Can I Bring My Plants?

California agricultural inspection stations

There are 16 of them, on every major road into the state, and they have been there since the 1920s. If you are driving in with plants in the car, this is the bit you are wondering about.

Do you have to stop?

Effectively, yes. CDFA puts it in a slightly odd way: submitting to inspection is voluntary, but your vehicle is not allowed into the state until an inspector releases it. So you can decline to be inspected, and then you do not get in.

Not every car gets pulled apart. Around 20 million private vehicles go through these stations in a year, so inspectors work by risk — where you have driven from, what time of year it is, and what you are driving. A rental van in spring gets more attention than a commuter in a sedan.

Where they are

The six linked above have a page each: the road, the mile mark, the station's own phone number, and what is and is not published about hours. The rest are on CDFA's contact sheet, in the sources below.

What to do when you get there

Declare the plants. CDFA's own advice to travellers is to declare all fruit, vegetables and plants when you arrive, and their advice for anyone in a moving truck is more specific than you might expect:

  • · Know what is in the vehicle and where it is packed.
  • · Have the keys, or the combination, for every lock.
  • · Make sure every door opens and closes easily — self-mover trucks and trailers especially.

Which is really one piece of advice: pack the plants where you can get to them without unloading the truck at the state line.

What gets turned away

Inspectors reject more than 82,000 lots of plant material in a typical year. California can reject and confiscate anything that is carrying pests, or that there is reasonable cause to think might be — that authority is in the state's Food and Agricultural Code, and it does not require them to prove anything first.

There is no treatment counter. If something is rejected you send it back out of state or you give it up, so the decision about what happens to a plant you cannot bring is one to make at home, not at a window at midnight.

What the stations will take

There is no published list of banned items, and it would be misleading if there were: almost everything here is a judgement about condition rather than a category. What CDFA does say is which things get looked at hardest and what gets an item taken off you.

Taken, or turned back

  • · Plant material that is pest infested, or that there is reasonable cause to think may be
  • · Houseplants showing signs of even common insect or disease problems
  • · Houseplants grown outdoors, or potted in soil from a garden
  • · Firewood with insects or disease symptoms, or covered by one of five quarantines
  • · Hay carrying noxious weeds or insect pests
  • · Ferrets, gerbils, hedgehogs, Quaker or Monk parrots and sugar gliders — restricted species, enforced here

Inspected, and normally passed

  • · Fruit, vegetables and nursery stock — the primary focus, and most of it goes through
  • · Houseplants grown indoors only, in sterile commercial potting mix, free of surface pests
  • · Hay: no specific restriction on bringing it, and most bales pass
  • · Dogs and cats, with no restrictions at all
  • · Boats and watercraft, checked for quagga and zebra mussels rather than plants

Two details worth carrying: firewood is discouraged outright, whatever its condition — CDFA strongly discourages moving any of it out of the area it was cut in — and hay should be loaded so the outer surface of the bales can be seen, because a bale nobody can look at is a bale that holds the queue up.

Source for all of it: the Border Protection Stations FAQ and the Transporting Plants FAQs, both CDFA, below.

The houseplant rule worth knowing

This is the one that decides most people's outcome. To be eligible for entry, a houseplant should have been grown indoors only — a house or an enclosed greenhouse — and potted in sterile, packaged, commercial potting mix. Not grown outside, even for one warm summer, and not potted in soil from the garden.

It also has to look healthy and be free of surface pests. Worth being clear about what that does not mean: repotting will not rescue a plant that has lived outside. CDFA's condition is about where the plant was grown, not what it is sitting in today, so fresh mix in a clean pot does not make a patio plant eligible. If it summered on the deck, plan for it to be refused.

Where repotting does help is a plant that has only ever been indoors but is potted in soil dug from a garden. That one is fixable before you drive.

Citrus, pine and fruit or nut trees are a separate matter. CDFA strongly discourages moving those in at all unless you can satisfy every provision of the quarantine that covers them. See citrus trees and other fruit trees.

If a moving company is driving

Tell them to write house plants at the top of the inventory list for the shipment, and to load the plants near the van doors. That is CDFA's instruction, not ours, and it exists because a van that has to be unpacked at the border is a van that sits at the border.

Sources

Although submitting to inspection is voluntary, vehicle and commodities are not allowed to enter until released by an inspector.
To be eligible for entry into California, house plants should have been grown in an indoor setting only, such as in a home or enclosed greenhouse, and planted in sterile, packaged, commercial potting mix.
  • California Border Protection Stations, CDFA. Read .
  • California Border Protection Stations FAQs, CDFA. Read .
  • Transporting Plants FAQs, CDFA Pest Exclusion. Read .

This is a guide to official rules, not legal advice.