trees of heaven in the heat
Last year I wrote meanderingly about lanternflies and the City’s attempts to contain the threat. The invasive planthoppers threaten fruit trees and, in turn, economies and agricultural prospects. The threat has only grown. “Summer is the perfect time to relax outdoors with a nice New York Riesling,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer in a recent request for federal funding, “but the rapid spread of the invasive Spotted Lanternfly threatens to suck the life out of our vineyards, agriculture, and great outdoor tourism industry.”
I have no way of knowing the official count, but I’ve seen many more this summer. I killed a nymph in Prospect Park, dismounted my bike at a crosswalk to squash an adult, crushed one on Pier 45 as it crawled up my shirt. They litter downtown sidewalks like half-crumpled shapes made from origami paper.
Lanternflies meeting their end on New York sidewalks is the result of international supply lines, eggs brought from Asia in shipping containers. But as global warming makes itself known in enormous catastrophes—one-third of Pakistan is flooded; the Colorado River is disappearing; the Northeast is heating faster—these small, ghostlike bugs make fitting harbingers of general disaster.
The lanternfly’s favorite tree, also invasive, is the Ailanthus altissima, which was brought to the US from Asia via Europe. A nasty consequence of 18th-century chinoiserie, its flowers reek of rotting meat, it secretes toxins into the soil to keep other plants from growing, and it puts out huge networks of root suckers, from which it can clone itself indefinitely. It must be uprooted by hand. Its common name is the Tree of Heaven.
Walking up to my apartment, I see a lanternfly on the outside of the stairwell window. I can’t reach around the window bars to kill it, so I just stand there, looking at it. I imagine reaching through the window somehow, the pane going viscous at the touch. Or smashing through it and snatching the insect in a fistful of forewing and glass. Those things, of course, I cannot do. So I stand there, sweating and futile, staring at damage and its dull, gray wings.
ben tapeworm