Have any of you traded plants or ordered plants from the mainland recently? Ordinarily you need a permit and have to get a phytosanitary certificate, which costs about $35, and then the plants have to go to the Ag Quarantine station for inspection, which is fine if you're buying a lot of stuff, but if you just want to get a couple of clean, unrooted cuttings from someone who wants to share, it's too much humbug! My husband says that they scan everything at the airport now, and any plant material is easily detected and destroyed. I would think he was just being paranoid, but I recently had some SEEDS confiscated because they came in without a phyto, so it seems to be a different ballgame now than it was a few years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I know the regulations are there to protect us from invaders like the coqui frog, and I think that's generally a good thing, but I just wondered what other people's experiences have been lately...