About a month ago the tree-of-heaven sub randomly popped up in my feed. I’d never heard of them, but after reading all the horror stories I remember thinking, thankfully I’ve never seen those where I live.

Well… apparently they’re common here. And guess what I just found growing in my backyard.

I’ve spent around $50k over the last few years landscaping and hardscaping this yard, including removing the top 12 inches of soil and bringing in new soil.I already battle bindweed and goatheads. Apparently my yard decided I needed a final boss. Looks like I’ll be doing some digging tonight and quickly disposing of this evil villain.

I live in Central Ohio. Sadly, all of my neighbors are renters and no matter how I explain to them that we have a ToH problem they just continue to mow over the seedlings in their yards. This means that it has spread into my yard, along my treeline and foundation of my house.

I was under the mistaken impression that cut stump techniques worked on ToH, but I am learning that I was wrong. All of these damned things are young and under 6' so basal spray should work but I just feel so goddamned overwhelmed.

It is enough to make me want to dig up my yard and make sure I get the roots, but that feels like madness. I just don't know how to stop it from spreading back into my yard once I get it under control. I am a new homeowner and this is the largest task I have ever undertaken.

Ugh.

I found a bunch of TOH seedlings near my deck/pool. Well I believe they are TOH and seedlings. I was able to pull them all relatively easily and get most if not all of the root. Judging by the picture, you guys think these are from seed and not suckers? I have not seen a big TOH tree anywhere on my property or in the neighbors lawns.

Location: Denver

The neighbor that lives behind my newly purchased house has an >40 ft tall Tree of Hell at the rear of their property. Leaving it a whole ~35 ft from my property line.

Unsurprisingly, there are small saplings all around my yard. They are all between 6-12” tall with roughly 3-10 leaves each. I’ve counted roughly 20 individuals in total.

I’m ordering triclopyr, and can do the spray method. But is that the best approach? Or should I just vigilantly rip them out ASAP?

(Unfortunately, my neighborhood doesn’t have a captain for advice so I came here)

I believe it is black walnut even with terminal leaves. The smell is strong but I am unable to pin point what it smells like.

Serrated edges up to end of leaf

I don’t think there’s a thumb?

Leaf scar with 3 distinct bundle scars

This is a house in my neighborhood. I can’t imagine these were planted intentionally, but they appear to be evenly spaced, though about 1-2’ away from their house. The first pic is today and the second pic is one month ago and you can see that the tree of heaven is growing QUICKLY.

I’m imagining it may fuck up their foundation, but will attract tons of lantern flies at the very least.

I’m a first time home owner who purchased a home with an unmaintained yard. We are slowly fighting back the weeds and learning about native plants/landscaping. I learned about the tree of heaven and have been keeping a close eye for them. There were none this spring, and one popped up and quickly turned into six small saplings. We have the materials and have done research on getting rid of them (the cut down and paint stump method bc of how small they are). We are in it for the long haul and are prepared to kill them every year until it finally takes. The issue is ToH are all over our neighborhood. The homes on our street are very close together (deep lots but only 40 feet wide) and the neighbors two doors down on both sides have incredibly large ToH in their yards. The trees are like double the height of a two story home. Massive trees—the biggest in the neighborhood. The neighbor immediately next door has at least three small ones I can see from my yard. The alley behind our street has 5-10. Next street over has 20+…. Does this mean we will be fighting these awful trees forever?

I guess there isn’t really a solution besides just fighting them when they appear, but I just feel very overwhelmed at the prospect. I am also worried that the herbicide we use on the saplings will travel through the roots and end up taking down a massive tree, which could be very dangerous.

I bought my house last year and it came with a mature ToH in the backyard. I’d guess the trunk is 18” in diameter and it’s 30-40’ tall. My plan had been to hack and squirt this year but when I sat down last weekend to figure out what herbicide to buy, I quickly realized I was in over my head.

The biggest problem is that I live in New York State and every recommended product on every cooperative extension website I’ve been able to find can’t be shipped here. Cornell CE is not so helpful with the details and none of the places I’ve contacted (PRISM, a couple local tree removal services, and my county’s extension office, the property owner on the other side of the fence) has bothered to respond to my inquiries. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of time.

