Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 Like locusts or the European gypsy moth, spotted lanternfly is a genuine threat. Same for hops and grapevines and fruit trees. Lanternfly can kill a tree outright, or stress it to the point where it dies over time. Stand at the foot of a mature maple when lanternfly are feeding and you’ll be showered in “honeydew,” the sugar poop that destroys the forest floor, the understory, with reeking sooty mold stinking of vinegar and molasses. Lanternfly feed most successfully on another invasive from Asia: Ailanthus altissima.Įven in tony suburbs like Lower Merion, outside Philadelphia, the bug covers the trees. This they can do by the thousands or tens of thousands. They drain nutrients from the plant, and excrete sugar water. To feed, they unfurl their mouth parts and penetrate the phloem, or vascular tissue, of the tree or vine. Below-average fliers, but decent gliders and hoppers. In every stage from nymph to adulthood, this is a stunning bug. Spotted wings, often a silvery blue-gray, a sort of iridescent gunmetal, with a bright red-orange flamenco petticoat beneath. Spotted lanternfly: Lycorma delicatula, ruinous and beautiful, the size of your thumb and a destroyer of worlds. Three of our team went out there and found spotted lanternfly.” They had heard us advise, ‘If you see something unusual, give us a call.’ They noticed a smell and a lot of insects around some tree of heaven. “Our entomology team received a phone call from an employee with our game commission. “It’s a day you don’t forget.” Dana Rhodes is the state plant regulatory official for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. They found the first spotted lanternfly on September 22, 2014. Southwest end of the Lehigh Valley, just up from Reading. His daughter Laurel now manages Bower & Branch. “I told my kids, all six, that are actually the owners now, that they shouldn’t plant another tree” unless they had a direct connection to retail customers. That year, he explains, “I went 100 percent trees and topiary as a strategic long-term move, which we’re enjoying today.” He also started Bower & Branch, the family e-commerce enterprise. He used to grow what he describes as “A to Z”-shrubs to perennials and trees. In 2010, after the recession, Don saw a business opportunity. First seen in Pennsylvania in 2014, it has infested five other states. The four-winged multicolored, polka-dotted adult is as distinctive as it is destructive. “Over my 35 years, I’ve watched the industry go from independent garden centers, who were and are still my customer base, to where 85 percent of the market is now with mass retailers.” Eaton Farms does not sell to the big chains. It’s a high-risk crop because there are threats. “That means I have to plant four crops before I get to sell the first one. “Our average production schedule today is probably at 48 months,” he says. Now he works the farm and the business with his wife, Kathy, and their six children, all of whom live near enough that the 16 grandchildren are around too, helping in the potting shed and whooping and chasing each other through the rows. The footer on his emails nods to the Bible, the Book of Luke, “Keep your hand on the plow.” Late 50s, sandy hair going gray, big handshake. Eaton Farms is surrounded.ĭon Eaton is a big man, a tall man, wide and high as a doorway. It is a pretty place.īut Don Eaton is in trouble. If you look straight up you see the blue sky. There’s a creek down in the bottoms and the place smells of flowers and sweet water and clean earth. There’s birdsong and the breeze in the leaves and you can hear your footsteps one to the next to the next. Here in the rows it’s peaceful, just enough shade to ease the heat. Salix alba “Tristis.” Liriodendron tulipifera. Redbud and sweetgum, chokecherry and crabapple, hornbeam and plum. Every day the nurseryman rises and prays and walks the rows of his trees.
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