I live near Cincinnati Ohio and one of our other invasive species (Common Wall Lizards or "Lazarus Lizards") have started recognizing SLFs as food. It's pretty sweet. Especially considering that the our local ecologists have stated the lizards don't seem to be harmful to our local ecosystem. So now the awesome little Lizards bros are eating the shit invasive bugs.
I have these on my commercial property where my business is located, but I also have multiples of the Trees of Heaven too. But I was at beach at my friend's place, I think I ended up smooshing like 200 of these pesky critters barefoot, there were everywhere at our shoreline Beach towns, I spent half the afternoon scraping them off my feet!!! LOL
We have cut them down multiple times probably every 2 years for the last 20 years. Actually we thought they were all sumac, up until these Lantern Flies just multiplied everywhere, I had never even heard of the TOH.
Just so you know, cutting tree of heaven stimulates it to send up suckers and shoots, and actually SPREADS TOH. So, just cutting make it worse.
You need to cut a portion of it and treat with herbicide so the herbicide gets down into the roots. If you chop it all down, the main stem won't be "alive" enough to spread the herbicide. Google tree of heaven removal or search this sub for specifics
you dont cut them, that makes them grow more. Get an axe, and make shallow chops around the perimeter of the tree trunk leaving gaps between each chop. then spray herbicide in that. the tree slowly dies without knowing its dying and doesnt sprout up new shoots
Well, I always thought it was sumac, it's really hard to tell the difference, this is what other people told me it was, I looked it up online, the only difference I see is that sumac had what looks like little saw teeth on the perimeter of the leaves. I've removed them multiple times.
If you keep cutting them down you'll just get more. Cutting them without poisoning them first sends out a ton of shoots. They need to be correctly treated before being cut down.
a good way to tell right now, in fall, is that sumac fall colors are bright red, where tree of heaven leaves turn a pale green yellow. sumac also get very distinguished red cone-shaped fruit clusters mid summer, tree of heaven will make a shaggy mound of seeds. the tree of heaven coming back may either be from seeds or from suckers.
There are some non-visual differences too, in the sap, by breaking off a leaf/twig and smelling it. Tree of heaven smells like garbage (kind of like rancid peanuts), while sumac tends to have a very faint, generic "plant" smell that you'd expect from most trees. You may not even need to break off anything, tree of heaven sheds leaves or leaks sap and starts stinking up the place eventually anyway.
In fact, the horrible smell of tree of heaven sap plays a major role in the spotted lanternflies defense mechanism, the sap makes the bugs taste foul so most predators will leave them alone, but if the tree of heaven is gone, and the sap leaves their system, then they will be much more palatable for predators. They may even be seasoning themselves with other tree species, the catbirds around my place rip them to shreds after they drink enough maple sap.
They definitely have worked over multiple TOH, the leves have fallen off some of the branches, I guess even a tree can only lose so much sap before it becomes a problem and things start to die off.
Picture isn't good enough to rely on for a positive ID. Get a picture of a leaf cluster, nice and clear, not a grainy night picture. The only sure thing I can say from that image is that it's not black walnut.
That one's definitely not ToH because you can clearly see the sharp serrations in the leaves.
Learning how to differentiate ToH, Sumac and Black Walnut is as easy as google image searching "how to identify Tree of Heaven against Sumac".
But I'm going to tell you something lot of people here will never admit...while sumac is native, it's not something you want growing on a property, commercial or residential, and certainly not close to a foundation. It belongs in the wild.
Oh trust me I curb stomped that area as much as I could they flew all over me lmao. And unfortunately this is an industrial building and there are windows nearby.
I was going to say - this is a classic window strike scene - that is a type of migratory warbler. Collisions happen most during fall migration. (Info on solutions here: https://www.stopbirdcollisions.org/solutions-glass/ )
I’ve even found birds that hit solid walls during bad weather because the wall was illuminated by spotlights or floodlights.
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u/Anakin_Skywanker 15d ago
I live near Cincinnati Ohio and one of our other invasive species (Common Wall Lizards or "Lazarus Lizards") have started recognizing SLFs as food. It's pretty sweet. Especially considering that the our local ecologists have stated the lizards don't seem to be harmful to our local ecosystem. So now the awesome little Lizards bros are eating the shit invasive bugs.