Volume 31 Issue 1, Winter 2026
by Tracy Whittington, Virginia Master Naturalist
In the spring of 2025, the Ashburn Village Community Association (AVCA) discovered it had millions of new residents — invasive planthoppers who arrived in the United States in 2014 and migrated south to Virginia over the next decade. AVCA residents, like most of their Loudoun County neighbors, began seeing tiny black and white nymphs blanketing trees and shrubs, decks, sidewalks, houses, and cars. By June, the nymphs became adults, and it felt as if the millions had become trillions. Everyone had the same question: How do we get rid of them?
Any schoolkid in Loudoun can identify the Spotted Lanternfly (SLF), and most will stomp on any of the bugs they can catch. But as any homeowner can tell you, a thousand more will take their place … and go after the plants in your garden. Common (and bad) advice on how to deal with the SLF abounds. Ring your trees in sticky tape? You’ll likely catch not only SLFs, but also mortally wound beneficial insects, bats, and birds. Spray them with insecticides? You’ll also kill the creatures you want to welcome. Squirt them with dish soap? Sure, if they don’t hop away first — and also, how many hours of the day do you want to spend squirting?
Yet for every 1,000 people who have heard of SLF, perhaps one or two have heard of the Ailanthus altissima, commonly known as the Tree of Heaven. If you are in this majority, the Tree of Heaven is an invasive plant that has been in the U.S. since the 18th century. Ailanthus spreads very quickly and aggressively, producing hundreds of thousands of seeds per year; and it can sprout from both roots and stumps, often several yards from the mother tree. It’s also the Spotted Lanternfly’s favorite host plant, and it allows the insects to multiply at seven times the rate of any other plant they feed on. On Tree of Heaven, they produce more eggs, those eggs are more likely to survive and hatch, and the feeding offspring will have natural protection due to a bitter taste acquired from the sap that dissuades birds and carnivorous insects from eating them. So while Tree of Heaven has always produced allelopathic chemicals that prevent the growth of other plants near them and transform the nearby area into a foul smelling grove, it was when the SLF arrived in North America that things got really bad.
Why eradicate Tree of Heaven? It is the favorite host plant for the destructive Spotted Lanternfly, pictured here on Trees of Heaven as breeding adults. Photo by Tracy Whittington.
Spotted Lanternflies as red and black nymphs. Photo by Tracy Whittington.
Which brings us back to Ashburn Village last spring.
Loudoun Invasives Removal Alliance founder Mike Littman and Virginia Master Naturalist Tracy Whittington, both AVCA residents, had teamed up earlier in the year to create the Ashburn Village Invasives Removal Team, or AVIRT, designed as a volunteer-led effort to address invasive plant issues in the community. One of their first major initiatives was to complete the Tree of Heaven removal that had been started the prior year. In June 2024, Littman had arranged through the HOA for training from the Blue Ridge Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM), specifically to work on a few stands of Tree of Heaven. Blue Ridge PRISM taught volunteers the hack-and-squirt, cut stump, and basal bark methods of controlling Tree of Heaven and other invasive plants (see “Resources” below for a link to their Fact Sheet detailing these methods). Littman had simultaneously learned that Zephaniah Winery in Leesburg had removed the Trees of Heaven surrounding its vineyard in 2023 and saw a marked reduction in lanternflies the following year. It made sense: If you take away the tree that the SLF thrives on, it should mitigate the situation.
Wanting to get ahead of the problem in AVCA, Littman and Landscaping Committee Chairman Randy Bargiel then scoured AVCA’s 500 common ground acres and identified several large stands of Ailanthus. After teaching the community’s tree service how to properly treat the trees using the Blue Ridge PRISM training they had received, AVCA management gave the tree service workers their marching orders. Littman estimated they treated and then removed 70 percent of the Trees of Heaven in the Village in 2024. That’s when Whittington got involved and wanted to help finish the job. In May, AVIRT continued the citizen science experiment that Littman and Bargiel had started: What if they tried to remove all the remaining Trees of Heaven within AVCA’s 500-acre boundaries? Operating on the assumption they had already killed most of the SLF host trees, AVIRT began by asking residents to report any Tree of Heaven sightings. More than two dozen people reported Ailanthus trees in their neighborhoods.
An Ashburn Village volunteer applies the hack-andsquirt control method to a Tree of Heaven in the neighborhood. Photo by Tracy Whittington.
Trees of Heaven in this grove were treated by AVIRT volunteers, who now wait to assess whether further action will be needed to eradicate them. Photo by Tracy Whittington.
Next, Whittington mapped the sightings. First came the bad news: The prior years’ efforts had treated, at most, 30 percent of the mature Trees of Heaven in Ashburn Village. It turned out it takes more than a couple of well-intentioned residents and a tree service to find every Tree of Heaven; it takes a Village. The good news, however, was most of the AVCA was Ailanthus free. There were a handful of trees that had been planted and mulched by the HOA (as well as one of the elementary schools within the Village’s borders) and a smattering of one-off or small groups of trees, perhaps started by birds dropping seeds. The remainder of the invasive trees radiated out from two hot spots — the shore of Ashburn Lake, and a wooded remnant of the pre-Ashburn Village farm that abutted local church and school grounds.
As confirmation of the connection between the SLF and Ailanthus, AVIRT noticed the strongest concentrations of SLF nymphs and adult insects were where Trees of Heaven were located. In homes in or near the hot spots, large infestations of SLF nymphs began in the spring and grew into large infestations of SLF adults, with damage to even non-Ailanthus trees, bushes, and forbs. In areas of the HOA half a mile or more from a Tree of Heaven, SLFs were much less numerous and not seen in sufficient numbers to be destructive. What really stood out: The area where the very first stand of Ailanthus were treated and removed in June 2024 during the Blue Ridge PRISM training, and where the very first SLF adults were spotted, showed no signs of SLF. They were gone!
From June through August, AVIRT held five workdays, with Littman, Whittington, and others also working additional weekends. More than 60 volunteers were trained and used hack-and-squirt for large trees, cut stump for saplings, and hand pulling, where appropriate, for any sprouts after rainy periods. As of September, AVIRT had treated more than 1,300 Trees of Heaven, including 300 mature trees. Except for a few very large “mother” trees that required multiple treatments, all of the treated Ailanthus groves died after one attempt. Since the cost of tree removal can be expensive, only standing dead trees that could impact property or pedestrians were scheduled for removal by the tree service (the biggest expense of the entire project) this fall.
Now Ashburn Village waits until spring to find out how the science experiment went. The hope is that, like Zephaniah Winery, the community will see a dramatic reduction in SLF from what they might have been.
Open questions include:
• How extensive will re-sprouting of treated areas be?
• How will regrowth differ between areas where mature trees were removed and areas where there were only saplings or previous regrowth?
• Which of the methods used produced the least regrowth: hack and squirt, or cut stump?
• Will regrowth diminish with each passing year of treatment?
• And most important, when their host plant is gone, will the Spotted Lanternflies leave?
Resources
Blue Ridge PRISM Invasive Plant Fact Sheets: Tree of Heaven (including a list of effective removal methods).
“Living With the Spotted Lanternfly” by BJ Lecrone, Habitat Herald, Summer 2025
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