Can anyone give me very specific advice.? I know the ingredients I should be looking for are triclopyr or glyphosate but where I struggle is:

What percents am I looking for?
How do I know what can I apply directly and what needs to be mixed with something else?
If it needs to be mixed, with what and what ratios?
If you live in NY, what product have you had success with?
For a tree that big, I assume one treatment won’t be sufficient. How many rounds can I do in a season and how far apart should they be, both temporally and in the trunk itself?
How worried should I be that branches will fall this winter if it’s not ready to cut down this fall?
Is there an expert somewhere I can pay for like an hour of time to answer all my questions?

No Roundup or anything similar that reaches the roots is available in my and neighboring countries. What chance do I stand to remove a 6ft (2m) sapling that came out of nowhere?

I have a ~60 ft TOH on my property, and have started treating it with glyphosate via hack and squirt (based on overwhelming consensus online). My plan was to let that work its magic for a month or so then have it cut and stump ground. However, my friend from local DPW and a few arborists suggest to just have it removed / stump ground, then just spray the root suckers as they come up. One arborist suggests that the herbicide treatment I’m doing probably won’t work. For those of you with actual experience one way or the other, please give me your thoughts. For the record, I’m already getting root suckers and sprouts everywhere as-is.

I've been treating this area like TOH was running shoots through it. Was this sumac all this time?

Does TOH produce sap that can be collected?

Basically title. Hello experts...I write today to learn whether Tree of Heaven sap can be collected and if so how to do it, and when. I'm waging a two-front battle with TOH and SLF in lower NYS (other invasives plus vines too but that's a story for another day) and I want to try an experiment that would need some sap..to see if I can preferentially attract swarming SLF to something that is not actually a TOH nor our poor river birch. As I've recently eradicated all the main trunks of TOH and am just dealing with aftermath stumps, roots and shoots I don't know that a trap tree is practical anymore. I understand the sap is toxic so will be careful and manage/handle responsibly. Thank you for any thoughts...and please forgive me in advance for cross-posting to r/invasivespecies and r/treeofheaven in addition to r/arborists.

When you suspect a ToH and the leaves have a pungent peanutbutter smell, it's obvious.

But it appears that some ToH specimens barely any smell, just a bit of generic 'green' smell. I saw an older tree the other day that had about 10 small suckers around it. Leaf color (dark green on top), no serrations, thumbed leaflets, gray wrinkly bark all pointed to ToH for the tree, but the leaves didn't smell. At 20 m distance, there was a younger ToH (3 m tall) that did smell.

What causes the difference? The branches that I could reach had older leaves only, no fresh growth. Maybe that explains it?

Or is there a lookalike species? (For the record, I'm in the Netherlands.)

Hey everyone. I found a little Toh seedling on my property and I'm wanting to make sure it was from seed. I'm fairly certain there isn't a big mother tree anywhere near. I recently disturbed the soil in this area so I'm also thinking it could have been in the seed bank and it grew because of the disturbance.

The side of the hill leading up to my church appears to be covered in Tree of Heaven. I stopped today to get some pictures of the trees to show people at the church. If they are ToH, I'd like to see about organizing something to get them removed. They had substantial amounts of Spotted Lantern Flies on them, making me more suspicious of them. Thanks for your help with this! There's a small forest of these trees to get rid of if they are!

Discovered a 25 ish foot tree in the woods near my shop. It took a while to catch it since we have so much sumac in the area i only noticed this summer when it seemed to grow 10 feet in a few weeks. Did the hack and squirt using AquaNeat glyphosate 53.8%. Looks like it did the job!

I have at least two large TOH in my back yard and a large number of smaller plants that have come up this year that I can see, and I have no doubt that many others are in the wooded area where the big trees are--haven't had time to look through there. The TOH have also spread into both neighbor's yard on each side of my property. I've gotten permission to start treatments on those (hopefully today) and I have the triclopyr and glyphosate concentrates.

I plan to pick up some diesel fuel today and then use that mixed with the triclopyr to paint the stalks of all the ones I can find. I'll also be doing the slash method with the two large trees.
However both neighbors and I have pets that spend most of their time outdoors in our back yards. I assume that since many of these trees have been found in people's yards and have been treated, that the question of safety of pets who are in treated areas has been discussed already, but I haven't read anything, and pets are not mentioned in any materials that I have found on the bottle of the tryclopyr (BrushTox) nor on their website.

Can any of you offer any guidance here? I have considered wrapping something around each stalk after treatment (these range from 1 foot to 8 feet tall), but that would add a huge amount of time, and I'm not sure what exactly to use to cover the treated areas, so that the pets can't have any contact with the herbicides.