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Importing T.pachanoi crestate

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I was thinking about this after reading bit's thread on his new crests he picked up in Auckland, which came from the Castle Rock Cactus Company in Christchurch. I visited them recently, and really they do have a hell of a lot of crested pachs there! We are getting a camera shortly, and I will go out there again soon and take some photos. His private greenhouse is amazing with an unbelievable massive crested astrophtyum and a beautiful single column Lophocerus shotii monstrose.

Anyway, it got me thinking... there are quite a few people back in Aus who have expressed oh, shall we say, extreme interest in obtaining a crested pachanoi, and it seems as if they do not exist in Australia, except possibly in some old granny's backyard somewhere, so I wondered if these people would be interested in putting their dollars together and importing a square meter footprint of crested pachanoi from this greenhouse. Thing is, a year or two ago the owner was very reluctant to let even one go, and I really had to cajole him just to get a small one, but he said come back in a year. So now it is a couple of growing seasons later, and they have sent a few around NZ, and I have personally just bought 5 or 6 in my latest trip out there... still, he would only let me take two of the larger ones, but I think this is because they are pretty overgrown, and would easily make three or four medium ones, as well as a healthy root so it is not very good business sense for them to sell them for $15.

Okay, so the point is I'm fairly sure they would sell a bunch of the small to medium ones quite happily, and I reckon people back home may as well buy them and give their existence over there a massive headstart, as NZ obviously has no shortage! Personally, I want these funny fellas to be around over there cause I would miss them if we ever move back home... not as much as I would miss my wife or my balls if I had to leave either of them behind, but quite a bit nonetheless.

A couple of years ago Rev and I were looking into importing a bunch of TJG from here, and it looked like it would be fairly expensive but the scariest part was that they could still end up destroying them for some reason, and the money would be wasted... but the thing is, if enough people over there are genuinely interested in obtaining a specimen or three, it really wouldn't be that much of an outlay per individual.

Of course, it would be possible to just try discreetly posting small cuttings over there, but the problem is that apart from being completely dodgy, the little cuttings have a low chance of survival.

So what do you guys reckon? I can think of at least half a dozen of you I reckon would jump at the chance... fucking cactus heads.

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Mate, many of us have wated to import rare cacti from overseas. Problem is as you stated in your original post it WILL be destroyed by Quarantine.

I don't personally speak from exprience but wait for Kadakuda to reply to this thread. I think he is in Indonesia and has tried sending several clean cacti cuts to aus with no luck.

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Man I'm glad I don't live in the land of Kangaroos and cactus-haters....

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its the expense of the 6month quarentine fee that makes it impractical.

otherwise everyone would be. as far as i know trichocereus cacti are legal to import? as has been mentioned cites certificates and quarentine costs makes the idea unaffordable to me. even in a syndicate

its often a dream though i must admit! set up a quarenteine station IB.u wouldnt have a hard time finding customers.

Edited by jono

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Y'all need cactus smuggling hot-air ballons or some shit...

Think a pigeon could carry a cactus???

Maybe a small Lophophora!

Anybody in Aussy-land have carrier pigeons?

wait...carrier pigeons can't fly 1000s of miles over the sea...

Anybody got carrier...fish?

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Anyone gets it going, I might chip in some dollars... brain have you considered that you could put a heap of cuts into some ug boots, trackies, an allblacks shirt and a swandrii, put a tag on it saying "gidday, my name is Grig" and tell airport staff its your narcoleptic cousin going to find work in Australia? Taking a quick look at other things I mean people we let in without fuss from NZ, I can see it working :P

It's not that we hate cactus,Teotz, we just have this aversion to possible epidemics of destructive critters n plants... well, at least the ones that the upper echelons of the established nursery trade don't have vested interest in, that is! Unfortunately, unless you live in pretty pristine areas, most of what aussies have come to think of as "scrubby stuff" is generally nursery escapees... around me I can walk up a creekline for an hour an pass nothing but non native Cyperus sp, Lantana, Passifloras, Calliandras, Jacarandas, Japanese Raisin Trees, non native palms, ornamental oxalis, Camphor Laurels... its like Hawaii, most of what ppl think of as "local" isn't even close, its all feral imports with the odd spot of the real deal left, and thats fucked...its just that it all kinda "goes together" in visual terms so it looks a lot more natural than it is...even the parrots are imports, in some cases. I like a pretty yard as much as the next person but its that kinda thinking here for the last hundred years that means "real bush" is being pushed further and further back... I don't credit a crested pach with much ability to become a monoculture across thousands of hectares, but then we didnt think that about the last 500 species we let over the back fence either. To get from where I live to where all my stuffs growing I have to drive for about an hour an in that time would have to pass easily a hundred advanced Opuntias, and so many patches of the Mother of Millions stuff that I lose count.

