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evolving since March 30, 1999 |
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A Total Forest Management Plan
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See USDA paper.
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It is valued for its reputed medical and other properties, particularly in Chinese medicine. Pre-settlement people were said to share knowledge about the medicinal properties of the plant with the colonists. (Colonists were probably affected by the "signatures" doctrine prevalent at the time, one that held that plant parts looked like the part of the body for which they may be curative. The ginseng roots often have the appearance of head, arms and legs of the human body.) Harvard Medical School Health Letter (2005) reported that it does little to prevent cancer depression or loss of libido but is a health gamble for its side effects include insomnia, vaginal bleeding, and headaches. The medicinal properties, widely claimed, are poorly studied. It is said to be a universal tonic, a stimulant, an aphrodisiac, and good (as one writer said) from asthma to anemia. It has also been claimed to be an antidote for every poison. It contains vitamins and minerals, perhaps giving it part of its reputation for promoting all-around health, helping resist stress, and achieving mental power. Perhaps the active substances are the saponins. These are the glycocides that produce froth and foam when mixed in water.
The roots are typically dug in autumn (Harvest between mid-August and late December). They are said to "mature" in six years. Whether this means that they produce viable seeds or that the root is large enough for commerce needs to be answered.
It brought $250/pound in 2005. An email note in August, 2000 was:
Wild ginseng commands a price of $225 to $500 a pound,
said Marj Boyer, ginseng coordinator for the state
Department of Agriculture (NC).
"The prices paid to diggers of wild ginseng are essentially determined by what price the Oriental buyers are paying," Boyer said. "For most of the 1990s, it's been about $300 per pound. Last year (2004), it started out low at $225 per pound and went up to $500." North Carolina ranks among the top 10 states in exporting ginseng. Last year, buyers in North Carolina shipped 7,600 pounds of dried roots, primarily to China and southeast Asia, Boyer said.
See email-cited ginseng article, June, 2005: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050606/NEWS0104/506060393
Forest Magazine reported 300 mature plants are required to make a pound of dried wild ginseng bringing $500 in some markets.
Roots must be 10 years old before legal harvest. Scars develop each year of growth. A plant with 3 prongs above ground is 5 years old, one with 4 is 10 years old.
It is not surprising that the plant is rare and perhaps threatened. It is only found in the cool shelter of hardwood forests and in rich soil, usually on North facing slopes. In Virginia, for example, only 60 percent of the land is now forested. Much of that is now in pines; more than half of the predominantly hardwood forest is on hot south-facing slopes, and deep humus forest soils are rare given past harvest strategies, grazing, recreational use, and forest fires. The areas where "rich, deep, cool, mature hardwood forest soils" exist are few…and declining on private lands. Gary Kaufman, North Carolina National Forest botanist, believes people may be poluting the local gene pools by planting seeds from distant areas to boost production.
Management strategies need to be developed under a concept of adaptive management. How to manage and save a threatened plant species sounds like a scientific question but is one that classic science cannot answer. It is unethical to do large-scale studies of rare plants. Adequate sample sizes can rarely be gotten for, by definition, rare means few samples. Time is a major factor of management for, by connotation, "threatened" suggests the need for immediate action. Sequential actions, somewhat experimental, deny the risk of losing the plant. Simultaneous actions (not having the "control" of classical science but reducing the risk of loss) are needed. These may then be followed with adaptive work, experiments, modeling, and gathering of information about the rarity of the plant and its reproductive vigor under protection and management. For growers, efforts are needed to stabilize the price, prevent poaching, and prevent "under-selling" by people unaware of the value of the plants.
The simultaneous strategies include:
Ginseng is a well-known plant with a history, commercial value, and potential future value (option value of economists). It is a component of the ancient forests. It may be a managerial test species: If this one cannot be saved, other rare, threatened or endangered plant species have an unlikely future.
Rural System staff is attempting to develop genetic "gardens", large areas where plant are collected and preserved. These are special, dispersed arboretums. Plants likely to be destroyed by clearcutting or developments are brought to these gardens for genetic as well as esthetic purposes. Contact the staff about ways to participate in the sound development of these areas, the Gene Bank program.
