The Bromeliads of Merritt Island

[JohnsBromeliads]

Last January, I was visiting life-long friends in Coca Beach and had the chance to spend the day at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge's neighbor on Merritt Island is the Kennedy Space Center, and it seemed just about wherever you went in the refuge, you could always see the huge Vehicle Assembly Building.
The large refuge consists of 140,000 acres and has a few easy hiking trails located only a couple hundred feet from the Visitors Center. Once we got started on one of the more easier trail's (I'm not much of a hiker), I found bunches of Tillandsia recurvata and T. usneoides (Spanish moss) growing on mature trees of the wetland hammock. It wasn't untill we got deeper into the hammock trails that we saw the most abundant of Tillandsia species of Merritt Island: Tillandsia setacea and T. utriculata. Although there were many trees, cocoplum and gumbo limbo, most were wild oaks that characterize the hammock's trees.
Tillandsia utriculata was in every wild oak, mostly 10 or more mature plants per 40-foot tree. Most had spent bloom spikes, indicating that they had reached maturity and had, or were about to disperse seed, the seedlings were even more numerous from last years bloom.
These bromeliads appeared to me at least, to be free of the Mexican Bromeliad Weevil (Metamasuis callizona) that is killing Tillandsia utriculata populations in our state, including other areas of Brevard County and south of Merritt Island's location. I looked as closely as I could at each plant I found lying on the ground near the trail. I found that they all looked intact, without damage to the bases of the leaves. It was likely that the bromeliads had fallen because the branches they were attached to had fallen from the parent tree.

What is protecting Merritt Island's Tillandsia utriculata from the bromeliad weevil? Is it because the refuge is uninhabited, and far from the reach of pests growing in the closest private collection? Is it because the weevil cannot bridge the gap between the mainland and the island refuge? Is the weevil already there but not in large enough quanities to cause any large-scale damage? I don't know if the University of Florida or the Florida Council of Bromeliad Societies has any information on the weevil's march this far north or not, but I will find out what the 07 reports are.

On our day trip to the refuge we also saw many ferns, a few orchids and one small wild hog.
Whatever your wildlife interests are, a trip to Merritt Island has something for everyone. Go during the dry season when the trails are dry and easy to walk. The Atlantic Ocean is just a stones-throw away and brings in great afternoon breezes.
It's only 4 hours from Miami, and 145 miles from St. Pete. (three hours).