What Trees Do Spotted Lanternflies Not Like?

Spotted lanternflies feed on a remarkably wide range of plants, with researchers documenting feeding on more than 100 plant species across 33 families worldwide, so the list of trees they truly avoid is shorter than most people hope. Still, research has identified specific trees that fail to support their development, and understanding which ones the insect struggles on can inform smarter landscaping decisions in areas where spotted lanternfly populations are established or spreading.

Trees That Cannot Support Spotted Lanternfly Development

The most useful way to think about which trees spotted lanternflies “don’t like” is to focus on which ones cannot sustain them through their life cycle. A tree that an adult lanternfly lands on and briefly probes is very different from a tree that allows nymphs to grow, mature, and eventually reproduce. Several species fall into the category of dead-end hosts.

Red maple is one of the clearest examples. In controlled studies, spotted lanternfly nymphs failed to develop through the third and fourth instars when reared on red maple, meaning the tree could not fuel the later, more energy-demanding stages of nymph growth.¹ That is a significant finding because red maple is one of the most common native hardwoods in eastern North America. If you are choosing a shade tree for a property in lanternfly territory, red maple is a species that the insect cannot use to complete its life cycle.

A broader field study that tested spotted lanternfly survivorship on 26 host plant species across 17 families found that the majority of tested species could not support the insect for more than 30 days. Only ten of the 26 species sustained them for an average of 45 days or longer, and just eight species allowed spotted lanternflies to develop all the way from first-instar nymph to reproductive adult.² That means roughly two-thirds of the tested tree species were poor enough hosts that the insect could not thrive on them in isolation.

The Small Club of Trees That Do Support Full Development

To understand what spotted lanternflies avoid, it helps to know which trees they do well on. Only eight species in that 26-species trial supported the full journey from first instar to adult. Those were tree of heaven, black walnut, chinaberry, oriental bittersweet (a vine, technically), hops (also a vine), sawtooth oak, butternut, and tulip tree.² Everything else in the study either killed nymphs outright or left them unable to reach maturity.

Tree of heaven stands out as the overwhelming favorite. Adults consistently and significantly preferred it in choice experiments, and more spotted lanternflies were trapped on tree of heaven than on any other species tested.² In multi-species landscapes, tree of heaven essentially acts as a magnet. When it was present, late-stage nymphs clustered on it overwhelmingly, while adults split their time between tree of heaven and silver maple.³

The practical takeaway is that most common North American landscape trees are not on the short list of species that can fully support the insect. If you are planting trees in an area with lanternfly pressure, choosing species outside that list of eight gives the insect fewer opportunities to reproduce in your yard.

Why “Doesn’t Like” Is Complicated With This Insect

Here is where things get frustrating for homeowners: spotted lanternflies are extreme generalists. A global review of feeding records found the insect has been documented feeding on 103 plant species across 33 families and 17 orders, with 56 of those species recorded in North America alone.⁴ Twenty of those were species not previously known to be associated with the insect, meaning the host list keeps growing as researchers look harder.

Feeding on a tree and successfully developing on it are two very different things. Spotted lanternflies are phloem feeders that insert their piercing mouthparts into plant tissue and drink sap. They will probe almost anything. You can find them sitting on conifers, ornamental shrubs, and even herbs, but sitting on a plant and extracting enough nutrition to survive and reproduce are separate questions. A lanternfly on your dogwood does not mean dogwood is a good host. It might be resting, it might be exploring, or it might be extracting just enough sugar to stay alive while looking for something better.

The distinction matters because people sometimes panic when they see lanternflies on a tree they thought was safe. The presence of the insect on a given tree species does not automatically mean that tree is at risk of serious damage. The trees that suffer the most are the ones where lanternflies aggregate in large numbers for sustained feeding over weeks or months.