On the other side of that, my Mum lives in Florida most of the time, and reckons she can't take two steps without tripping over some virulently successful Aussie native species taking over local swamps etc, and half of what she sees her neighbours paying top dollar for are things that she spent 30 years here chopping out of the backyard and burning in big piles. Small world, after all.

A lot of Australia is pretty damned close to that semi-bare south american country, so we have to be careful.. 75 percent of weeds I see around are SA in origin and a lot of our practices in stock management etc came from there... basically this place could be New New Mexico in not too long at all, if we're not careful.

It can't be entirely impossible to get em in, the amount of people I know that have gotten dodgy palms n sappy things here from Indo, Thailand, Vietnam means all hope is NOT lost... but then lifes always easier when you know what forms you need to fill out and are on decent terms with quarantine property owners.... anyone in the trade might want to look into one of Don Ellisons famed trips to south america, has to make things easier being surrounded by old school, official nursery types.

Say gday to the killer bees, zebra mosquitos and west nile virus afflicted folks for us :P Hanging out under the eucalypts there n all ;)

VM

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Problem is as you stated in your original post it WILL be destroyed by Quarantine.

I didn't state that... what I did say was I have checked it out at length with AQIS, and as long as the right procedures are followed, there would be no reason for them to destroy them... problem is that they still can, and so there is some risk involved.

I don't personally speak from exprience but wait for Kadakuda to reply to this thread. I think he is in Indonesia and has tried sending several clean cacti cuts to aus with no luck.

I have read some of Kadakuda's posts, but I didn't get the impression he had gone through AQIS, just popped them in the post... maybe he can clear this up?

___________________

Jono, what I am saying is that if enough people were interested, the cost would be relatively small... I can't remember exactly, but I seem to recall it would have worked out to about $700 to import the TJG cuttings, and crested pachs are the one thing I can imagine a sufficient number of people would be interested in importing.

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I bet Trichocereus could go nuts in Aus.

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haha could be fun finding out , but then again it does have a whole host of region specific predator species... most of which are members of SAB :P cactoblastus eat your heart out, never understimate a sabster with some pruning gear :D

If you've never come across the tale (tales...theres af ew versions) of the "Hunter River Valley Crop" in Australia then look into it, I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it Teotz... invasive weed, indeed!

Brain if theyre running on a sqm footprint, is that just a flat pallet or do you mean as three tiered racks or something? My only personal exp transporting plantstock is dealing with very large trucks driven by maniacs with poor timekeeping abilities, and stacking the odd airfreight container with a squillion cuttings now n then.

VM

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haha could be fun finding out , but then again it does have a whole host of region specific predator species... most of which are members of SAB :P cactoblastus eat your heart out, never understimate a sabster with some pruning gear :D

If you've never come across the tale (tales...theres af ew versions) of the "Hunter River Valley Crop" in Australia then look into it, I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it Teotz... invasive weed, indeed!

Brain if theyre running on a sqm footprint, is that just a flat pallet or do you mean as three tiered racks or something? My only personal exp transporting plantstock is dealing with very large trucks driven by maniacs with poor timekeeping abilities, and stacking the odd airfreight container with a squillion cuttings now n then.

VM

No sorry man, it's actually per cubic meter, but I thought it would be best not to stack em while they were in quarantine... if there was some kind of stacking apparatus to keep them from touching each other or if that doesn't even matter, then yeah it is really per cubic meter. Not sure exactly if they would sell that much as the guy reckons it is more of a hobby, and he makes his money elsewhere... he is an unusual character!

As far as trichos taking over, I can't imagine it myself... as Vert said, there are far too many unnatural predators!

Still, it might give the acacias a rest... :devil:

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haha, "if youre a bastard and you know it, clap your hands" CLAP CLAP :P

K, when plants travel about they often do it by the pallet, or the rack, both have the same foot print etc... racks are essentially just collapsable metal shelving, so you end up with ...shelves in midair, haha. I don't know if they stuff with them intenationally, if they did theyd either be a lot smaller or lot bigger than the ones I've had much to do with... I do know offhand the lil container used to get a bunch of plant cuts from here TO new zealand was probably 3.5 metres long, about half that high and wide, i guess a couple cube metres of actual space if you wanted to leave any kind of airspaces and room to move around to place and check em... just thinking along those lines as when it came time to pay freight rather than quarantine fees etc, it often works out that "well you might as well send 3 times that matie as you still pay the same freight on the footprint" .

Of course if the growers numbers are down (interesting how many growers cant part with stock, when it comes to the crunch lol) and "we" had to pay a flat rate for the bulk etc anyway, it might be worth looking into what else they have, to fill the spaces. Of course to get any plant anywhere you need to sign a bit of paper saying its been drowned in three kinds of noxious chemical for x minutes and bla bla.. so nothing coming in like that would be for any kind of consumption least not for a while. To get cuts from here to NZ we used to have to use an organophosphate, a fungicide and some other whacky stuff that is only really used here for dipping sheep (i shit you not, and its not a kiwi joke lol).

