How does this comport with restrictions about moving plants into California? I would be concerned with the spread of insects and pathogens. Commercial nursery products are inspected. HLB was introduced into California by a person who brought infected scion wood into the state and shared it with friends.

Well, California does seem to have more stringent restrictions on moving plants than other states, and there is a useful index at http://pi.cdfa.ca.gov/pqm/manual/htm/pqm_index.htm, at the bottom of the page, that can be used to determine if a plant or seed is prohibited from shipment to California. I think any person who uses the site should check if the plant they are thinking of shipping is on the list, and I will include the list on the site.

There's also in a lot of regulations literature, not just in California, but in every state, mention that a "phytosanitary certificate" needs to be included in shipment of a live plant or seeds in the mail. In my searches, which are somewhat extensive, I have never found any template for this certificate or any information about who should issue the certificate or how it should be done. In my opinion, if a phytosanitary certificate is mentioned anywhere, there should be a way for people to use it. This seems to subtly make all shipment of plant or seeds through the mail by individuals against the rules.

It seems to me that people should be able to freely exchange seeds and plants through the mail, as long as there is no violation of existing quarantines.

lgteacher, do you think seeds should not be exchanged through the mail by individuals, but should be sold at a higher price by companies, because the general risk from pests is probably higher in individual trades?

Right On Igteacher! Been here in CA long enough to see what happens when good minded people "share" things. Disaster. Keep things local. "Just this once doesn't cut it."

-Babka

Well you guys should put "keep things local" into your laws then. Until there is a law in California that prevents me from establishing a worldwide exchange in which California is included, then I will include California. Currently the law states that specific live plants or seeds should not be shipped, and in my opinion this is the best way to go about it.

You guys can just go on bashing my idea until you are blue in the face. You guys are producing CO2 with your breaths and producing greenhouse gases when you use electricity and drive a car. Where do you draw the line?

Let's all listen to this applicable Woody Guthrie song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2aE

In my searches, which are somewhat extensive, I have never found any template for this certificate or any information about who should issue the certificate or how it should be done.

Go to Google search and type in the search term:

Any international plant shipments into the US need APHIS certs.

The Agriculture Department of each state sets the requirements for that state and the USDA does it for exports out of the country. CA isn't the only one with stringent requirements. Many of the warmer states who don't get killer frosts are most vulnerable, however even some viruses don't die when frozen. The Ag department sends an official who, upon inspection, will issue the certification to you. If you call you local Ag Dept. Extension Service they will gladly answer all your questions.

Wikipedia explains it pretty well. What is a Phytosanitary Certificate

-Babka

They are wasting time protecting monoculture because people are going to end up spreading these diseases. It only takes one spark to start a fire right? Time to start breeding more disease resistant crops. Is the citrus industry even trying?

Yes, the citrus industry is working hard to find citrus varieties that resist HLB. And for the person who started this thread, there are laws about moving plants from place to place. If you buy a citrus tree in California it comes with a tag that states it cannot be moved out of the county where you purchased it. Groups that exchange scion wood for grafting have stopped exchanging citrus. It's only common sense.

The polyphagous shot hole borer is not attacking a monoculture, but uses 33 species of trees as reproductive hosts. Most are ornamental trees, like liquid amber and sycamore, so there is not money to research for those trees. However, they also attack avocados, so the avocado industry is financing research.

Preserving genetic diversity does not mean growing every plant in every part of the world. Preserve diversity where you are and share carefully so you are not also sharing pathogens.

HLB is not a monoculture problem. It attacks every species of citrus of which there are around half a dozen comercially important species and dozens of hybrids. The vector for the disease is the Asian Citrus Psyllid. These little buggers spread through diverse polycultural residential neighborhoods with ease. Right now the only available solutions are quarantine and preventative spraying. Lots and lots of spraying.
Hopefully people will come to their senses and let the GM solution developed in Texas to be approved so we can save not only the citrus industry but also backyard suburban citrus.

Thanks all for your input. :) I can't argue with that.

Here in Napa county all shipments of nursery stock coming into the county is inspected for the Glassywinged Sharpshooter, a carrier of Pierces disease, a killer of grapevines, the backbone of our economy.

Don't even get me started about Pierces Disease. My grape gets hammered every year. I am desperately awaiting the retail availability of both the Walker resistant varieties and the newer GM resistant varieties. I would love to just get some of the GM thompson seedless that they were doing the preliminary GM on.

