So I checked a small habitat today that I surveyed last year. No ginseng there last year. But everything looks right. Maidenhair fern, Christmas fern, baneberry, and a brook lined with foamflower. Sure enough, I found an adult 3-prong and a juvenile 2-prong. Some bird must have pooped out a seed and now this one plant is trying to recolonize an entire strip of habitat.
I will plant 300 seeds there this Fall. I have seen this elsewhere also. Forest gets destroyed by logging. Then decades later the ginseng returns and tries to reclaim its ancestral habitat. Mother Nature might take twenty years to populate a 300 foot strip with ginseng but I can carpet the entire area with seeds in a few hours.
