Four sources, one of them a fee
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The plant limbs are drafted far more specifically than the wildlife limbs
Fish and wildlife are covered simply by reference to any law or regulation of any State or any foreign law. Plants get four enumerated categories and then two further limbs.
The first category is a foreign law that protects plants
Or that regulates the theft of plants, the taking of plants from a park, forest reserve or other officially protected area, the taking from an officially designated area, or the taking without or contrary to required authorization.
Which is four kinds of foreign rule, named by what they do
Rather than by what they are called. A foreign statute qualifies if it regulates one of those four things, whatever its own title or classification.
The second limb is the surprising one
A plant taken, possessed, transported or sold without the payment of appropriate royalties, taxes, or stumpage fees required for the plant by any law or regulation of any State or any foreign law.
A stumpage fee is a charge for standing timber
So this is a federal prohibition that reaches non-payment of a forestry charge levied by another country. The unpaid fee abroad becomes an ingredient of a United States offense.
Which is the clearest demonstration of what borrowing means here
Nothing about the plant changes. Nothing about the transaction in the United States changes. The offense turns entirely on whether a payment was made somewhere else.
And the third plant limb borrows an export control
A plant taken, possessed, transported or sold in violation of any limitation under any State or foreign law governing the export or transshipment of plants.
Transshipment is a term about routing rather than about the goods
So a plant can become unlawful to purchase in the United States because of how it moved between two other countries, under a rule neither of them is required to publish in English.
The same structure appears in the special jurisdiction paragraph
Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States it is unlawful simply to possess fish, wildlife or plants taken in violation of any State, foreign or Indian tribal law, with the same four plant categories repeated in full.
Which means the section repeats its borrowed list twice over
Once for commerce and once for possession in that jurisdiction. The drafting is long because the borrowed categories have to be restated rather than cross-referenced.