There is a plaque before the Tree, between the Tree and the sidewalk, bronze and embedded in the lawn. Tissy down on old knees scrubs it weekly with a cleaner meant for headstones, bought from the hardware store up the street. A toothbrush through the crevices keeps off lichen and shines the bronze. With little sewing scissors she snips each blade of grass that grows over the plaque’s face, blows the clippings away with pursed lips. She looks the plaque over for smudge-marks and, once satisfied, rises to admire her gleaming handiwork:

A Champion of the Midwest

The Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus Altissima)

Circa 1899

- Gift of Friends of Village 1999 -

The hardware store up the street sells replicas of the plaque—Tissy’s idea. The replicas can come with a mount and screws for an additional five-fifty. The gift shop in the square, owned by Tissy’s artistic friend Val, sells rubber plaque stamps and pretty plaque pendants for chains. The plaque and the Tree appear in Village’s biggest mural, the one on the bank, on the brick wall facing Main. The winery sells a Riesling called Champion of the Midwest, available in mini-bottles, and the mini-bottles are bronze.

Day-trippers from City visit Village and walk the square, buy the gifts, drink the Riesling, photograph the mural, ask a local where they can find the real thing, the Tree. The local sends them to Tissy’s.

Here comes a pair now. Two women, past middle age, toting paper bags from the gift shop, white bakery boxes from the cupcake parlor.

Tissy hears one say, This must be it. How grand, how gorgeous.

The other ardently agrees. 

Hello there, Tissy calls. Lovely day.

The women, giggling, agree. They ask, Is this your tree?

Tissy places a hand on the smooth bark of the Tree. A little red bug—fragile nymph-form of something—hops away just in time to avoid the crushing force of her palm, a behavior Tissy interprets as deference. She eyes the great trunk up and up, up to the Tree’s yawning canopy, through its massive branches wide as doorframes and heavy as cars, an array so grand only deep time could’ve rendered it. The year’s tilted into spring and the Tree bears many blooms amidst its baby leaves, pinker than coral and soft-dropping petals like rain from a dream. From the street, from the sidewalk, Tissy knows how grand, how gorgeous-pink a sight the Tree makes, the biggest, oldest of its species in the region—the Champion, the pride of Village.

My great-great-grandfather planted it, Tissy recites. In 1899. Same year they built this house. She sweeps an arm, directs the women’s attention to her big white Victorian in the background. We were some of the first residents of Village after incorporation. We founded the brickworks. Seven out of ten of the bricks here were made by my family.

The women say, Wow, shake their heads and say, Amazing. They ask to take pictures, phones already out. Tissy tells them of course and they snap away. As they leave, back toward the square, Tissy calls, Don’t forget to tag Village’s Tree of Heaven when you post, all one word, starting with a hashtag.

Minutes later, still standing in the pink shade of the Tree, Tissy has a notification. She’s been tagged in a post. Her heart swells—pride and love—looking at the day-trippers’ photos. In them the Tree soars and the plaque—shined, shined, shined—gleams upon the lawn.

My Champion, Tissy sighs, and goes inside.

Who’s that? asks Val, peering, pointing out the turret-room window that faces the Tree. She often visits with Tissy after closing her shop, to recount her day of sales and the comportment of her customers.

Tissy peers along. There’s a new pilgrim to the Tree, but they’re no day-tripper—no gift bag nor bakery box burden, no air of awe and amazement. This person is studying, touching, scrutinizing. This person steps right over the plaque, ignores it, takes up-close pictures of the trunk from all sides but none from the street, none from the Tree’s best angles, in which the Tree’s full majesty—sunlight glowing behind, luminous pink and green—can be captured.

Tissy doesn’t like the look of this person and says so to Val, who agrees. They descend from the turret, march onto the porch.

Can I help you? Tissy calls.

The person asks if she’s the owner of this property. Tissy responds that this property’s been in her family since 1899, well over a century, so, yes, she’d say she’s the owner of this property. She crosses her arms and repeats, Can I help you?

Are you aware of the invasive status of this species of tree? the person asks.

Invasive status?

Yes. A specimen of this size—

It’s the biggest in the region. And the oldest. It’s the Champion Tree of its species.

Yes. A specimen this size produces hundreds of thousands if not millions of windborne seeds a year.

Ungrateful wind blows then, shivers the leaves, takes with it the Tree’s seed-bearing whirlybirds. Tissy says nothing, purses her lips. Behind her Val scoffs. Whirlybirds drift around like pink confetti.

Are you aware of The Spotted Lanternfly? the person asks.

That new bug?

Yes. It’s highly invasive.

I’m aware of it.

Are you aware the Tree of Heaven is the preferred host of The Spotted Lanternfly?

Oh, good lord, Val mutters.

Tissy turns to her and says, We’ve got a warrior.

It will devastate orchards and grapevines, the person says.

Thirsty little winos, Val giggles. Tissy giggles. 

It’s coming this way. Your tree’s opening the door. You ought to cut that down.

Oh, so I’m responsible! Tissy shouts as Val yells, Fat chance of that!

