Florida Commercially Exploited Plant List: Permits, Exemptions, and Penalties

The Florida commercially exploited plant list contains nine native species that the state has determined face serious depletion from commercial harvesting. The list lives in Florida Administrative Code Rule 5B-40.0055, maintained by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), and it governs who needs a permit to harvest, transport, or sell these plants.¹

The Nine Species on the List

The complete list is shorter than most people expect:

Butterfly orchid (Encyclia tampensis)
Green-fly orchid (Epidendrum conopseum)
Nodding club-moss (Lycopodium cernuum)
Cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea)
Royal fern (Osmunda regalis)
Needle palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix)
Pink azalea (Rhododendron canescens)
Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens)
Coontie (Zamia spp., all native species)

That is the entire commercially exploited category. Wild lilies and other species that get casually grouped with these actually sit in Florida’s separate threatened or endangered categories, which carry different permit rules.¹ Applying under the wrong category can mean submitting the wrong permit or skipping one you actually need.

When You Need a Permit

Two questions decide whether you need an FDACS permit: how many plants, and are you selling.

Harvesting one or two commercially exploited plants from someone else’s private land or from public land requires the landowner’s written permission but no state permit. At three or more plants, you need both the written permission and an FDACS permit.²

Selling changes the math even on your own property. If you plan to sell any commercially exploited plant you harvested from land you own, you need an FDACS permit in your immediate possession while transporting or selling it. Owning the land does not carry an automatic right to sell the regulated plants growing on it. For personal use on your own land, no permit is required.²

When you are harvesting, transporting on public roads, or selling, the permit and the written landowner permission must be on your person. Not in the truck. Not at home. On you.²

Saw Palmetto Berries Get Their Own Permit

Saw palmetto is the most commercially significant species on the list. The berries feed the dietary supplement and herbal product industry, which makes them valuable enough to attract large-scale illegal harvesting. Since July 2018, FDACS has required a specific permit to harvest and sell saw palmetto berries, separate from the general native plant permit.³

Applications go through the Plant Industry Online Portal, by email to DPISPB@FDACS.gov, or by mail to the Division of Plant Industry in Gainesville. You must have written landowner permission for every property where you plan to harvest.³

Enforcement is active. People have been arrested and charged with felonies for harvesting thousands of pounds of berries from private land without permission. Buyers face exposure too: if you are purchasing saw palmetto berries from a harvester, ask to see the FDACS permit and the landowner permission documents before you pay. Buying berries you know were illegally harvested can pull you into the same criminal case.

Exemptions That Keep Normal Land Use Legal

Florida Statute 581.185 carves out three activities where the permit rules do not apply:

Agricultural and forestry work, including clearing land for farming, silviculture, fire control, or required mining assessment.
Landowner property maintenance, meaning a landowner or their agent clearing regulated plants from a canal, ditch, survey line, building site, road, or other right-of-way on their own property.
Public utilities, whether publicly or privately owned, clearing vegetation while meeting their obligation to serve the public.

These exemptions are narrower than they look. A landowner clearing a building site is exempt. A landowner digging coontie out of that same site to sell at a farmers’ market is not. The exemption covers the clearing itself, never the subsequent sale of what came out of the ground.⁴

How to Apply

FDACS accepts permit applications through its Plant Industry Online Portal, by email, or by mail. Online submissions are the fastest. Email applications and permission letters go to DPINECE@FDACS.gov. Mail goes to the Division of Plant Industry Permit Unit, P.O. Box 147100, Gainesville, FL 32614-7100.⁵

Written permission from the landowner (or their legal representative) is required for every property you plan to work. The statute specifically requires the permission to be in writing, and you will carry it alongside the permit in the field.²

Paper applications can take upwards of two weeks depending on volume. A plant inspector may visit the harvesting site to verify the information in your application before the permit issues. If you are working against a seasonal window, use the online portal.

Penalties for Harvesting Without a Permit

Section 581.185 makes it unlawful to harvest regulated plants without the required permission and permits, to falsify any document used to authorize harvesting, to fail to follow the conditions of an issued permit, or to transport or sell plants collected illegally.²

An affirmative defense exists for someone who harvested one or two commercially exploited plants without written permission, if they can prove actual verbal permission was given beforehand. For three or more plants, the defense requires showing that both written permission and a permit had been granted before the harvest. Relying on that defense means you are already being prosecuted, which is not a position worth courting.²

Federal Exposure Under the Lacey Act

Harvesting in violation of Florida’s rules can also trigger federal prosecution under the Lacey Act, which makes it illegal to traffic in plants taken in violation of any state law.

Civil penalties reach up to $10,000 per violation for anyone who should have known the plants were illegally harvested. Knowingly selling or purchasing illegally harvested plants worth more than $350 carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000. Even at lower values, a knowing violation with a due-care failure can bring up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.⁶ Illegally harvested plants can also be seized on a strict liability basis, and felony convictions can bring forfeiture of vehicles and equipment used in the offense. These federal consequences stack on top of anything Florida imposes.

1
Legal Information Institute. Florida Administrative Code Rule 5B-40.0055 – Regulated Plant Index
2
Florida Senate. Florida Code Title XXXV Chapter 581 – Preservation of Native Flora of Florida
3
Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Saw Palmetto Berry Harvesting
4
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 581.185 – Preservation of Native Flora of Florida
5
Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Native Plant Harvesting Permit
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 16 USC 3373 – Penalties and Sanctions