You'd also need some way to work out, at that end, the barerooting, cleaning, drying, dipping, spraying, counting, stacking, of all those bits of plant and then someway of getting the container, pallet whatever to the airport... maybe have to think about how to lift x hundred kilos of cactus into the back of the truck too, some have pallet jacks but plenty dont even if they do have powered tailgates on em they wont want to hang around for hours while you stack spikies.

So when do I get my cactus anyway? :P

VM

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haha, "if youre a bastard and you know it, clap your hands" CLAP CLAP :P

K, when plants travel about they often do it by the pallet, or the rack, both have the same foot print etc... racks are essentially just collapsable metal shelving, so you end up with ...shelves in midair, haha. I don't know if they stuff with them intenationally, if they did theyd either be a lot smaller or lot bigger than the ones I've had much to do with... I do know offhand the lil container used to get a bunch of plant cuts from here TO new zealand was probably 3.5 metres long, about half that high and wide, i guess a couple cube metres of actual space if you wanted to leave any kind of airspaces and room to move around to place and check em... just thinking along those lines as when it came time to pay freight rather than quarantine fees etc, it often works out that "well you might as well send 3 times that matie as you still pay the same freight on the footprint" .

Of course if the growers numbers are down (interesting how many growers cant part with stock, when it comes to the crunch lol) and "we" had to pay a flat rate for the bulk etc anyway, it might be worth looking into what else they have, to fill the spaces. Of course to get any plant anywhere you need to sign a bit of paper saying its been drowned in three kinds of noxious chemical for x minutes and bla bla.. so nothing coming in like that would be for any kind of consumption least not for a while. To get cuts from here to NZ we used to have to use an organophosphate, a fungicide and some other whacky stuff that is only really used here for dipping sheep (i shit you not, and its not a kiwi joke lol).

You'd also need some way to work out, at that end, the barerooting, cleaning, drying, dipping, spraying, counting, stacking, of all those bits of plant and then someway of getting the container, pallet whatever to the airport... maybe have to think about how to lift x hundred kilos of cactus into the back of the truck too, some have pallet jacks but plenty dont even if they do have powered tailgates on em they wont want to hang around for hours while you stack spikies.

So when do I get my cactus anyway? :P

VM

I'd be happy to pick up, clean up and drop off... don't know about the chemicals though! AFAIR, doesn't AQIS dip them in some kind of horrible stuff anyway? The place has some very nice specimens that could fill the gaps, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what would be really desirable as well as fairly hardy... apart from the crests, obviously. No worries on the eating front, as I think anyone who decided to eat their allotted portion would be immediately flayed alive by the rest of the crew here, and made to feel very morally impure.

Actually, I guess we could quickly fill up the space with a couple of TJG logs, but it will depend on how many I can find... a couple of years ago I bought a couple of bog boxes full, but it all seems to have mysteriously disappeared... :scratchhead: Of course, that was two years ago and I bet the lady, who seems like a very nice person would probably again be overwhelmed by the stuff by now... I will ask her what's up.

You can have your cactus as soon as you can get to NZ.

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is that 700dollarsper square metre of quarentine space for the 6 months?

if that where the cost id be in, but how many cacti can u fit on a square metre?

edit-on the topic of noo zooland, anyone here seen the movie 'Black Sheep'?

unreal stuff after a bamboo schooner or 3.

Edited by jono

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I dunno bout the other way around, but from here to there stuff had to be dipped and thorougly using high strength mixes at that, before AQIS would accept it for further treatment n processing... they're also not averse to "pruning" trays of plants with electric hedgers if they suspect they have flowers in the foliage, that kinda thing... I guess they like to keep their clean areas, clean. Or maybe they just get a kick out of knowing someone is swimming in termite spray somewhere. Other stuff I've dealt with was going to Japan and that was just a fucking nightmare as far as what standards it had to meet, all for some trays of jasmine which im fairly sure they already have in Japan haha... removing every last trace of anything that even remotely resembled soil was good fun, not. From memory even though it was muggins here doing the spraying the whole process was signed off by someone else entirely that had a phyto-cert and all the rest, and they needed to know what agents had been applied, at what rate, by what method, for how much time, etc. Also removing anything that might qualify as "bug habitat" or even evidence of past bug damage (some bugs lay eggs in their dirty plates, so to speak)... so nip of anything thats been nibbled, scribbled or whatever ... problem there is that any cactus of a reasonable size esp. a tricho tends to have some kind of scarring etc, and its a lot harder to just cut out black spot than it is to nip off some dodgy looking leaves.