Tissy carries on loudly. Go back to City and don’t let me catch you on my property again. My property is private.

You’re leaving the door open, the person says. They wave good-bye. You’ll see.

The year tilts on, summer lengthens, and nymphs molt into adults. They’re the size of silver-dollars, and they bear black spots like blooms of mold. They’re everywhere, these lanternflies, crawling down Village’s sidewalks and up Village’s windows, across the outdoor dining areas of Village’s restaurants.

In flight, lanternflies open like wounds, exposing hindwings red as devil-masks. They can’t fly far but they can fly out of reach, making them hard to eliminate by stomping, smashing, or swatting. Desperate signs go up in all the shop windows, begging KILL THIS above a picture of a lanternfly splayed wide, pinned down.

The walnut and apple trees are swarmed, and the winemaker’s grapes are devoured at the vineyard. Future production of bronze-bottled Champion of the Midwest is threatened. Day-trippers are grossed out and trip elsewhere. Stamp and pendant sales sag and Val closes shop early, even on Saturday.

The mayor makes calls to the Department of Natural Resources, accuses negligence, seeks recompense. The officer on the line responds that the whole state’s under siege, they’ve no support to spare. He suggests Village representatives remove invasive host species, such as Oriental bittersweet and the Tree of Heaven. He says, That’s the best place to start, and you’ve got to start somewhere.

In late September, Val comes over for tea. Usually, Tissy would serve it with shortbread cookies on the porch, in the breeze, but there’s too many lanternflies crawling about, leaping around grotesquely, so they sit in the turret-room, open a window, turn on the fan, and it’s fine.

Do you remember that person? Val asks.

Probably not, Tissy answers.

The one who came in spring? When I was here? Who said about the Tree?

Tissy sets down her teacup. What about that person?

You don’t think—Val’s stilted, hesitating—perhaps, do you think, they were right?

Don’t be dumb, Tissy says, but Val goes on. She says, It’s just, I’ve done some reading, and—

Tissy, speaking firmly now, interrupts. I’ve done reading too, she says. The Tree of Heaven is a preferred host. Preferred, not only. These nasty bugs were coming this way whether we grew the Tree or not. Do you think my ancestors could’ve foreseen this? Of course not. If you want to point fingers, point fingers at the source, where they come from, which is China.

Val nods, agreeing, agreeing, saying, Yes, of course. She dips a cookie in her tea. She’s really soaking it. It’s falling apart. It’s just, Val says. I worry about that door. That we’re leaving it open. Don’t you think?

No, Tissy says. I don’t.

Val says, All right, then. Chunks of cookie swamp her tea. Neither speaks, then outside there’s commotion, raised voices.

What on Earth? Tissy mutters, rising. Val mirrors her. They thunder down the turret, out to the porch.

The mayor, the winemaker, and the hardware storekeep stand encircling the Tree. One’s holding an axe, one’s holding a saw, one’s wringing their hands, and everyone’s shouting.

This can’t go on!

We’ve got to start somewhere!

Enough, already, enough!

What’s the meaning of this? Tissy cries, running into the lawn, old stiff knees crackling, but she need not really ask. She knows precisely what the meaning is of this, has been anticipating this since that no-gooder showed up on her property last spring. This—hysteria—is why Tissy read up, armed herself with knowledge and argument and counterargument, because she knew, after everything the Tree’s done for Village, everything her family’s done for Village, decades of economic undergirding, she knew they’d come eventually to take it all away. Seven out of ten bricks, and they’d take it all away.

Over my dead body, Tissy spits, will mine be taken from me.

The mayor, the winemaker, and the hardware-storekeep turn on her, fill their lungs to shout, and Tissy fills her lungs as well, more of the same words nocked and ready to loose, all eyes pinned and locked.

Only Val looks elsewhere. Only Val senses the pressure in the air, arriving like a storm. Val, standing in the background on the Victorian stoop, turns up her face, cranes her neck, takes in the darkening, darkening sky. Her mind doesn’t comprehend what she sees, but her blood does. Her blood tells her, It is coming, the horizon is changing, another armada. She points at the sky and shouts, Be Quiet! Look!

Across the sky, before the whole sun, The Spotted Lanternfly is in flight, sight-filling size of an asteroid. Sunlight falls to Earth through Its massive red hindwings and all the world turns red. Tissy had thought it was her wrath changing the color of things, but, she now realizes, even her wrath hasn’t such power. She falls to her old stiff knees. Hundreds of thousands if not a million of Its children fly close behind It. The Tree thrums to them Come, Come, Come, and they do. And It does.

Val steps forward and places a trembling hand on Tissy’s shoulder.

Oh, Altissima, she whispers. That door.

The Champion by Mish Gajewski-Zambataro

Mish Gajewski-Zambataro (she/her) lives in the Lake Erie watershed and studies fiction in the NEOMFA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming from Gramarye: Journal of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction; American Literary Review’s Flash Flood series; Beyond Words Magazine; and JMWW. She was a finalist in Ninth Letter’s 2024 Regeneration Literary Contest.

Published October 15 2025