Tobias

Wow. That's really too bad for Mr. Mihalic. I hope he's able to at least partially recover his losses from the state.

I'm curious to know what the law used to be before it was changed to a two year (wow!) quarantine. Does this quarantine apply only to "artificially dwarfed plants" as the news articles states (this wouldn't really make much sense)? Do people here who are knowledgable about pests think that a two year quarantine is rational? It seems like a really long time to me.

Is the concern only a certain type of wood boring beetle, or are there several pests which raise concerns? We have some types of boring beetles in the States already I believe. Are these types currently here indiginous or were they imported at some point? How does the insect concern here relate to the disease concern I've heard mentioned elsewhere? Questions questions questions!

This is a very interesting issue to me. It's a real bummer that Mihalic asked a state USDA employee about a federal USDA issue. While it would be easy to lay the blame on the state employee who gave "bad advice," it's entirely possible that she thought she was giving him advice on state importation laws, not federal...uhhhh...or something. Ok, maybe we should blame her at least a little.

I'm curious to know what other people think about all of this. Two year quarantine. Yeesh. Has this started hurting the entire bonsai market in the US yet? Ok, no more questions, sorry.

peace,

toby

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~Self-proclaimed dendrophile!