An adult sits about 1 inch (2.5 cm) long and 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) wide with the wings folded. You see brown forewings covered in black spots, and the back third of each wing carries a speckled band instead of round dots. That resting pose is where spotted lanternfly identification stalls. Folded wings hide the loud half of the bug. Underneath sit scarlet hind wings, banded in white and black, over a yellow belly ringed with black.
Red flickered along the trunk of the young black walnut by my own driveway, down near knee height, in a patch the size of a dinner plate. Up close the color broke apart. I found forty or so insects, each about 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) long, bright red with black stripes and white spots, all pointed up the bark. My shadow crossed the patch and half the group snapped off the bark into the grass.
The insect is a planthopper. Moths get the blame for the shape at rest, and that shape is the whole problem, because a sitting lanternfly stays plain brown and spotted for as long as you leave the bug alone. The scarlet flashes during a jump or a short flight, and not much longer than that. Young and adults both jump hard, several feet at a time, so the red often reaches your eye after the bug has left the spot you were watching.
Getting a real look at the scarlet takes patience. Nudge the bark and the bug launches, and for maybe half a second you get red flecked with black, banded in white along the trailing edge. Then the wings fold and the color is gone again. Photograph the resting insect instead of chasing the flash, because the spot pattern on the brown forewings holds up in a picture and a blur of red does not.
A spotted lanternfly nymph looks like a different animal. The first three stages are black with bright white spots, wingless, and no bigger than 1/4 inch (6 mm), which is small enough that you write the bug off as a crumb of bark. The fourth stage is the red one from my walnut tree, about 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) long, striped in black and flecked white. Most people photograph that red stage, so the red stage is the one you have probably seen in a neighbor's phone picture.
Egg masses look like nothing at all, which is why you walk past them. Each mass runs about 1 inch (2.5 cm) long and goes on wet, like a smear of gray putty pressed onto bark, stone, metal, or the leg of your patio chair. Dry, the mass turns dull brown with a cracked-mud surface. At a glance you read the whole thing as a splash of old mortar or a patch of lichen.
Two native insects account for most spotted lanternfly look-alikes at the red stage. Utah State University Extension names the boxelder bug and the small milkweed bug, both red and black, both common in yards, and neither one a threat to your trees. The tiny first stage causes a different mix-up. You pick a black speck with white dots off your pant leg and call the thing a tick, and at arm's length that is a fair guess. First-stage young are out from May through July.
Spotted lanternfly identification comes down to two checks you can run on the spot. Measure first, because a folded adult runs about 1 inch (2.5 cm) long and a boxelder bug comes in well under that. Then look at the wings. You want black spots on a brown background, loose toward the front and packed into a speckled band at the back. Nothing else in your yard wears that pattern. Rough order through the year: black-and-white young, then red young, then brown-winged adults, then gray egg masses.
Read the full article: Spotted Lanternfly: What It Actually Damages
