Re: Importing Aquarium Plants

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Importing Aquarium Plants
From: nfrank at parsifal_nando.net (Neil Frank)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 95 06:16:44 EDT

Erik Olson wrote:
>Lastly, along the lines of the recent posting by Len Trigg, anyone an 
>expert on US agriculture import laws or know where I could look up info 
>on important, say, uh, plants from, oh just to pick a country at random, 
>New Zealand. :)  I am very interested in helping get these fascinating 
>plants into the US!

The following information was published in _The Aquatic Gardener_ (V6n2),
March 1993; and was supplied by Susan Irwin of Lynden, WA.

To import plants into the U.S., a Phytosanitary Certificate (PC) is
required. The PC is isued by the federal government of the country where the
plants have been gown.  THis serves as both a certificate of origin and an
inspection certificate.  Inpector will require that you supply scientifc
names of the plants you wisht ot export.  Most countries require that PC be
dated within 14 days of shipment.

An Import Permit (IP) is also required for shipments of thirteen or more
items, except that no IP is required for shipments of enterable plants from
Canada, or shipments of 12 or fewer enterable items. There is a list of
prohibited species: Azolla pinnata, Eichornia azurea, Hydrilla verticillata,
Hygrophila polysperma, Ipomoea aquatica, Lagarosiphon major, Limnophila
sessiliflora, Monochoria hastata, M. vaginalis, Sagittaria sagittifolia,
Salivinia auriculata, S. biloba, S. herzogii, S. molesta, Sparganium erectum
and Stratioties aloides.

To Import plants into N.Z., PC is required and IP probably required.

Some countries are more sensible :-).  In Denmark, France and Germany,
aquatic plants for aquarium use are unrestricted and in Great Britain,
aquarium plants from EEC are also unrestricted.

--Neil