Riccia and Glossostigma, again.

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Riccia and Glossostigma, again.
From: Erik Olson <eriko at wrq_com>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 07:54:01 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <199509180739.DAA07851 at looney_actwin.com>
> From: "Dan Resler" <resler at liberty_mas.vcu.edu>
> Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 22:29:14 -0400 (EDT)

> Just had a long conversation with Mike T. at Delaware Aquatics (easy
> to do - the man is not lacking in opinions <g>). Anyway, Amano's book
> came up. He was chuckling because everyone under the sun has been
> calling him asking for Riccia. And he talks them all out of using it,
> saying it just won't work.

Now why would he want to do that?  It's such an inexpensive plant, and 
a nice floating plant.  Could it be that he DOESN'T HAVE any? :)  I'd 
like to try this, but nobody has it locally here either.

> Mike claims that the stuff will look like
> the pictures for about 3 weeks, then everything next to the rocks
> starts rotting and it all goes to h*ll.

Speculation alert: I'll bet it depends on lighting.  I mean, consider 
this: "Green hygro looks real good for about a month, then the leaves 
near the bottom of your tank rot away and it looks like a damn forest in 
there."

> He also mentioned that everyone wants Glossostigma (who wouldn't after
> seeing Amano) but he can't get it *anywhere*. He claims that Europeans
> can't either - he gets calls from Germany asking for it! (Odd - its
> listed in Dennerle). 

I have several articles on this on the Krib 
(http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~aquaria/Krib/Plants/Plants/
and Krib/Plants/import.html))
It seems that the US import laws are what keeps this plant out.  Tropica 
and Dennerle have it just fine in Europe, but they cannot export to the 
US.  You need to ship it sans growing material (ie, dirt) and get a 
phyto-something certificate from the country you export it from.  Doesn't 
sound that hard, except that you have to find a friendly person to go 
hunt for that certificate.

> Any Australians out there? Can you readily get it? And how many years
> would you get if you were caught shipping boxes of it to the States?

It's New Zealanders that you should be asking (hi Len, how's it growin'?);
see also the Clayton article on NZ native plants for more info (in same
directory).  I would still love to grow some of these plants, but as I
still haven't even figured out the legalities of registering an
organization as non-profit, I can understand someone's disinterest in
hunting down a Phytosanitary Certificate from their local government.  Ah
well.   Actually, we could ask the many Europeans on this list if they'd 
be interested in helping...

   - Erik

---
Erik D. Olson					              I'm baaaack!
eriko at wrq_com (was olson at phys_washington.edu)