Then theres the issue that being crested, I'm sure they are riddled with teeny tiny little cavities and recesses for buglife to lurk in, and no matter how dead it seems to be or what you drenched it with, if the gnomes at aqis see any kind of life hanging out on your batch, the whole process can fuck right up and everything has to be started from scratch. And other reasons why its generally left to either wealthy collectors or serious trade importers with a lot of cash behind them, and usually a great working knowledge of the country of origin (being married to a local helps too, just ask the man with the frangis). Oddly enough some of the best operators in this area I've had anything to do with are ex serviceman that got their break in some developing craphole by running around splatting the local inhabitants... go on Brain, become a Cactus Commando! I can see the merchandising now...

Maybe theres some interesting Kiwi plants of other kinds that could go on the same lot, then everyone at this end would have to appoint an official "agent" to handle everyones dollars or plants long enough to distribute properly... unless you address it all to yourself and fly over with em i guess (stupidly enough theres this much fucking around jsut for some cacti whereas you can ship an entire PERSON with bugs in their guts and drugs in their undies for bugger all on Jetstar, not that im suggesting they dip the Brain for lice ya understand :P )... I vaguely know a couple of people with quarantine setups but noone on what I'd call a useful basis, sorry.

VM

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QUOTE(Hellonasty @ Jan 26 2008, 01:21 PM) *

I don't personally speak from exprience but wait for Kadakuda to reply to this thread. I think he is in Indonesia and has tried sending several clean cacti cuts to aus with no luck.

I have read some of Kadakuda's posts, but I didn't get the impression he had gone through AQIS, just popped them in the post... maybe he can clear this up?

I have not tried to do it the legal way. I have *tried* shipping, seeds, cacti cuts and cleaned (i mean CLEAN****) rooted cacti, plant cuttings and pollen on a brush and every damn package was destroyed....they were nice enough to send the empty envelope with a pamphlet on what your not allowed to get mailed though....dinks.

but your right, i have only tried doing it without paperwork in the mail and using currier (DHL), neither worked....honestly....its a waste of money and plants to try unless you are willing to put up the $ for proper paperwork...i gave up a while ago...

is cites and phyto enough for OZ, i get the feeling there may be other papers needs...perhaps even provincially???

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Heh, I should have just smuggled some over here... I'm in brizzy at the moment.

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dam bit....

anyone keen on shelfing a 3inch Tricho Pach crest? de-spined inside a little rubber johnny..... it just might be possible...

lotta love for a cactus though...and if it bursts mid flight, i don't know how a mes trip at 25 000 feet on a protected public service would go. :scratchhead:

I'm surprised Torsten has not got involved with this?... He loves his cacti as much as any of us, and is trichos too, and probably has more dealings with AQIS and quarantine than all of us put together lol.

Yo Torst ....you got a quarantine station down at Wandjina mate? We just wanna fill it with Tricho Pach crests for 6 months, and have quarantine come out and inspect regularly :wink: lol

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Thing is, a year or two ago the owner was very reluctant to let even one go, and I really had to cajole him just to get a small one, but he said come back in a year. So now it is a couple of growing seasons later, and they have sent a few around NZ, and I have personally just bought 5 or 6 in my latest trip out there... still, he would only let me take two of the larger ones, but I think this is because they are pretty overgrown, and would easily make three or four medium ones, as well as a healthy root so it is not very good business sense for them to sell them for $15.

That is one of the main reasons i think it IS here but is being kept on the lowdown.

Im doing a little behind the scenes research with our new zealand friends as im sure a few others may be too. Hopefully i get lucky. Failing that... i dont know about shelfing, :unsure: but Im actually thinking of going for a little flight across the Tasman. Its about time i took a holiday ! Pretty keen to go try the worlds biggest canyon swing anyway. I like my chances :)

Edit : BTW has anyone seen kadas monstrose pachenoi ? :drool2:

Edited by tipz

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F**me but reading this actually makes me realize i'm not so bad off where i live(weather aside). in the place where i bought a whole bunch of my trichs they had some really juicy lookin' pach crists. and officially pach is no no in this land! I have to get me one before they dissapear!!! awesome plant!

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Hey neomad where are you in the world?

I would also be interested to find out if Torsten has a quarrantine facility for plant imports.. I remember someone talking about one of the big cacti nurseries in Oz importing plants from Europe, maybe someone here is chummy with em.

Don't worry, pachanoi crest will be in Aus next year :wink:

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That's Hamilton's you're thinking of centipede.

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Hey neomad where are you in the world?

 

I live near where Evil Genius lives, I do believe. Over a border though.

Edited by neomad

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It Is here :)

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OMG......i just came.....where...how big? how stable? cuts released into community? Pics to fap over?......

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Tipz has bigger balls than most :P

Can you add me to the list of people wanting a piece :)

Cheers

Got

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