They’re pretty awkward on the wing, but spotted lanternflies do manage to get around.

You’ve probably seen them by now in your garden, your trees or even on your car — the adult plant hoppers being a rather sizable and intimidating bright red visage with large greyish-pink spotted wings, that suddenly alight from flight with the grace of a hippopotamus.

“They’re not very good flyers,” Wilton’s tree warden Lars Cherichetti explained. “That’s what wigs people out, because they bump into you.”

As autumn unfolds, however, you’ll have your best opportunity to thwart the proliferation of these critters, which while causing significant damage to a select group of plant life, will also be responsible for harmless but unsightly patches of mold-like goo on tree trunks, walkways and cars that can be slippery, sticky and annoying.

“For agriculture there’s a problem of damage to grapes, apples and some other fruit trees,” Cherichetti said. “That affects their livelihood.”

The young lanternflies especially will bore into immature plants to suck sap, thus weakening the stalks and opening them up to potential disease. Cherichetti said they also infest young rose bushes too.

“It doesn’t necessarily kill them but it slows them down a lot … and it also helps spread disease because they’re putting holes in the plants,” he said.

“For homeowners, the main thing is,” he said, “first of all, the ‘eooh’ factor of having these flies flying at you. The second thing is they produce an abundance of honeydew.”

Cherichetti explained that in order for these insects to get their nutrients, they suck a great deal of juice from plants, which leads to their secreting a large amount of this sugar-rich liquid. It’s common among aphids, following their own indulgence in plant sap.

“That sticky substance will quickly mold and you’ll get sooty mold,” he said, with deposits common to trees, walkways, driveways and even cars, especially when they’re parked below trees that favor the lanternflies.

The mold itself results in dark, black patches.

“It’s unsightly, mostly,” Cherichetti said. “It can be slippery on walks, but mostly it sticks on cars and what not.”

According to Dr. Victoria Smith, state entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, at this point these critters have arrived in Fairfield County and the public needs to be somewhat resolved to their presence.

“Lanternflies will be nuisance pests for most of us,” she said. “If you grow grapes, you will need to manage for them. The rest of us have to learn to live with them.”

“Fairfield County is generally infested,” Smith said. “Reporting is not necessary, but you may report if you wish.”

Native to China and parts of east Asia, the spotted lanterflies made their first known appearance in North America in the autumn of 2014, when they were first found in eastern Pennsylvania.

By 2021 they were known to be in Connecticut, having entered through the southwest corner.

Cherichetti noted that they reach new locations and expand their habitat primary through egg laying, not by flying.

“They lay their eggs on almost anything, so they’re generally not moving by flying,” he said. “They’re generally moving by laying their eggs on a car, a trailer, a piece of equipment. It gets moved to the next town.”

“If you see them fly, you’ll know they’re not getting very far … but they certainly are flying yard to yard, which does make it difficult to control on small lots, but we’ve had success on lots as small as a quarter acre,” he said.

Currently there are no known natural enemies, Smith said, at least in the United States.

Investigators have worked to determine whether certain kinds of wasps that feed on the larvae in Asia would be worth introducing in the United States, but at this time it’s unknown if those too would then potentially become invasive species.

“There is a naturally occurring fungus that has shown promise, but we need to find ways to encourage that fungal growth,” Smith said.

Cherichetti, who also runs a private Wilton-based business called Cherichetti Horticulture, LLC, said that there are some steps that can be taken to diminish their numbers, especially as fall unfolds and the insects begin laying eggs.

“Some people say, ‘Well, kill all the ones you see,’ (but) pretty soon you’re gonna be overwhelmed,” he said.

Instead, disturbing the creature’s egg masses can go a long way to lowering numbers.

“The egg masses look like little patches of cement, maybe 2.5 inches long, .75-inches wide, on the bark of trees … They’re kind of armored on there,” he said, generally appearing late in the fall and into winter, though possibly sooner.

“They’ll start laying at the end of the month and then right through November,” he said.

While some authorities will advocate disposing of the egg patches in bags of alcohol or hand sanitizer, Cherichetti said that just by disturbing the egg patches, other insects and creatures will then intercede and dine on the exposed eggs, thus reducing new births.

“There are treatments an arborist can do to protect plantings and to reduce the conflict from the honeydew or the insects themselves,” he said, including systemic insecticide sprays to taint the tree’s sap, which is then passed on to the insects eating it, or otherwise regular insecticide to directly impact the lanternflies.

Ironically, spotted lanterflies are particularly drawn to an invasive species of tree known as the Tree of Heaven, or ailanthus, which will be very familiar for its proliferation around empty lots, construction sites and by roadsides, as it can grow in almost any soil or condition.

“Tree of Heaven is bad because they can produce many more eggs and many more babies if they’re on a Tree of Heaven, so it is recommended that you remove a Tree of Heaven if it’s on your property,” Cherichetti said. “They thrive together.”

“[The Tree of Heaven] is not native,” he said. “It’s native to where the lanternflies are from, which is Asia.”

He said that it’s a very rapidly growing tree, quick to take over native habitats, and reaching heights of up to 50 feet.

“It’s also a very weak tree, so if you let one get big, it also becomes a problem in that way,” he said.

Cherichetti said that the creatures also favor red maples, which are now often used to replace fallen ash and elm trees along roadsides.

“It’s certainly become a problem in our area, in Wilton,” he said of the lanternflies. “It’s showing up, really showing up, this year.”

“In Norwalk it was a bigger problem last year and now everybody knows,” he said.

Smith was somewhat sanguine about the infestation at this point.

“Most invasions follow a pattern,” she said. “Small populations at first, then a big wave cresting, then falling back to smaller populations.”

“We are in the wave right now,” she said. “Areas in Pennsylvania that were once heavily infested are now seeing fewer and fewer.

“It won’t go away, but it will ease,” she added.