Ministry for Primary Industries officials cannot see much point in a two-week trial over what is essentially a disagreement among botanists.
That is what Crown prosecutor Lance Rowe told the Wanganui District Court yesterday when the remaining charges against Wanganui plant expert Clive Higgie were dismissed.
Mr Higgie faced three charges - importing Agathis silbae, a Pacific Island relation to the New Zealand kauri; possessing it; and of failing to tell the Ministry for Primary Industries about it.
Mr Higgie was not in court, but Judge David Cameron excused his presence and discharged him.
Mr Rowe said Mr Higgie's South Auckland lawyer - who was not present either - had probably told him the matter was resolved because the ministry was withdrawing from the prosecution.
"The chief reason is that the public interest in a two-week trial that is essentially a disagreement between botanists is not a sufficient basis," Mr Rowe said.
The ministry had now "achieved a better working relationship" with Mr Higgie, and was not pursuing the charges.
The decision marks the end of a long saga which Mr Higgie's wife, former district councillor Nicki Higgie, has previously said was costing the couple dearly in legal fees and worry.
It started in February 2012 when six ministry officials and two police, with a search warrant, conducted a dawn raid at their nationally significant Paloma Gardens, which are at Fordell and have a huge range of plant species. The officials took away computers and plant material.
In October that year two Auckland plant experts and the Auckland Botanic Gardens were also raided at dawn, searching for evidence of the same plant. Ecologist Graeme Platt was also charged over it.
As far as the ministry is concerned, the tree should not be in the country because it is not on a 1997 list of plants known to exist here. It is, therefore, banned.
But the plant experts argue there is no such species.
They say that what a United States botanist visiting Vanuatu found was a tree species that had been in New Zealand since early European settlement, Agathis macrophylla.
The American thought it was a new species, and named it after himself.
Mr and Mrs Higgie were also charged over a piece of an Australian strangler fig they were trying to grow in a hot box.
They say that species was also in New Zealand before 1997, and those charges were dropped in December last year.