Field report — Speak for the Trees

June 25, 2026

(Lycorma delicatula) are at peak abundance across the urban core — over a hundred sightings since late March, with adults now feeding heavily on oaks and maples in Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Heights, and Lower Manhattan. The insects have spread from a focus point on Governors Island in late spring to establish themselves in clusters throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan within ninety days.

Their explosive presence here traces back to an earlier invasion. (Ailanthus altissima), which arrived in these neighborhoods in the 1700s as an ornamental, proved to be the perfect host plant for this invasive pest. Now the lanternflies' honeydew coats street trees in a thin film of sticky residue that fuels sooty mold blooms — blackening foliage on the very maples and oaks that neighborhoods have spent years establishing and maintaining. The ecological cost compounds: weakened urban canopy, pest populations exploding where natural predators are scarce, and no easy way to manage the cycle without broad toxin applications.

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nymphs (Lycorma delicata) are actively feeding on both sides of the Hudson this spring — a stark contrast to six years ago when the first individuals appeared here. What began as a curiosity has become a permanent fixture across the region.The lanternfly's success owes much to the landscape itself. (Ailanthus altissima) lines every weedy margin from Jersey City to Lower Manhattan — an aggressive non-native that provides unlimited food for this pest. The combination is ecological opportunity in its starkest form.There is still a narrow window for intervention. At this nymphal stage, before they develop wings and disperse, the lanternflies remain largely vulnerable to targeted management. Once they fledge in late summer, control becomes far more difficult.

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(Lycorma delicatula) has arrived as a permanent resident. Twenty-five research-grade sightings across the Boston region since early June — from Wellesley through the inner suburbs — suggest that egg masses overwintered locally for the first time. Until recently, these speckled insects appeared only as summer visitors drifting north from established populations farther south. Now they are here year-round.The presence of throughout the area has provided the foothold. This weedy woody plant, which thrives in disturbed ground across suburban Boston, is the lanternfly's preferred host. From here, the insects are beginning to move onto native fruit and timber trees — apples, maples — that formed the backbone of the New England orchard and forest economy for centuries. What begins as an incidental pest on an invasive weed threatens to become an agricultural problem.