Pest to pest

Could this pesky weed tree and annoying insect have value after all? According to this PennLive blog post, the pointy-leafed trees that you see so often along roadsides and neglected fields - tree-of-Heaven, or Ailanthus altissima - is a favored host plant of the brown marmorated stink bug, the shield-shaped bug best known for invading our homes in winter. Cornell entomologist Peter Jentsch says he is heartened that this otherwise nuisance tree has some value as a diversionary tool to draw stink bugs away from damaging farm crops, such as soybeans and apples, and the blog author points to it as a great example of nature using one pest to counteract another. But he suspects stink bugs are not going to do enough damage to trees-of-Heaven that the prolific, spreading species gets eliminated.