Great idea! I love trading plants! A while back I created a group on flickr to try and facilitate local plant exchanges... but never got around to really doing anything with it. I planted a seed... it germinated... but then I never really gave it any TLC. I didn't give the seedling very much water, food or a larger pot. So it turned into a bonsai!

Here's some feedback on your seedling...

1. It looks ghetto! :) Personally, for me it's not a deal breaker. But still... it was my first impression. Am I arguing that you should allocate more of your limited resources to improving the style? Nope. Substance is always more important than style. Craiglist is a perfect example.

2. On your homepage you have a little box with a little slideshow of plants. Beneath the slideshow it says, "Available Items". I want that to be a link that takes me to a page that shows me all the available plants. After a while I figured out that clicking on "Search" seems to accomplish the same thing. But "Search" really isn't the same thing as "Browse". You're just getting started so I'm hardly going to want to waste my time searching for all the plants on my very very very long want list.

3. Regarding your credit idea.... hmmmmm. Live plants equals three credits? I get three credits whether I share a Crassula ovata (common) or a Laelia speciosa (uncommon)? In that case I'm probably going to share my common plants rather than my uncommon plants. If everybody else does the same... your website will not be a good source for uncommon plants. Which is unfortunate for those of us who are interested in uncommon plants.

Here's an alternative system. Allow people to use paypal to put money into their digital wallet (DW). Let's say that I put $10 dollars into my DW. I browse and see that you recently listed Crassula ovata. Given that, from my perspective, you're listing a very common plant.... I wouldn't allocate even one of my pennies to your listing. From my perspective your listing would be worthless. One person's trash certainly is another person's treasure... but if nobody allocated any of their pennies to your listing then... well... you get the idea. But what if you listed Laelia speciosa or any of its crosses? Then I would definitely allocate quite a few of my pennies to your listing!

Recently some guy listed Bpl. Golden Peacock on eBay. This is a really great cross! So I took the time to share this listing with the Epiphyte Society of Southern California (ESSC). You can see how much the plant costs ($19.95) but you can't see how much the listing itself is worth. Clearly it's worth something given that I was willing to share it with the ESSC. But you can't see just how much the listing is worth to me or anybody else. In other words.... you're missing important information about the information.

Let's explore this concept using this thread itself. You posted this thread to share information and perhaps to receive some feedback on your information. And here I am sharing some information about your information! Others have done so as well. But it stands to reason that you really don't equally value all the posts in this thread. I sure don't equally value all the posts in this thread.

With the current system... we have the option to "Like" posts... and this does help provide some useful information about posts. It tells us how popular they are. But it really doesn't tell us how valuable they are.

It's good to know how popular things are.... but it's infinitely better to know how valuable they are. It didn't cost me anything to "Like" your OP. Well... perhaps it cost me one second and one calorie to click the "Like" button. In any case.... the cost was vanishingly small. And it's because the cost of "Liking" something is so vanishingly small that it doesn't really convey much information. But what if I had allocated $1 dollar to your OP? Or $5 dollars? Or $25 dollars? I could have used that money to buy a nice orchid! I could have used that money to buy another Golden Peacock! So it would say a lot if I was willing to forego a really nice orchid in order to support your OP.

Technically speaking... it's not fundamentally more difficult to facilitate allocations than it is to facilitate "Likes". In both cases you need an additional table to store the additional information about the information. And I'm guessing that you might want an additional column in your listings table to store the total allocations. That would make it easy to sort the listings by their value. The front end would just require a bit of javascript and AJAX. Fun stuff!

Right now this forum doesn't allow us to valuate threads or sort them by their value. EBay allows us to sort orchids by their price... but it doesn't allow us to valuate listings or sort them by their value. Craigslist doesn't allow us to valuate listings or sort them by their value.

Obviously your website can certainly succeed without facilitating valuations of the listings. I just really like the idea of being able to easily use my money to help bring valuable listings to the attention of other people. If somebody lists some awesome plant on your website then I'd certainly appreciate the opportunity to use my money to easily and clearly communicate my valuation of their listing.

This website makes it stupid easy for me to try and encourage you with my words. Which is all kinds of wonderful! But imagine trying to grow plants with only words! Hah. I'd simply attach Golden Peacock to a tree and say, "Grow grow grow please grow!" Maybe that would work in Miami! But here in Southern California... if I want Golden Peacock to grow then I'm going to have to take the time and make the effort to water it twice a week (at night) during summer.