Wondering... is Mammillaria napina available here in Auistralia? It's not on the allowable imports list so seed can't be brought in... but then neither is M. luethyi

Yes, napina is already in cultivation here...and it's another very temperamental one. Prior to 2006 the whole of the Mammillaria genus was allowed in by AQIS (back then they only told you what genera you could or couldn't have, not a species allowed list) so it's around, though not seen often. Pretty sure Vlado may have had seed of them too. I have one plant that has never flowered although it's old enough to... Even if it does, one plant ain't much use !!! Grrrr

So what do we do now that Vlado is no longer doing it... he's off in the Phillipines now. Is yours from seed or is it from offsets (so what I'm getting at is there more than one clone going around or are they all identical)? There is seed being sold on Ebay atm... just a pain we can't buy it

Mine was seed grown... I'm sure there are plenty of other people with the plant, so it's just a matter of finding out who has it, then when their plants are going to be flowering, and then getting two plants (or at least their pollen) together when in flower so they can "get it on !" Sounds easy doesn't it...but.....

Anyway, I'm sure some of the master grafters in OZ will already be trying to propagate it, but it is a tough one from seed, seedlings just 'disappear' so I don't think we'll ever see it in big numbers...it'll always be a rare one...

You could always apply to have it put on the allowed list.Not sure what it costs, but I don't think there's a charge to get it assessed until you actually apply for a permit to import it (used to be $33 per species)..but I could be wrong. The thing that annoyed me a bit about it was the first person pays for the permit, but if it's allowed it then goes on the next allowed list, so people afterwards don't have to pay..and it's entirely possible that multiple people are paying for permits for the one species at the same time!

I must email AQIS one day and find out what the current procedure and cost these days is. I've seen the forms and they're not too hard to fill out, you're essentially just doing the research for AQIS to give them the info to prove it's not a weed and then they either agree with you or not !

Has anyone else on here tried to go through the assessment procedure ?

I do have this information somewhere Nav. I was looking into bringing some Rosa persica in last year until I managed to get a successful pollination using one of its F1 hybrids (the only one here in Australia... pretty much sterile but by persisting with it I finally got 8 seeds which are in the fridge now stratifying. If they don't germinate I'll be looking into it again or trying a different seed parent or perform an embryo extraction and culture on the exisiting seeds). So I will have a look at the information and links and post them back here for people to look at.