Bromeliads and Mosquitoes

Bromeliads are popular ornamental plants in central and southern Florida. Many imported species and hybrids are easy to care for. They provide colorful flowers, attractive foliage, or both. Most of them grow best in partial or full shade. Dead leaves and twigs of shade trees fall, and some are caught and decompose in the leaf axils of some bromeliads which hold little pools of water (tanks). These tank bromeliads obtain nutrients from the decomposing materials in their water-filled tanks.

Larvae of some mosquito species also will live in these water-filled, nutrient-containing tanks. The mosquito larvae do not harm the bromeliads, but the adult female mosquitoes bite warm-blooded animals in daylight hours. Although many of the tank bromeliads that support development of mosquito larvae in cities in central and south Florida are imported from the tropics, some tank bromeliads are native to Florida and are protected by law. In addition to mosquito larvae, they may contain numerous, harmless, minute, native, aquatic organisms which occur nowhere but in bromeliad tanks (Frank 1983).