Where unique sites or rare animals, plants, or communities are found on an area, the staff will prepare a separate document outlining how the site may be preserved and financial gains experienced. The large set of private resources coordinated within Rural System create previously unavailable financial opportunities for such action.
Contacts with Sylvester Yunker, Boone-Sang Gensing Cooperative, Staunton, KY may be of assistance. ASPI (50 Lair St, Mt.Vernon, KY 40456) has an Appalachian Ginseng Foundation.
The US Forest Service is attaching dye and microchips (with latitude/longitude record) to ginseng in wilderness areas to deter theft.
From Detroit News. Reproduced here with permission , email from author March 29, 2006)
Revival of fabled ginseng quietly takes root in state
Herb that inspires thoughts of healing powers and
riches grows back from near extinction.
Joel Kurth , The Detroit News March, 2006
HOUGHTON LAKE -- One by one, ginseng seeds slowly slip through Michael Hunter's fingers. His eyes grow big at the sight of thousands of tan and brown pellet-sized kernels overflowing from a cardboard box. In another life, he could be a pirate caressing shipwrecked gold coins -- loving them as much for their beauty as promise of wealth.
"Oh wow. Look at 'em," Hunter whispers. "See how that seed is grinning? That is one pretty seed."
Gnarled, bitter and seductive, woods-grown ginseng fetches $300 a pound and has been coveted for millennia. Lore claims its sale helped finance the American Revolution. Now, it's creeping back from near extinction in Michigan because of folks like Hunter.
Since beating cancer in 2003, he's been reborn as a self-styled Johnny Ginsengseed, dedicating his final years to spreading millions of seeds in hidden corners of Michigan's hardwood forests.
But the root prized by Asians for balancing yin and yang and credited with boosting immune systems is returning in the shadows -- so secretively Michigan agricultural agents barely acknowledge the existence of the state's 300 growers.
The shades are drawn as Hunter inspects seeds in his house off Houghton Lake, perhaps with good reason. Illegal to harvest in Michigan from 1973-95 -- and still a misdemeanor to pick on public lands -- ginseng hasn't shaken its reputation as a backdoor business teeming with poachers, cheats and cutthroats.
They're drawn to eye-popping prices: Roots that live 60, 70 or 100 years can fetch thousands of dollars. Potato blight and over-harvesting by scavengers decimated wild Michigan ginseng in the '60s. Foragers included Hunter, the latest in a family line of pickers he dates to the War of 1812.
"You might say I emptied the register once and now I can fill it up again," says Hunter, 62, a onetime forester, gold miner, circus-camel herder and Skid Row beat cop in his hometown of Jackson.
"I can bring it back, doing my modern-day Johnny Appleseed thing with ginseng."
By his reckoning, he's put 56 million plants in the
ground in the past 10 years from Missouri to Montreal.
Now, he's focusing solely on Michigan, working from a
secret root cellar in Tustin next to his 115-acre
"ginseng showplace" and slowly spreading his way north
from East Lansing.
'Bring ginseng'
If anyone knows how much American ginseng -- Panax quinquefolius, perhaps the most desired strain in the world -- rests in Michigan soils near poplars and oaks, they're not telling.
Officially, state growers sold 20,000 pounds in 2001, the last year of available records.
"Interest in ginseng has definitely increased. People come to the forest and ask where it is. We don't tell them," says Jeff Pullen, resources officer of the Huron-Manistee National Forest in the northern Lower Peninsula.
"There's a lot out there, and it's making a remarkable comeback."
This year, managers of the 1-million-acre forest began a 12-year venture with three Michigan tribes to seed some 80,000 acres and "strengthen the virility" of existing ginseng, Pullen says.
American Indians have long used the root in ceremonies and as medicine. Credited with boosting immune systems and mental clarity, it's forever commanded a nice price -- as George Washington knew well.
