Originally posted in Bulb Section :
(I'm going to post this here, but because it doesn't just affect South African bulbs, Admin might want to move it out as a new topic (not familiar enough with how the forum works to do this myself!))
As of this month, the UK Plant Health regulations have been amended so that ALL seeds imported from outside Europe need to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate. The Australasian Plant Society had a large order of seeds from Nindethana Seeds in Australia returned to the sender in February by UK customs marked 'No Phytosanitary Certificate'; when I looked at the latest information on the gov.uk website, there was a new version of the list of restricted plant material dated March 2020 which was different from that issued last year in that all seeds not specifically named and with specific restrictions are now classed as 'Regulated', which means that if coming from outside Europe they have to have a phyto.
This means that, if intercepted, seed orders from, for instance, Silverhill Seeds, are likely to be sent back to South Africa. Of course, small packages may not be picked up; I received a small order from Gordon Summerfield in February, about the same time the APS order was sent back. (It looks, by the way, as if the new version of the regulations was being put into force before they were actually published! I suspect the reason for the change is that opening and inspecting every package labelled as containing seeds to determine if specific items needed a phyto would have been way beyond customs' resources, so they just put a blanket requirement on all seeds.)
I presume that the same restrictions would apply to seed orders from seed exchanges like NARGS and NZAGS, as I can find no sign that there are any exemptions to these rules (though I would love to be corrected on that point.) The APS is waiting for further clarification from contacts in DEFRA, but I thought I ought to post this information now as anyone who is thinking of ordering seed from, say, South Africa, might want to wait to see if we can find out definitively what the situation is.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings at a time when we really all need cheering up!
