A website that showed people where to buy plants on a national blacklist has now labelled them as banned species and does not list stockists.
Two weeks ago the Herald reported that the Department of Conservation was worried about the number of banned species available from plant shops through the websitewww.plantfinder.co.nz.
The website included nine plants on a blacklist compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry that have the potential to destroy native species.
A spokeswoman for the website, Meg Gaddum, said the offending plants had now been added to the website's list of banned species.
She said the list of unwanted plants had not been well publicised: "It is not the nurseries' fault."
Meanwhile, of the seven stockists who said they sold plants on the list when contacted several weeks ago, two said they would continue to sell the plants, as they had not been told they were banned.
One shop denied selling the banned plants and the rest said they had taken them off their shelves.
David Harrison, of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's bio-security department, said the plants on the list were banned in August last year.
MAF had publicised the blacklist through MAF publications, the nursery association's newsletters and at the Ellerslie Garden Show last year.
"I am surprised [the list of banned plants] has not spread through word of mouth."
He said the nurseries that said they would continue to sell the banned plants could expect a visit from regional council officers who would tell them to get rid of them.
Nursery and Garden Industry Association chief executive Jeremy Kennerley said the onus was on both the grower and the retailer to ensure they were neither producing nor selling a plant that was banned nationally or in that region.
