The Chinese revered American ginseng and the wild ginseng business mushroomed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.   Thomas Jefferson listed it in his inventory of native plant resources.   Daniel Boone supplemented his income by digging ginseng.   An all- time record of 750,000 pounds of ginseng root was shipped from the United States  to China  in 1824.

By the late 1800s, the plant was no longer abundant.   Though native populations have continued to diminish since those early days, wild ginseng is still harvested from the eastern United States  where it occurs naturally from Maine  to Georgia.   In the 2006-2007 season, 8,600 pounds of wild ginseng were dug from the West Virginia  hills for commercial sale.   The average selling price was about $500 per pound.

According to Robin Black, a forester with the West Virginia Division of Forestry, West Virginia  still has lots of wild ginseng.   In fact, populations may have received a reprieve over the last decade.   According to Black, “Fewer people are digging now than in the past.” In some states, however, populations have been seriously decimated.   The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service passed a law requiring that plants must be five years or older to be harvested.

Counting the leaf scars on the rhizome at the base of the stem allows one to easily detect the age of a ginseng plant. The stem rises from a bud that grows at the top of the root. When the stem dies back in the fall it leaves behind a leaf scar.   A ginseng root actually shrinks as the bud develops.   This consequent shrinking and growing produces wrinkles on the neck of the root.   These wrinkles or leaf scars may be counted to estimate a plant's age.

Young ginseng plants will produce one or two leaves.   After about three or four years, a ginseng plant will produce three to six leaves divided into five lobed leaflets.   The leaves are arranged in a whorl around a central axis.   Also, after three to four years, ginseng plants begin to produce flowers.   Multiple tiny, green flowers arise from the center of the umbrella-shaped leaf arrangement in late May or early June.

Anyone who wants to successfully harvest ginseng every year must learn to estimate the age of a plant before harvesting it. The older a plant is, the more convoluted the root will become and the more closely it will resemble the human form.   Because of beliefs established over 2000 years ago, those older plants bring a higher price.

  To this day, it is still a delight to find this ancient healer revered for thousands of years in the shadowy forests of the Mountain State.

Emily Grafton was formerly the Wild Yards coordinator for the DNR.