Spotted lanternflies are back. Whether you see them crawling up building facades, hopping from tree-to-tree, fluttering along sidewalks or (ideally) smashed against the pavement, you’ve likely encountered grey and red-spotted insects in Montgomery County sometime this summer.
The insect is invasive to the United States, and since the first confirmed sighting of the insect in Maryland in October 2018, the spotted lanternfly population has boomed across the state and the county. Last summer, the county began to see its first boom in the late summer and fall. But by wintertime, the insects in their adult form had died out. However, the bugs left a promise of their return by laying eggs in greyish, wax-like masses that survived the winter. This spring, the young spotted lanternflies, little black and white-spotted nymphs, hatched out of the masses and started over the insect’s life cycle.
Spotted lanternflies are native to eastern Asia and are harmless to humans and animals, but can cause damage to trees and crops by sucking sap from trunks and stems, according to the Maryland Department of Agriculture. In their adult form, the insects are characterized as planthoppers that munch on more than 70 species of crops and plants such as grapes, hops, red maple trees and weeping willows…