For gardeners, the offer seems too good to be true: Twenty tree seeds for just $4.68, the ad on eBay says, roughly 24 cents for each tree that grows from planting them.
There’s a catch: The tree is the tree of heaven, a weedy tree that grows abundantly along highways and country roads, in vacant city lots and suburban parks, and on the edge of parking lots, farm fields and woods.
Its long, fern-like fronds resemble sumac, and its leaves emit an odor like burnt peanut butter when crushed, or when the tree flowers, earning it the common nicknames “stink tree” and “varnish tree.”
Related
Hope grows in lanternfly-killing fungi found near Berks fruit farm
A native of China and Taiwan, the tree of heaven, or Ailanthus altissima, has flourished in Pennsylvania for more than 200 years, brought to the United States by a wealthy Philadelphia botanist for his lavish gardens in 1785. It has spread to at least 44 states, often growing in clusters, its roots producing suckers that bloom into trees as well. A female tree can produce 300,000 seeds a year, according to the Penn State Extension.
It’s not even great firewood. The wood burns well, according to one poster on Answers.com, but “the smoke doesn’t smell very good so I like to mix in some maple and cherry lest I offend the neighbors.”
Even the eBay seed seller, a Florida business, admits in its ad, “Those who know this tree know it is anything but heavenly.”
Now a recent discovery has made it even more notorious: It is a favorite food of the spotted lanternfly, an Asian sap-sucking insect that has infested part of Pennsylvania.
Discovered in District Township in 2014, its first sighting in the U.S., the bug has spread to 14 southeastern counties, as well as three additional states: New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia. In Pennsylvania, the pest, a voracious eater, has killed grape vines and hops, and threatens the state’s $18 billion grape, tree fruit, hardwood and nursery industries, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
So Pennsylvania has taken a step it never had taken: It recently named the tree of heaven to its noxious weed list, an act spurred by the spotted lanternfly plague, officials said.
The state’s Controlled Plant and Noxious Weed Committee, a 14-member panel of legislators, horticulturists and representatives of state agencies and nursery owners, voted unanimously April 25 in Harrisburg to put the tree on the list.
Once simply an advisory panel, the committee was given the power to name invasive plants to the list in 2017 by an executive order issued by Gov. Tom Wolf, an order that followed the state Legislature’s repeal and revamping of the state’s old noxious weed law. Previously, only the Legislature could name a plant to the list.
It’s noxious; so what?
The vote allows the state to stop the sale of Ailanthus altissima trees and seeds, according to Shannon Powers, a spokeswoman for the state Agriculture Department.
The revamped noxious weed law also gives the state the power to order property owners to remove plants on the noxious weed list, through their municipalities of residence. But Pennsylvania has never used that power, and doesn’t intend to use it to force landowners to remove the trees, Powers said. It would be too costly for landowners to remove clusters of trees.
“The department has never taken this step, as invasive plants like tree of heaven are so prolific this kind of order would be burdensome,” Powers wrote in an email to the Reading Eagle.
However, the state will stop the sale and import of tree of heaven, as it does with other plants on the noxious weed list, according to Powers. That is helpful in the fight against the spotted lanternfly, said Heather Leach, a spotted lanternfly expert at Penn State.
The tree officially will be a noxious weed 60 days after the committee’s vote is published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, which has yet to occur.
“Preventing more tree of heaven is important in the fight against the spotted lanternfly,” Leach said.
The noxious weed committee’s action at least will warn the public about the tree, said Fred R. Strathmeyer Jr., deputy secretary of the Ag Department and a committee member.
“It’s certainly brought more light to the tree of heaven,” Strathmeyer said.
Other than online purveyors, no one sells tree of heaven trees in Pennsylvania, industry authorities said. After William Hamilton, the wealthy Philadelphia gardener, brought seeds to the U.S., the tree was sold as a hardy shade tree for city parks and streets in the 1800s, but today it has “no economic value in our industry, virtually none,” said Gregg Robertson, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association, and a member of the noxious weed committee.
It’s not in demand among Pennsylvania gardeners, said George Weigel, a gardening blogger based in central Pennsylvania.
“No gardener I know of says, ‘Say, where can I buy one?’ ” Weigel said. “No one even likes that tree.”
Role as pest’s host
The tree of heaven once was thought to be necessary for the spotted lanternfly to lay eggs, a notion based on field observations and a South Korean study. But the study cited no experiments that proved it, according to Kelli Hoover, an entomology professor and researcher at Penn State.
Hoover will determine the tree’s importance in the life of the spotted lanternfly at an outdoor field lab in Longswamp Township this summer. A smorgasbord of 500 trees preferred by hungry spotted lanternflies, including the tree of heaven, silver maple and willow, has been planted at the site to study the bug’s feeding habits and egg-laying.
The Ag Department has urged property owners to remove clusters of female trees and use a few remaining males as “trap” trees in a statewide effort to control the spread of the spotted lanternfly. It’s a strategy the department has adopted when removing the trees from the sides of highways and other public areas: Inject a systemic herbicide in the remaining male trees to poison the feasting insects.
The Ag Department is watching a Berks County tree removal program that could be a model for approaching the tree of heaven problem in Pennsylvania.
The Berks County Conservation District is killing female tree of heaven trees on 20 selected properties this summer and using male trees as traps. The effort, funded by a $150,000 grant from the Ag Department and $20,000 from the county budget, asks landowners to volunteer, rather than submit them to the mandates allowed under the state’s noxious weed law.
Teams from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture will check tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles for spotted lanternfly quarantine permits at state police roadside checkpoints, the department announced Wednesday.
The goal is to convince businesses that don’t have permits to comply, according to the Ag Department.
The department began issuing the permits in 2018 to businesses that travel in and out of Pennsylvania’s quarantined counties. Currently 14 counties, including Berks, are in the quarantine area.
Almost 370,000 permits have been issued by the department.
You can wrap sticky bands of tape around tree trunks to catch spotted lanternfly nymphs that are feeding on your tree.
Sticky bands are available at garden stores and online, or you can use duct tape wrapped with the sticky side out.
Follow these steps offered by the Penn State Extension:
Place bands tightly around trunk about 4 feet from the ground.
Secure the bands to the tree with staples or pushpins.
To reduce the chances of capturing small birds or other creatures, cut commercially available bands in half or in thirds, or place chicken wire or mesh guards over the tape.
Check bands once a week.
For more information and a how-to video, visit the Penn State Extension website at extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly-banding.
