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From: "Gary" doji at hawaii.rr.com> on 2005.01.10 at 19:46:25(12568)
Dear Listowners,

On the aroid-l archives pages, http://www.hort.net/lists//aroid-l/ ,
on the left side in the box labeled "Top Stories", the last headline "US
government prepares to restrict nursery shipments", no story appears when I try
to open that message.

Since this may be of great importance to all of us, can you as list
owners find out the correct site of this notice? A notice to the mailing
list would benefit us all, I think.

Thank you, Gary in Hilo, HI

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From: Steve Marak samarak at gizmoworks.com> on 2005.01.10 at 20:49:17(12569)
Gary,

Others may also be wondering about this, so I'm replying to the whole list
...

The hort.net site archives many horticultural and botanical mailing lists,
but isn't directly connected with Aroid-L. We appreciate them archiving
Aroid-L - it's been very convenient for our members, having a reliable and
consistent place to go to find posts they may have missed or search for
topics previously discussed.

I'd suggest you contact the hort.net web gurus about the stale link. There
may not be anything they can do, either, as that's a redirect to the
Seattle P-I web site, and the problem is probably that the story has been
archived or moved internally. (I was not able to find it on the
seattlepi.com web site with any of several searches.)

Steve

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From: "Bryant, Susan L." SLBryant at scj.com> on 2005.01.10 at 21:03:54(12570)
I'm not sure, but I think that has to do with the sudden
oak death disease. Here is an article, although it is from last
spring.
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From: James Waddick jwaddick at kc.rr.com> on 2005.01.10 at 21:46:03(12571)
Title: Re: [Aroid-l] Headline

Might be this:

2004

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From: "MJ Hatfield" mjhatfield at oneota.org> on 2005.01.11 at 00:01:50(12572)
Susan,

Here is an update on what the government is doing concerning
plants and Sudden Oak Death.

MJ

December
23, 2004

By
BRADFORD McKEE

JUST
in time to complicate spring planting, the federal government is preparing to
issue what agriculture officials call the most sweeping restrictions on the
shipment of nursery plants ever undertaken in the United States, to try to prevent
the spread of a virulent disease that has killed tens of thousands of oaks and
other species along the West Coast.

The
restrictions, expected to be issued in early January,

will
affect millions of plants grown in California, Oregon

and
Washington, about one-third of the country's nursery

plant
supply. They will require inspection, sampling and possibly testing of all
plants that could be hosts to the pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, the cause of
sudden oak death syndrome, before shipment across state lines. The disease has
been spotted in 22 states.

The
list of likely host plants has grown to include 64

species,
among them popular ornamental plants like

camellias,
rhododendrons and azaleas. Agriculture officials caution that the list could
grow as the range of host plants becomes better known.

The
disease, caused by a poorly understood organism,

ravages
oaks and tanoaks. In other species, including bay laurel and andromeda, it
causes leaf spots and dying twigs. Discoveries of the disease in the nursery
trade have been isolated and few, but the potential impact of its spread leaves
regulators little room for error.

"This
is as big a plant regulatory emergency as I've ever experienced," said Dan
Hilburn, the administrator of the plant division of the Oregon agriculture
department. Nursery plants are Oregon's No. 1 agricultural product, and about 76
percent of them, about $589 million worth, are sold out of state. Mr. Hilburn
compared the government's concern to that following the arrival of the gypsy
moth and Japanese beetle in North America, problems that
appeared in the early 1900's and lingered for most of the century.

"It's
a megapest, as big as they get," Mr. Hilburn said.

Industry
experts said that customers of retail garden

centers
could face shortages of some common garden plants

for
the spring planting season, especially if symptoms of

the
disease are found during the nursery inspections.

Growers
would have to stop major shipments if inspectors

find
signs of P. ramorum infection on their properties.

Testing
for the disease can take weeks to months for a confident result.

John
Aguirre, the executive director of the Oregon

Association
of Nurseries, said that more than 50 percent of Oregon's nurseries would
have to be inspected under the order. California ships about 20
percent of its nursery plants out of state. "If you lose the ability to
get plant material from California and Oregon, it's going to be
felt without question by the consumer," Mr. Aguirre said.

