City’s response to aphid invasion bugs this homeowner
When Sheila and Aron Louis moved into their house on a quiet treed street in East Vancouver, little did they know how much grief one of those tall trees would cause them during the summer.
Every May or June, the giant tulip tree, which towers higher than their two-storey home, attracts colonies of aphids. And the little green bugs emit what’s known as honeydew, an excretion that coats their house, their ornamental trees, their driveway and their car with a shiny, sticky film. The little droplets actually rain from the sky and they get no relief until the fall rains return.
Sheila spent the day before scrubbing the honeydew from the sloped driveway so she doesn’t slip when pushing her daughter’s carriage.
“We have to wash or hose down the car every day because we touch the handles to open the car doors and it’s impossible to see out of the windows,” she said.
She and her husband have logged a number of calls to the City of Vancouver’s 311 line over the years and are frustrated that they haven’t had a return call at all this year.
“Once they brought us some ladybugs,” the aphids’ natural predator, she said.
She said she wants the city, in this case the park board, to be accountable for how a cityowned tree is making their life “miserable” during the summer. When you walk in the area, the sticky secretion tugs at the soles of your shoes and makes it feel like you’re walking on a spilled soda.
The aphids have migrated into the family’s backyard and onto garden plants and a cherry tree. That attracted ants, which killed the tree.
And the sweet sap attracts wasps, making it impossible to enjoy the outdoors, especially with a toddler.
Sheila called 311 as recently as last Friday.
“Nothing happened and no one ever does anything,” she said. “I would love for them to spray the trees. And I would be more than happy for them to remove the tree.”
The couple has resorted in the past to buying their own supply of ladybugs, around 400 to 500 of them, but it made little difference.
Last year, Joe Coll on 46th Avenue near Fraser Street faced the same problem from a row of linden trees on the city boulevard. He complained and said the city this year pruned the branches to five metres above the ground and sprayed a week earlier than usual, which mitigated the problem but didn’t eliminate it.
“It still gets on your shoes and you still drag it inside,” he said.
This year he’s been busy and hasn’t complained, but he still would like the city to take responsibility for what he said was the poor decision to plant a row of the same type of tree. He said arborists have told him that leads to these types of problems.
The city planted 10,000 linden trees over 30 years but stopped about 10 years ago when arborists noticed they attracted aphids. Tree removal can run over $1,000 per tree.
The city arborists weren’t available for comment Thursday and, in any case, had no record of the Louis’s 311 calls. City arborist Amit Gandha said in an email that he would follow up with the family.