PBS Forum

Sprecklia howardii a few days ago 

Closing out May...it's amazing what a couple days of warm weather can bring out in the garden.

1- Gladiolus 'Atom' or 'Atomic' (considered a 1940's hybrid of Dalenii). A nice reliable garden Glad, great color and presence in the garden. One of the earliest Glads when I was just getting into SA bulbs to add in my garden.

2- more common Amaryllis that I'm trying to get looking good in my sunny SoCal garden. Another couple's first season looking pretty good for a few days in the sun.

3- Progress shots of my Watsonia Meriana.

Farewell May. Here comes the heat!

Hello everyone.

I had placed an order to Shire Bulbs and another one to the SA Bulb Company with a colleague before the orders from the PSB were placed, so I have my bulbs (photo attached).

Overall it all went OK but we had an issue with VAT and I think it is advisable to ask Leigh if she can give directions to DHL (I assume we are going to choose DHL, as we had the bulbs delivered in France within 4 days, after being almost 10 days sitting in the premises of Mailwise (Mail-lazy?), once they finally shipped they would have taken three weeks more to get to the EU!!)

I told Leigh about it and got no answer but I'm getting used to that when I email her. The % of VAT is calculated using the total amount in the invoice, it's not a fixed amount like the phytosanitary tax, so in big orders it can be quite considerable.


"Hi, Leigh, ------ has the bulbs, it was really fast, thanks. There has been an issue with DHL as they declared the contents as "dried flowers"which was charged a VAT of 20% instead of declaring "living plants", which are charged 10% only.

By doing it that way, the import tax was 10% and not  5.1% and though we skipped the phytosanitary tax of 31.50 euro, overall we paid more in taxes.

It seems that DHL does this randomly (we had a previous order from another supplier declared as Tonka beans - Dipteryx odorata, I had to look it up), but I thought that they had enough experience to be aware that bulbs are living plants, why else do they carry a phyto?

Maybe you can try to make it clear for the European orders from the PSB (I don't know how it goes in the USA).

Anyway, ------- complained to DHL, we might have some money back. [Note: no answer from DHL]

Finally it seems that if the invoice comes in ZAR, the VAT will be lower, at least that was what happened with the other seller. This is something you don't have to know, I suppose".

I had some bulbs of Eucrosia bicolor I managed to import from Thailand (yes, it's easy to find in the US) in a bag with substrate to send to a colleague, and when I went to look for them this is what I found. They must be got wet with the last rain (over a month ago)...



So my colleague will have to wait, or I'll have to bring them to Barcelona (he is on chemo unfortunately, but it seems to be working).

If you haven't done so already please send me privately  your preferred contact email address.

Arnold140@verizon.net

The shipment should be here in USA with 10 days to two weeks.

I will notify all those who participated about the amount due for bulbs, shipment to US, phyto documentation and transport form the receiving station in Atlanta to Bob Lauf in TN.

You will receive a note with the amount due when the bulbs are sent to you by Bridget, our BX Director.

Arnold

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on May 26, 2024, 08:52:18 AMI wonder if pink ones are still growing in old gardens.

Good point. Victorian gardeners are the villains of the story. There have been examples where gardeners stripped the wild of plants and none of them survived in captivity. On the other hand sometimes gardeners ensure the survival of species. Part of the BBC version is that they have reintroduced the wild plants, rather than obtaining them from Europe.

The wikipedia article answers everything:

"Saxifraga rosacea, or Irish saxifrage, is a herbaceous plant in the family Saxifragaceae. The epithet rosacea does not refer to its flowers which are white,[1] but to its radical sterile shoots which are often rosy.[2] Owing to this misleading epithet, the rosy-flowered Saxifraga × arendsii is sometimes misidentified as Saxifraga rosacea."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxifraga_rosacea#:~:text=Saxifraga%20rosacea%2C%20or%20Irish%20saxifrage,shoots%20which%20are%20often%20rosy.