Issue No. 422
Ian C. Stocks
November, 2012
Introduction
On 15 June 2011, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Plant Industry (FDACS-DPI) inspector Lisa Hassell collected the mealybug Phenacoccus multicerarii, a new continental record, from a retail nursery in Fernandina Beach (Nassau County). On a return visit to the store, the mealybug was observed in high numbers on numerous host plants. On 28 June 2011, an additional find was made at a nursery in Apopka that had exchanged plant material with the nursery in Jacksonville. No further infestations were reported until October 2012, when a heavy infestation was discovered on a residential planting of Plectranthus scutellarioides (L.) Dodd (= Solenostemon scutellarioides, common coleus) in Cooper City (Broward County). This mealybug was described in 2007 from a sample collected in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1949 from an unknown host (Granara de Willink and Szumik 2007).