The Tree of Heaven Paradox

Tree of heaven is an invasive species that most land managers want to remove, and it is also the spotted lanternfly’s preferred host. This creates an odd strategic tension. Removing tree of heaven eliminates the insect’s favorite food source, but it can also scatter lanternfly populations onto other nearby plants. When tree of heaven was absent from mixed-species landscapes in one study, nymphs shifted primarily to weeping willow and adults moved to silver maple.³

There is another layer to the tree-of-heaven relationship that makes it even more complex. When spotted lanternflies feed on tree of heaven, they store toxic chemicals called quassinoids in their bodies. These compounds make the insects unpalatable to birds. Research found that birds, including nesting house wrens, consistently preferred to eat lanternflies that had not fed on tree of heaven, and wrens fed larger quantities of non-tree-of-heaven lanternflies to their chicks.⁵ In other words, tree of heaven does not just feed the lanternfly. It also provides chemical armor against one of the insect’s few natural predators in North America. Adults accumulated the highest concentrations of quassinoids, which partly explains why adult lanternflies are so strongly drawn to tree of heaven despite being capable of feeding on many other plants.

This means that removing tree of heaven could actually make lanternfly populations more vulnerable to bird predation over time, even if it temporarily pushes them onto less-preferred hosts. Some integrated pest management approaches suggest leaving a few treated tree-of-heaven specimens as “trap trees” rather than cutting them all down. The idea borrows from the broader push-pull concept in pest management, where repellent and attractant stimuli are used together to concentrate pests where they can be killed most efficiently.⁶ A systemic insecticide injected into a standing tree of heaven can turn it into a lethal bait station for lanternflies that flock to it.

What About Grapevines and Fruit Trees

Much of the economic concern around spotted lanternflies centers on vineyards and orchards, so it is worth noting how crop plants fit into the picture of host quality. Concord grapevines, for example, are a poor-quality host. Lanternflies reared exclusively on grapevines had higher mortality, slower development, and produced fewer eggs compared to those on tree of heaven.⁷

But here is the catch that vineyard owners dread: when lanternflies had access to both grapevines and tree of heaven, their fitness actually exceeded what they achieved on tree of heaven alone. Nymphs developed faster, adults laid more eggs, and body mass was higher on the mixed diet.⁷ The two food sources apparently complement each other nutritionally. This is particularly bad news for vineyards that sit near woodlots containing tree of heaven, because the insects can shuttle between both food sources and end up healthier and more fecund than they would be on either plant alone.

This mixed-diet effect underlines why simply planting trees that lanternflies “don’t like” is not a complete solution. The insect’s generalist feeding strategy means it can patch together adequate nutrition from multiple mediocre sources, or combine a marginal host with a good one to come out ahead. A landscape full of individually poor hosts may still support the pest if those hosts collectively provide enough nutrition.

Practical Landscaping Choices

If you live in or near an area with spotted lanternfly populations and you are choosing trees for your property, there are a few evidence-based principles worth following. First, avoid planting anything on the short list of species known to support full development. Tree of heaven is the obvious one to eliminate (it is invasive and damaging in its own right), but also think twice about black walnut, tulip tree, sawtooth oak, chinaberry, and butternut if you are specifically trying to reduce lanternfly habitat. Tulip tree and black walnut are excellent native hardwoods with many ecological benefits, so this is a genuine trade-off rather than an easy call.

Second, favor trees that have performed poorly as hosts in controlled studies. Red maple is the standout here, since it is widely available, native, offers good fall color, and cannot support lanternfly nymphs through their later developmental stages.¹ Conifers like pines, spruces, and hemlocks are rarely reported as hosts in any meaningful sense, though lanternflies may occasionally rest on them. Native oaks other than sawtooth oak have not been identified as strong developmental hosts in the available literature, which makes them reasonable choices for both wildlife value and lanternfly resistance.

Third, if you have tree of heaven on your property, consider the trap-tree approach rather than simply cutting them all down. Removing tree of heaven can scatter lanternfly populations onto other plants, including ornamentals and garden crops you care about. A pest management professional can treat standing tree-of-heaven stems with a systemic insecticide so that lanternflies that feed on the tree are killed. Female tree-of-heaven should still be removed to prevent seed spread, but retaining a few treated male stems can concentrate the pest where you want it.

How the Host List Keeps Expanding

One reason it is hard to give a confident list of “safe” trees is that researchers keep finding new feeding associations. The global review that documented 103 feeding host species also noted that 20 of those were previously unknown associations and 15 had not been confirmed as feeding hosts before.⁴ The insect has been in North America only since around 2014, and each year of observation adds new records. Species that appear safe today may show up as occasional hosts in next year’s surveys.

