Importing a Bonsai from Japan

[ficus26]

Hello to all,

I am new to the forum and I would like to ask you a small question. I have a trip planned for Japan soon and I plan to bring back a Bonsai with me. And I would like to know if there are any restrictions for that or what procedures to follow.

Thank you in advance for your answers,

[TimS]

Yep, there are laws, regulations, costs, permits, fumigations, biosecurity isolation periods and plenty more fun to discover.

In the past you could buy a tree in Japan, bring it back carry-on luggage if it was small enough and begin the process once you landed here. That is NOT the case anymore and it needs to go through the Japanese process for export trees first (some amount of time in a biosecurity area at the nursery) phyto certification before it leaves, and depending on what it is it may need to be bare rooted as well.

Once it arrives it then goes through a fumigation process, then it goes into a period of biosecurity isolation here, the length of which depends on the species and the risks of exotic pest and disease it presents to the country. The absolute minimum is 3 months (can be significantly more depending on species and if pest/ disease is found on the plant) and you are paying for that by the square meter you take up at the isolation facility and by the hour that your entry is interacted with by a biosecurity officer. It will have 2 mandatory inspections at a minimum to check for active growth and presence of any exotic pest/ disease before being released to you.

Some species just are not legally able to be imported into the country full stop as well, so no matter if you did all that it would be exported back out or put into an incinerator here for failing to comply with the regulations.

I looked into it some years back as far as brining in a specimen Japanese Maple as i actually work with imported biosecurity plant material from all over the world including from Japan so I'm familiar with most of the aspects of the process, and financially/ risk speaking it just was not worth it in any way shape or form for me.

Your place to begin searching is here, the government website for importation of plant material. You can search by the species and find first of all if it can even legally be imported into the country (I know pines cannot be imported full stop) I can't recall all the links i had at one point for the fees and paperwork needed, but it was a PITA and required more butt lube than i was prepared to apply.

https://bicon.agriculture.gov.au/BiconWeb4.0

[TimS]

If there is a particular species or cultivar you are after feel free to post here or a want to buy thread once you have access to the sales section. Much has made its way into the country already, either predating the biosecurity regulations, or legally been imported for nursery production, and often can be tracked down with some little searching.

[Promethius]

That's a great guide to the process, Tim.

My five cents (used to be 2c, but, you know, inflation): We have great bonsai in Australia already, including most classic Japanese bonsai species, which have already been introduced. There are brilliant bonsai nurseries in each state, and professional growers who have advanced stock for sale at reasonable prices can send trees interstate to most states.

The import of a tree will take a long time and doesn't guarantee a living bonsai at the end, if something out of your control goes wrong during quarantine. Unless it's an extraordinary tree or of personal significance, I would strongly suggest having a look locally. Where are you located? We may be able to suggest some local places to peruse!

[TimS]

The import of a tree will take a long time and doesn't guarantee a living bonsai at the end, if something out of your control goes wrong during quarantine. Unless it's an extraordinary tree or of personal significance, I would strongly suggest having a look locally. Where are you located? We may be able to suggest some local places to peruse!

This, this and this again!

There is absolutely no guarantee of a living plant at the end of the process.

In my years of dealing with biosecurity material much has ended up failing at the fumigation stage on arrival into the country; ie there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it from a pest/ disease point of view, but being nuked with methyl bromide killed it more effectively than round up.

Toss in disease issues and the fact that no treatment can be made until the disease or pest is identified (can take weeks for that process to occur) and it cannot be systemic treatment either, there are many pitfalls. Even simply being kept in the same facility as another entry that does have exotic disease or pest can be enough to have your entry destroyed.

Ultimately the whole thing is set up around the nursery industry who are importing tissue culture, unrooted cuttings, bud sticks for grafting, rooted cuttings, cut flowers for floristry, bulbs etc. high volume of small low cost material, not low volume of high cost advanced material.

As Pro says pretty much all the classic Japanese species are already here, advanced material can be had relatively easily for most and with a bit of Sherlock work even the obscure varieties may be found.

For me a better keepsake from a Japan holiday tends to be bottles of sake, clean bonsai pots or both; neither of which require biosecurity isolation

[Matthew]

I imported 12 ficus microcarpa from China to Australia around 2007 if my memory serves me right . Of the 12 , 11 survived the methyl bromide treatment. Remember all plants need to arrive bare rooted either in coconut husk or some other medium (that was ok in 2007 if i remember ) Quarantine will repot into whatever soil they have and depending on species they spend 3 months min in a facility . You have daily space costs etc and it was pretty expensive in 2007 imagine now.........
I sold all of these over the years except one which i donated to the Arbotorum in Canberra that i believe is still there..

[SuperBonSaiyan]

I would love it if we had a big enough bonsai market to make looking after quarantine trees a full time job.

Trees arrive, are treated, then potted into inorganic substrate and watered according to needs.

Apart from being exposed daily to the methyl bromide it sounds idyllic, especially if the trees being imported are of great quality.

I wonder if more people would be open to paying the fees if they knew the trees had a decent chance of survival because they were looked after by people with bonsai knowledge.

[Matthew]

I would love it if we had a big enough bonsai market to make looking after quarantine trees a full time job.

Trees arrive, are treated, then potted into inorganic substrate and watered according to needs.

Apart from being exposed daily to the methyl bromide it sounds idyllic, especially if the trees being imported are of great quality.

I wonder if more people would be open to paying the fees if they knew the trees had a decent chance of survival because they were looked after by people with bonsai knowledge.

Id imagine a HUGE amount of red tape especially when it comes to bio security. Also some species ie pines cannot be imported due to disease risks.....Our isolation is both our stength and weakness depending how you look at it.

[TimS]

Yep, massive amounts of red tape for being granted the ability to operate an on-site biosecurity facility. Record keeping, audits, methods of dealing with wastewater treatment, insect & rodent monitoring, procedures for correct disposal of plant material the list goes on and on and on. Not the kind of thing even an established bonsai nursery with reliable customer base would bother attempting and especially not when the cost for those imported trees would be higher than locally produced stuff anyway.

Plus if it was a specimen tree that got bare rooted, there's every chance it would suffer setbacks in acclimatising to our environment and may have significant die back or even lose entire branches, in which case the beautiful tree becomes a 10+ year restoration job

I guess the way i see it is the way i saw it when i opted not to bother with importing the specimen tree. Too much risk & too much cost.

- There's no great point importing bulk cheap material from Japan because it's already cheap as chips here.
- The obscure stuff is obscure because it's only loons like me that enjoy the hunt for the rare stuff as much as i enjoy growing it. Hardly a good base for a business case.
- As stated pines cannot be imported due to the disease risk to our forestry industry, and again all the main pines cultivars are already here.
- When i checked junipers it was a massive ball ache, even worse than normal, to bring those in and again we have all the main cultivars here including itoigawa and biosecurity don't make anything easier to import, they only make it harder.
- Pretty sure prunus was a ball ache too, and mume is becoming more and more available by the year in garden nurseries. I picked up a 2m tall alboplena mume for $35 a few years back, a bit of propagation and you have more material to work with than you could possibly import for less money than a nice smashed avo brunch with a couple of coffees to wash it down.