Importing bonsai is no joke these days. You will need to contact the US Department of Agriculture and be prepared to go through at lot to be approved to receive a permit and approval to quarantine a tree.

The fines can be quite heavy if an individual is caught illegally shipping trees into the US.

Cordially,

Michael Persiano
members.aol.com/iasnob

-----Original Message-----
From: Layne
To:
Sent: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:42:36 GMT
Subject: [IBC] Transporting Bonsai


What you have to do is find out what the importation laws are
regarding plants. Certain jurisdictions have very stringent rules
regarding the importation of plants due to pests traveling on the
plants or pathogens in the soil. You may be able to ship them or fly
with them, but they could be held up in customs and/or quarantined. My
father and his bonsai buddies used to travel to the neighbor islands
(Hawaii) all the time to collect plants. They'd dig them up, spray the
roots with water, wrap them in plastic and box them for the trip back.
Traveling island to island is no problem...no customs and no Dept. of
Ag. to get through. You may need a permit and other documents from
your government approving of the shipment of plants. Some plants may
be considered invasive by your government.

I'd suggest getting all the documents in order, water your plants a
day or two before shipping and wrap the roots in plastic and tie the
plastic around the trunk to seal off moisture loss. If you can just
leave the plants in the pots. If however, your government has
restrictions on importing soil you'll have to unpot your plants and
wash off any soil then add a soilless mix like moist peat to the
plastic bag like above. It might be best to ship your plants a day or
so ahead of your flight via UPS or FedEx if possible.

This is about all the help I can give on the matter.

Good luck.

Layne

On 19 Jul 2005 08:29:25 -0700, "Tekmanx" wrote:

I'm VERY new to this hobby and have a few cuttings/seed growing right
now. Thing is, I'm moving back home to the Bahamas in about two months
when I'm done with school here in Florida. Has anyone had problems
carrying their Bonsai plant through the airport? Will they tell me I
can't carry it through then dump my Bonsai in a waste bin? No!!! Let me
know if you guys have any experience with this. I'll wrap the roots of
these trees in cloth with soil if I have to, or better yet, let me know
if you guys have a better method of transport other than the cloth n'
soil thing I just mentioned.

Tekmanx
- Zone 25 (Florida/Bahamas)

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************************************************** ******************************
++++Sponsored, in part, by Kevin Bailey++++
************************************************** ******************************
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+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++