The same review concluded that the spotted lanternfly’s North American distribution may not be limited by the presence of tree of heaven, which was long assumed to be essential for the insect’s establishment.⁴ That finding undercuts the earlier hope that eradicating tree of heaven might create a firewall against lanternfly spread. The insect is adaptable enough to persist on a patchwork of alternative hosts, even if it does not thrive on any single one as well as it does on tree of heaven.

What this means for homeowners is that no tree selection strategy will make your yard completely lanternfly-proof. You can tilt the odds by avoiding the strongest hosts and favoring known poor ones, but the insect’s flexibility means it will still show up. The goal is reducing the population pressure on your property, not eliminating every sighting.

Life Stage Matters More Than You Think

An underappreciated wrinkle in the “which trees do they avoid” question is that preference shifts dramatically depending on the insect’s life stage. Early-instar nymphs, the tiny black-and-white juveniles you see in spring, have different host associations than the large red-spotted fourth-instar nymphs, and both differ from adults. In one field study, the frequency of detecting younger nymphs on tree of heaven was actually equal to or lower than on all other species combined, while adults overwhelmingly favored tree of heaven.²

In multi-species plantings, late-stage nymphs concentrated on tree of heaven when available, but adults split their presence between tree of heaven and silver maple roughly equally.³ When tree of heaven was removed from the equation, adults moved to silver maple as their primary gathering spot, while nymphs shifted to weeping willow.³ Silver maple, then, is a tree that adults seem to find attractive even though it was not among the eight species that supported full nymphal development. This suggests the adults may be drawn to it for reasons other than larval nutrition, possibly the sugar content of its sap or the texture of its bark for egg-laying.

The practical lesson here is that a tree being “disliked” by nymphs does not guarantee adults will avoid it. If you are seeing adult lanternflies aggregating on a particular tree in late summer, that does not necessarily mean the tree is a good developmental host. It may simply be a convenient gathering and feeding spot for adults that developed elsewhere. The trees that matter most for population growth are the ones where nymphs can actually complete their development, and that is the shorter list of eight species identified in the research.

Conifers and Other Trees Rarely on the Radar

Spotted lanternflies are overwhelmingly associated with broadleaf deciduous trees and woody vines. Conifers show up very rarely in host-use surveys. The insect feeds by piercing phloem tissue, and the resinous, chemically defended phloem of pines, spruces, and firs does not appear to be a suitable food source. If you are in an area where lanternflies are a concern and you want to plant something that falls as far outside their host range as possible, conifers are a reasonable bet, though no researcher has published a controlled study specifically testing a wide panel of conifer species against spotted lanternfly. The absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence, but the feeding-record databases are notable for how few conifer species appear.

Similarly, most herbaceous plants and low-growing shrubs are not preferred hosts. The insect’s feeding behavior is oriented toward woody stems with well-developed phloem. Basil, tested as a non-woody control in one study, could not support nymphs past the second instar.¹ Perennial gardens and vegetable plots are generally not at meaningful risk from spotted lanternflies, though the insects may occasionally land on anything in the vicinity of an outbreak. The real targets are trees and woody vines with accessible, sugar-rich phloem, and within that group, only a handful support the insect’s full reproductive cycle.

1
PubMed Central. The impact of host plant species on instar duration and body weight of nymphal Lycorma delicatula
2
PubMed. Distribution, Survival, and Development of Spotted Lanternfly on Host Plants Found in North America
3
PubMed Central. Performance and host association of spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) among common woody ornamentals
4
Oxford Academic (Environmental Entomology). Worldwide Feeding Host Plants of Spotted Lanternfly, With Significant Additions From North America
5
Journal of Chemical Ecology. Sequestration of plant defenses by spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) and effects on avian predators
6
Journal of Oilseeds Research. Application of “push pull strategy” in pest management: An overview
7
PubMed Central. Life history traits of spotted lanternfly (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae) when feeding on grapevines and tree of heaven