GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

29-05-2003, 10:08 PM

(Aaron Hicks) wrote in message ...

Taiwanese plants may come with documents, but the FWS may still
have problems with them. I asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Office
of Management Authority not more than a month ago about buying a couple of
flasks; they asked about the origin, and I said they were from Taiwan.

Evidently the plants used for propagation in Taiwan were removed
from Vietnam under dubious circumstances, so even if they have legit
export permits, they are (as one other writer here put it) "fruit of the
poison tree." I suppose that applies to hybrids as well, but I really
don't know. They suggested that plants from Europe in flask are OK, those
from Taiwan aren't.

Go figure. Don't jump on my ass for any of this- I'm just
parroting what I was told. It's a legal quagmire.

-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ

That sounds totally bizarre. How does USFWS know which parents are
which? Especially when, I'm sure, a lot of what's in Europe came from
Taiwan originally? And what happened to their insistence that VN
never issued valid CITES permits for *any* plants in the first place?
Are they now saying you can legally import these plants from Europe?
It just keeps getting better and better....

MG