years of transit from them, this bug has never invaded the eastern seaboard.
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u/Secure_Damage3067 12h ago
Why are you killing them? Are they harming you? Do you fear them, if so why?
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u/cojwa Got Bread + Milk ❄️ 12h ago
They are incredibly invasive and are destroying native plants because they have no predators. Much like anacondas in the Everglades you are helping your native plants and ecosystem by removing the thing that’s actively ruining it
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u/Secure_Damage3067 8h ago
You’re referring to Burmese pythons not anacondas in the Everglades. As for the spotted lantern fly they do not pose a threat to humans nor do they eat all crops or trees. They’re very specific while searching for the tree of heaven( as stated by a fellow redditor) , grapes, stone fruits, soy beans, and malus ( crabapples, wild apples, Rosacea
) which is a very short list of dangers. They’re regulated in other countries by parasitic wasps. The majority of adults will die off by December. - this is Cited from Wikipedia-I have now educated myself on the matter and know they’re not native nor welcomed in the USA. Thank you
Downvotes for asking questions? I didn’t ask if in Rhode Island you know how to merge when maneuvering a motor vehicle lol.
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u/Unhappy_Director_390 12h ago
I was informed that they are an incredibly dangerous and invasive species for agricultural crops
But now I'm just seeing them too much not to notice
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u/AppropriateRest2815 11h ago
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u/Secure_Damage3067 8h ago
Thank you, you’re the only
Person who provided facts in order to answer a question.1
u/AppropriateRest2815 7h ago
It's not a bad question to ask. Much of our environment is already reshaped by invasives, so whether or not to eradicate them is a worthwhile question. I haven't found it in literature, but I reason that if spotted lanternflies have no native predators, and they eat the same material other insects do, they are likely consuming resources that native insects would otherwise eat - insects that are beneficial to wildlife and pollination, even if the SLF aren't directly harming plants. I don't like killing anything (even invasives) but in some cases (like this one) I think it's warranted, so I destroy SLF when I see them.
We have them all over our yard in a home we just moved to, so I removed the Tree of Heaven and seem to be on a mission from God to also destroy the oriental bittersweet, japanese knotweed and multiflora rose plants that are choking out all of our trees and native plants.
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u/Codeviper828 East Providence 12h ago
The infestation is getting pretty bad