Nurseries
in general have not yet raised prices on plants because of P. ramorum problems,
but nursery owners cannot rule out price rises if supplies for particular
plants become scarce. "With the most susceptible plants there could be a
shortage, with rhododendrons and camellias especially," said Dave Fujino,
the vice president of Hines Horticulture, one of the country's largest
wholesale nurseries, in Winters, Calif. "I'm not hearing anything about an
escalation of prices, but I'm not hearing there's a shortage" of
particular plants, he said.

In
September, inspectors found P. ramorum symptoms on rhododendrons at a Hines
nursery in Forest Grove, Ore., which prompted regulators to track down
10,000 rhododendrons that had been shipped to about 50 locations in Connecticut.

Agriculture
officials say they hope the new rules will

prevent
the sort of widespread disruptions of plant

shipments
that began last spring when the disease was found

on
camellias in a large California nursery, though the
officials cannot guarantee against future disruptions.

Retail
garden centers typically place orders for spring a

year
in advance. Consumers were largely unaware of last spring's disruptions because
most of the potentially infected plants found were confiscated and destroyed
before they were sold. With thousands of plants held up in California, retailers
scrambled to substitute plants grown elsewhere.

Bob
Jacobson, a senior director of Home Depot in Atlanta,

said
his company faced some plant shortages last spring, especially in the Atlanta area, but was able
to use other suppliers. "In all honesty, it was a pain in the neck,"
Mr. Jacobson said.

Owners
of smaller garden centers are watching the situation warily. James Harwell, the
president of Harwell's Green Thumb in Montgomery, Ala., said he feared the
impact of a quarantine. "In springtime they could shut down a whole
nursery."

At
first the federal government took steps to prevent the spread of the disease
from affected plants in California, where it has
devastated entire forests. But four states imposed wider bans unless the
nurseries could certify that their plants were disease-free. Thomas Johnson,
the plant pest administrator in Alabama, said he had
imposed a ban broader than the federal government's to protect Alabama's diverse plant
life and its nursery industry, the state's second biggest agricultural
commodity, after poultry.

"We
have a lot of plants in the East that they don't have

in
the West," Mr. Johnson said.

Nursery
owners and agriculture officials said they hoped

the
new rules would reduce the confusion caused by state

bans
against plants from California nurseries, some of

which
exceeded the federal inspection order. Little is

known
about the pathogen's behavior outside the mild foggy forests of the West. As a
precaution, however, plants thought to be infected are handled as if they were
hazardous waste.

California nursery growers
estimate that the bans will

result
in sales losses of at least $50 million this year. Claude R. Knighten, a
spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the federal
Agriculture Department, called the new restrictions "one of the most
comprehensive and challenging plant health programs undertaken by our agency in
recent years." He said the rules, to be issued under the Plant Protection
Act, were awaiting a final legal review by the department.

Most
upsetting to regulators and scientists is how little

they
understand P. ramorum. It is one of about 100 species

of
Phytophthora, Greek for "plant destroyer" and commonly

known
as root rot or crown rot. The first symptoms were

found
withering a tanoak in Mill Valley, Calif., in 1995.

In
2000 P. ramorum was isolated and identified by Dr. David Rizzo, a professor of
plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Matteo Garbelotto
at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We're
just getting started," Dr. Rizzo said. "This is an organism nobody
knew existed four years ago."

One

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From: "Christopher P. Lindsey" lindsey at mallorn.com> on 2005.01.12 at 20:40:07(12575)
> On the aroid-l archives pages,
> [1]http://www.hort.net/lists//aroid-l/ , on the left side in the box
> labeled "Top Stories", the last headline "US government prepares to
> restrict nursery shipments", no story appears when I try to open that
> message.
>
> Since this may be of great importance to all of us, can you as list
> owners find out the correct site of this notice? A notice to the
> mailing list would benefit us all, I think.

Hi Gary,

I found another site carrying the same article and changed the link
to point there:

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/v-printer/story/4370956p-4136784c.html

The top stories link should now work.

Thanks!

Chris

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