From: "Boyce Tankersley" <btankers@chicagobotanic.org>
Reply-To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [pbs] Importing Hippeastrum to Mexico advice
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:44:00 -0500

Darren:

I have no experience importing/exporting from Mexico, but I did spend some
time working for Robert and Catherine Wilson in Costa Rica. At that time it
was known as the Las Cruces Tropical Botanic Garden - after the passing of
the Wilsons it has been renamed in their honor.

Great plantspeople, they gathered an impressive collection of tropical
plants from around the world at their garden. Their advice, based upon
years of experience (I think they were late 70's maybe early 80ish at the
time), was to have someone physically walk the plants through Customs;
regardless of country. Either they brought the plants back with them in
person or they arranged for a friend, visitor or colleage to hand carry the
plants through Customs to them.

It seems questions about paperwork, forms, permits, etc. could be worked
out more efficiently in person. Being a 'newbie intern', of course I sent
some things from the States to Costa Rica by mail and got to experience the
joys of traveling for a full day up and down some steep mountainside roads
to the Customs office to discover they were closed. Customs eventually
forwarded it to me and it arrived - in very bad shape - about a week before
I left the country. Fortunately it did not contain anything of great value
but the Wilson's did mention it was not uncommon for this sort of thing to
happen with the seeds/cuttings/plants they were trying to import or export.

That experience has served me well as an employee of several botanic
gardens. Stateside we hand carry (deliver them to USDA at the airport) or
if that is not possible we arrange for a custom's broker to work on our
behalf.

Good luck,

Boyce Tankersley
btankers@chicagobotanic.org

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