A TREE pest has been confirmed in the UK for the first time in nearly two decades. 

Forestry Commission officials say the plane lace bug (Corythucha ciliata) was recently found in central London.

It is the first sighting on these shores since 2006, but no detail has been provided on how the pests in question arrived in the UK.                                                                                  

The plane lace bug is native to North America and is now widespread in mainland Europe, but not endemic to the UK. It feeds on the leaves of plane trees, and large populations can cause leaves to become bronzed or drop off earlier than they normally would.

Andrea Deol, the FC's head of plant health, forestry and contingency, said: “We have identified the plane lace bugs on a number of plane trees in central London. 

“This is not a regulated tree pest and there is no requirement to take statutory action, but we are now conducting wider environment surveillance to determine the full scale of the issue.

"We encourage the public to report any suspected findings via our online portal TreeAlert.”

Forestry officials say annual surveillance has already been conducted on the health of plane trees in the area, with volunteers also mobilised from multi-partner tree health monitoring project Observatree recently. 

In 2006, localised outbreaks of Corythucha ciliata were found at two nurseries in Bedfordshire, alongside a stand of mature plane trees near one of the nurseries.

London plane (Platanus x acerifolia) and Oriental plane (P. orientalis) trees imported from France and Italy, were found to be infested as well as mature plane trees grown on site at the nursery.

The nurseries were advised to spray affected trees with insecticide which seemed effective.

Due to the level of infestation and distribution on more mature trees at multiple sites, it was assumed that C. ciliata was already established in the UK and so statutory action against the pest was deemed inappropriate.