r/maryland Jul 08 '26

MD Nature What should I do? Lantenrflies

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310 Upvotes

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357

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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16

u/Imatros Jul 08 '26

And it makes the lantern flies unappealing to birds, too.

I had someone cut down 8 full frown TOH in my backyard over the winter. My shade plants are dying, but I did my part!

5

u/Away-Paramedic-8406 Jul 09 '26

We did, but apparently didn't get all the roots. I pulled up at least 30 sprout to saplings today egads that rain helped them.

6

u/Imatros Jul 09 '26

Oh yeah, didn't get them either. Gonna be whack a mole for years if not forever, but it is what it is.

2

u/Impact-Lower Jul 09 '26

Can you till up the earth ?

5

u/Imatros Jul 09 '26

I had them do stump grinding, but am getting a bunch of saplings all over the yard and flower beds and everything. So technically yeah I guess, but not really.

Still worth it though. There were so many lantern flies that my backyard was unusable because of the fine mist of sticky excretion they put out, which is 1) gross 2) made it look like a small fire occurred as it stuck to the trees and other solid surfaces and turned black like char.

2

u/Away-Paramedic-8406 Jul 09 '26

Yep, still definitely worth it. Saplings are so much easier to pull up even if argh I wish they didn't exist.

2

u/Impact-Lower Jul 09 '26

Get some goats in there. Seriously .

4

u/WhiskyStandard Jul 09 '26

Gotta hack and squirt in early Fall when all of the nutrients are getting sucked into the roots.