Assemblage characters:

Spotted lantern fly / SLF / 斑 衣 蜡 蝉 [Ban yi la chan] / Lycorma delicatula: insect; planthopper evolved in parts of China, possibly parts of India, Taiwan, Vietnam; accidentally introduced in current-day Pennsylvania in 2014.

Tree of heaven / 臭椿 [chouchun] / Ailanthus altissima: fast-growing, short-lived deciduous tree native to northeast and central China and Taiwan; purposefully brought to the Northeastern United States in the late 1700s.

Common grape / انگور [angur] / Vitis vinifera: cultivated flowering liana (vine) with flaky bark and deeply lobed leaves; domesticated in 3500-3000 BC in Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe, and now cultivated worldwide; wild ancestors native to Europe, Central Asia, and Northern Africa. 

Ailanthus webworm / Polilla Pintada / Atteva aurea: ermine moth; native to the Southeastern United States south to Central America; their native host (the paradise tree) is limited in southern range; they have adapted to alternate, more widely distributed ailanthus host; larvae create extensive web nests in host trees.

Dursban / Scout / Chlorpyrifos 4E: restricted use insecticide; nervous system enzyme inhibitor; patented in 1966 by Dow Chemical Company; considered moderately hazardous to humans (Class II); banned in England and throughout the European Union.

RoundUp Pro 41 % / Ranger Pro / Glyphosate: systemic, broad spectrum herbicide; patented by Monsanto in the 1970s; widely used in vineyards.

Arsenal / Chopper / Stalker / Imazapyr: non-selective herbicide; recommended for ailanthus control; developed by American Cyanamid Company 1980s; water soluble and long-lasting; may kill or injure non-target plants.

Garden Guard / Stiky™ Tree Wrap: tree-climbing insect trap; recommended for lanternflies; non selective.

DELICIOUS/VORACIOUS: A few of the techno-eco-social Entanglements of SLF

My first in-the-flesh experience with an individual spotted lanternfly came on a steamy September afternoon in current-day Manhattan. It was the first day of the semester for my new eco-art class, and I’d taken an assortment of thirteen undergrads out of the classroom for some fresh air. When we stepped onto the busy sidewalk, I steered us to the first patch of greenery in sight, a litter-filled street tree pit housing a decaying stump covered in moss. As I encouraged the group to stoop low to examine the moss, I noticed a small Ailanthus altissima sprout emerging from the base of the stump. Perched on one of the leaves was an unmistakably gorgeous insect: a mature spotted lanternfly. I responded with excitement: “woah y’all, look who it is!” As a commuter from three hours north, just outside the lanternfly’s range at that time, this was my first encounter. My students responded in varied ways to my exclamation, but most memorable was the look of consternation and distress on several faces. “Aren’t we supposed to kill it?” “Do you want to do it?” “OMG no!” followed by a collective backing away, as we all searched each others’ faces, looking for answers. 

This lanternfly encounter became an inflection point we returned to throughout the course as we considered which beings are “made to live” and which are “deemed infinitely killable” (Sandilands 2013, 118)—and who does the killing and cultivating—in today’s regimes of biopolitical control. Contemplating the current rhetoric and naturalcultural history of invasion biology through the work of interdisciplinary practitioners like Banu Subramaniam (2001) and Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015) helped open up avenues for critical appraisal of the current SLF frenzy. The individual responsibility to enact the visceral, violent killing of a single lanternfly stands out as a singular encounter against the backdrop of routine mass-killing and forced living that happens on a mass-scale in industrial monocultures, one of the baseline conditions that illuminates the response to current SLF “invasion” of the Northeastern United States. Woven around this vicious knot—an escalating arms race between so-called pest species and technologies of pacification—are the roiling crises of climate migration and intensifying nationalism, rooted in settler-colonial reliance on extractive practices on stolen land. Jason W. Moore characterizes this dynamic as a “taming cycle” wherein “the more natural processes are tamed, the more they spin out of control, provoking new and more aggressive taming measures” (2015, 273-74). In this particular “spin out” phase—a burgeoning lanternfly population expanding their range—affluent urban humans are exhorted to participate through individual acts of violence of questionable efficacy (Wade 2022).

Investigating the implications of individual civic responsibility to kill lanternflies on sight, I stumbled into a tangled assemblage of lifeways and the technologies that control them. Just a few of those threads and knots are illustrated in the accompanying image. Leaves, stems, and vines of two host plants for lanternfly—common grape and ailanthus—surround and overwhelm letters forming the words “delicious” and “voracious,” while bits of controlling technology, from pesticides and herbicides to sticky tape, emerge from the tangle. Accumulating on the edges of this assemblage are the gauzy structures woven by the larvae of another insect who uses ailanthus as a host, the ailanthus webworm moth, who is native to this continent but has adapted to and spread with introduced ailanthus populations. Mature adult webworm moths and lantern flies, with their striking wing patterns, complete the assemblage. 

In current-day New York State, 35,000 acres of land are devoted to cultivating common grape varieties (Vitis vinifera vinifera) generating what the state reports as 6.65 billion dollars of economic activity (Dunham, 2019). The ancestors of this widely cultivated liana, Vitis vinifera sylvestris, evolved across Europe, Central Asia, and Northern Africa. Cultivated grapes now exist on every continent except Antarctica, their success undergirded by massive amounts of human energy and labor in the form of selective breeding, soil amending, irrigation, herbicide and pesticide application, pruning and harvesting, much of it carried out by exploited migrant laborers (DiNapoli 2019). As the lanternfly expands into its urban niche in current-day Manhattan, sucking the sap of Ailanthus altissima, alighting on fire escapes and sidewalk cafes, and dying under righteously stomping feet, the Vitis vinifera plants spread across rural New York State sit vulnerable in their monocrop configuration, an artificially maintained, highly concentrated source of lanternfly food. The market for grape-derived commodities—from wine and juice to table grapes and raisins—is driven by voracious human consumption of this delicious fruit, a boon to the lanternfly and their similar sensibilities.

DiNapoli, Thomas P. 2019. “A Profile of Agriculture in New York State.” Office of the New York State Comptroller.

Dunham, John, and and Associates. 2019. “The Economic Impact of Grapes, Grape Juice and Wine on the New York Economy.” New York Wine & Grape Foundation. https://newyorkwines.org/industry/statistics/.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2015. “The Sacred and the Superfund.” In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, 310–40. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

Moore, Jason. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. New York: Verso.

Sandilands, Catriona. 2013. “Dog Stranglers in the Park?: National and Vegetal Politics in Ontario’s Rouge Valley.” Journal of Canadian Studies 47 (3): 93–122.

Subramaniam, Banu. 2001. “The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions.” Meridians 2 (1): 26–40.

Wade, Eeshita. 2022. “Lanternflies in New York: Squash or Spare?” The Observer (blog). October 27, 2022. https://fordhamobserver.com/70737/recent/news/lanternflies-in-new-york-squash-or-spare/.