American Ginseng

This plant sponsored by Equinox Botanicals - http://www.equinoxbotanicals.com/

Over 30 years ago Equinox Botanicals created an herbal salve using plants gathered from our farm to soothe the day-to-day wounds inflicted by fences, critters, and the rugged Appalachian terrain. The salve found its way to friends and neighbors, and before long we had people asking if they could buy it. From that humble beginning grew EQUINOX BOTANICALS™ and the herbal products we offer.

The farm is located in the Southeast Ohio where the quality of our ingredients is intimately tied to the quality of the land that yields them. Equinox Botanicals has a new line of syrups where we will be donating 5% of the proceeds to UpS.


Historical Background

Wars have been fought over ginseng, and emperors have monopolized the right to harvest it. Although I often hear claims that Chinese ginseng is superior, the Chinese themselves have imported large amounts of American ginseng since 1718, when the Jesuits of Canada first initiated trade with China. ‘Seng hunting in the United States started out as a lucrative business run by fur traders, who frequented the same areas where it grew. By the 1770s an average of 140,000 tons of ginseng roots were exported from North America every year. The year 1824 set a new record, with more than 600,000 tons of roots exported. The first successful U.S. ginseng crop, reported in an 1895 New York paper, sparked interest in cultivating ginseng; the U.S. Department of Agriculture printed a bulletin on its cultivation. In 1902 a Special Crops publication began networking growers. Six years later, A. R. Harding discussed its cultivation in Ginseng and other Medicinal Plants.

Sadly, you’re not likely to stumble upon wild ginseng. At one time it grew abundantly in the shade of North America’s eastern hardwood forests from Quebec to Georgia and west to Oklahoma and Minnesota, but no more. I Imagine that few, if any, of the early ‘seng traders considered the impact that collecting millions of tons of wild roots from the American wilderness made. Unfortunately, they did not adopt careful harvesting practices like those of the Ojibwa Indians, who lived on Lake Superior. These Natives harvested ginseng only after the berries turned red so they could replant the seeds and help replace the plants they took. To the ‘seng hunters, though, ginseng must have seemed an infinite resource, so they filed their bags with roots and their pockets with money as they depleted the woods of ginseng.

The impact was severe. Today ginseng is considered threatened or endangered in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Illinois. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered species (CITES), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US. Department of Agriculture regulate its trade in every state. A permit is required to dig roots, and even then the practice is restricted to the months of August though November in many states. A federal permit is needed to export either cultivated or wild ginseng. However, with prices topping $600 a pound for wild roots, there is a large black market for ginseng. More than 14,500 pounds of supposed wild roots found their way to Asia in 1992.

UpS Recommendations

• No wild harvest is recommended.
• Purchase cultivated roots only. Even woodsgrown plants are suspect.
• Use Chinese ginseng (Panax ginseng), Siberian ginseng, astragalus, and
ashwagandha as possible substitutes.

~Kathi Keville, Planting the Future, pg. 106-107, 109

This plant sponsored by Equinox Botanicals - http://www.equinoxbotanicals.com/


American Ginseng Podcast - The Plant Detective by Flora Delaterre