Are all the leaves removed (for some reason) before shipping an adenium?

Ken,
You will find that Adeniums shipped abroad have their leaves snipped of and bare root. The sending bare root is a procedure from Agriculture Dept. of both Importing and Exporting countries to prevent any soil diseases from one to another. This you are probably aware.
The leaves are taken off to reduce the stress on the plant while in transit. They will transpire if leaves left on and this stresses the plant.
Many people shipping plants within the same country will send with leaves, but many times this has the same result as stripped plants, as the leaves shed once received and potted up.
Weight of soil and pot is one factor also (for shipping cost).
Rick

Got it, Rick. That makes sense, sort of what we do when shipping plumeria. Thanks. I don't export so any of mine would stay within the USA. Shipping to CA is far different than shipping anywhere else (other than HI which has such restrictive shipping regulations that I won't ship there). I have to remove all soil from plants going into CA (but epiphytic plants are OK in their soil-less media).

I have received three plants last month shipped to Ca. They were in soil from St Louis and AZ. Two lost their leaves and the 10yr old was shipped bare root with the leaves cut also from St Louis. I got a tree from Thailand with some leaves on it. They cooked in the box. but the plant survived.

You got them all kinds of ways then, Marica. CA is now using plant/soil-sniffing dogs. I think they are the only state in the union that monitors the USPS packages coming into CA with dogs (unless HI uses them).

I guess I was lucking I got these then. That sounds odd for inter United States. I guess you have different soil bacteria then I do. Maybe it is also for things like invasive plants. So many of our lakes are filling in with different vegetation it is bad for the fish and ugly. I can't believe the waterways we can't swim in anymore. Even Lake Tahoe has weeds filling parts of it up.

As I said, as far as I know, CA is the only state in the union that uses dogs to sniff out plants and soil. All we tax-payers are actually funding this. For some reason, CA got a huge federal grant that pays for the agents and dogs. Actually, I am in one of the counties that is not considered a "restrictive" or "quarantine" county. In other words, there are thousands upon thousands of counties that are automatically screened when shipping plants into CA. I think the entire state of Florida comes under that added scrutiny. I guess you would say that I am in a "clean" county. I know how to properly label my plants that ship to CA and so long as I do this, it seems that my plants are not inspected, or if so, are not quarantined. Quarantine can and does result in losing the plants.

Now you know that when you see a seller state that he/she does not ship to CA (or HI), you can understand why.