"The war effort needs money, bring ginseng," he wrote Daniel Boone, according to the book "Woodland Nuggets of Gold." For years, Asian markets dominated the ginseng trade. Taiwan alone imports $5 billion worth a year, according to the Canadian Trade Office of Tapei. Elsewhere, demand has soared with the takeoff of the herbal supplements industry, which usually relies on a less potent, cheaper strain of ginseng. Various estimates peg U.S. sales at $4 billion to $12 billion.
But the good stuff -- the wild stuff, one of more than 20 grades of ginseng -- has been illegal to pick in Michigan since 1973's U.S. Endangered Species Act. Nineteen states allow limited culls, but ginseng was illegal to pluck -- even on private lands -- in Michigan until 1995. Harvesting planted roots is now OK.
"I swear to God, that's what broke my father's heart," Hunter says. "I don't think he ever enjoyed life again."
Only poachers profit
His father, Harold Hunter, died in the mid-1980s, long after passing on to his son a love of the twisty, multi-tentacled root.
Hunter says "ginseng has always been a big part of my life one way or another," but he's guarded about his activities during the time picking was outlawed in Michigan. He admits being approached with deals and "chauffeuring a few Chinese men," but denies ever poaching.
"Why, that would have been illegal," he says with a grin.
Plundering is such an issue in the South that rangers sometimes color roots with dyes to track them. In 2002, Michigan conservation officers busted a ring of 38 Korean immigrants picking through Lake Michigan dunes near Benton Harbor.
The arrests "acted as a deterrent," but state officers suspect thieves may be moving north up the coastline, says Mary Dettloff, spokeswoman of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Some experts claim growing ginseng to get rich is a fool's errand: The crop takes at least five years to mature and is vulnerable to insects, rot, deer and its natural fragility. Growing best in shade in older, mineralized subsoils, plants get to about 2 feet tall. Their roots reach 3-8 inches.
"It's certainly not trouble-free. There are many challenges," says Mary Hausbeck, a Michigan State University professor who studies cultivated ginseng.
An Upper Peninsula operation has tried for years to profit off ginseng, says Joe Heil, president of the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. He invested $35,000 planting 700 pounds of seed on 10 acres.
"I thought it would be a cash cow," he says. "I won't lose money, but would I do it again?"
He pauses and never answers his own question. But the possibility remains and tantalizes.
Hunter says he's spent more than a decade perfecting his seeds, cross-breeding generation after generation from thriving woods plants into a wonder seed. He boasts a germination rate of some 90 percent, which Heil deems "impossible" but Pullen and others don't discount.
Barron Pascheit, a Montreal engineer, paid $10,000 to plant 100 pounds of Hunter's seeds in 2004. This fall, he plans to recoup his investment by pulling 5,000 2-year-old roots and selling them for $2 apiece. Theoretically, his 30 acres one day may be worth $4 million.
Hunter's live-in companion, Bobbie Squires, assists with his business operations and operates the Web site, www.ginseng-seed.com. New to the industry, she's seen how it affects men. At first, they're intrigued. Then, the plant's distinctive strawberry-like leaves and red berries bloom.
"They see all that money in the berries and everything changes," Squires says.
Hunter knows the feeling. He's proud to call ginsengers "the last true independent Americans," but knows they inhabit a Wild West world. He may have his toes in it, but Hunter calls himself a simple seed man who knows better than to ask many questions. His focus is singular: a Michigan woods teeming with bitter, glorious ginseng. It can happen, he says, one seed at a time.
"Some people can't get the image out of their minds that people are pilfering the woods, like we're hunting rhinos," he says. "But this should be a legacy to our children and grandchildren. There really is something to ginseng. I've survived too long and too much for there not to be."
By the numbers
$2.2 billion U.S. exports of ginseng in 2004, up from
$1 billion in 1992
20,000 pounds harvested in Michigan in 2001, up from
5,000 in 1995
19 states allow limited cultivation of wild American
ginseng, but not Michigan
20-plus known varieties
5 years for roots to mature
Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Michigan
Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service
You can reach Joel Kurth at (313) 222-2610 or jkurth@detnews.com.
See also reviews of other limited plants:
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Last revision, November 21, 2005.