LOS ANGELES — Bed bugs have re-emerged as an urban blight in the past several years, forcing people out of homes, resisting chemical pesticides and evading other removal tactics. But researchers are building bug-catchers inspired by an age-old folk remedy to this “ancient scourge”: kidney bean leaves.

Their experiments, described in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, tested the home-grown solution and even made synthetic leaves that could help scientists devise an easy, environmentally friendly method of trapping bugs before they establish a full invasion.

Bean leaves have historically been used in Eastern Europe as low-tech bug traps: Bed bugs wandering a floor strewn with the foliage would get stuck on their surfaces, struggling in vain even as the leaves were collected and burned.

The leaves sport tiny, sharp-hooked hairs called trichomes across their surface. These microscopic hooks jab into the insects’ bodies, trapping them before they get very far. Even those that break free are often trapped again a few steps later.

Learning the unassuming bean leaf’s secrets could help them create a bio-inspired reusable bug trap that would avoid chemical solutions — and, unlike a real leaf, that wouldn’t dry out after a few days.