Ginseng is a small plant of the hardwood forest understory. Its scientific name is Panax quinquifolius L. and it is in the Araliaceae family. It is also called seng, five fingers, and tartar root. This not the blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides L. Michx.) which is also called blue ginseng. It is now a rare plant and may be threatened. It is listed as rare in 31 states of the US. As early as 1901 a law in North Carolina sought to prohibit its collection until after it had seeded. It has been exported since 1700. 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.) Collectors have worked through the forests digging the aromatic roots of the plants for export. 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. 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 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. 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.

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.

The simultaneous strategies include:

1. Investigating the insect pollinators and assuring their populations. (The flowers have the odor of lily-of-the-valley indicating dependence over time on insects of a type.)
2. Developing a logistic regression of the Alpha Units where the plant may probably be found. This suggests the remaining suitable sites and frames the difficulties.
3. Protect existing colonies. (Extreme procedures are needed in some areas. Fences are required, not the "hope" that the colony will not be found.)
4. Create nurseries. (It is produced commercially in Wisconsin.)
5. Reduce exports.
6. Require whole plants that are exported be of a sufficiently large size. (Set a minimum size or weight limit to prevent excessive exploitation of plants before they reach reproductive size.)
7. Encourage production of chemical and industrial equivalents.
8. Debunk the claims of the "miracle" medicine and clarify the pharmacological effects.
9. Study and publicize unsafe uses, dangers, and frauds.
10. Provide results of studies in Asian conditions that dispute the medicinal claims and offer viable alternatives to the folkmedicine.
11. Develop a strong educational program.
12. Encourage private cultivation that is profitable (e.g., with kits and instructions for plot work), increasing the supply and reducing the price and demand for the woodland roots.
13. Promote supervised ginseng gardening.
14. Create a club for sang hunters to educate them, enlist their help, educate them, show how to mark plots for harvest after seeding (August), and to improve their markets, protect their future income, and reduce wastes.
15. In areas where the plant occurs, provide education to increase the chances that people can get a sighting on their life lists and reduce the chances for poaching.
16. Make the laws clear to people in areas where the plant is well established or well known.

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.

An e-mail suggests the problem(s):

Wild ginseng poachers deplete South's invigoratingcash crop Tuesday, December 12, 2000

By EDITH STANLEY Special from the Los Angeles Times

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. -- Bernard Singleton wonders who slipped past his white lattice fence and dug up his garden. His neighbors heard nothing. His dog did not bark. But one night not long ago, someone cleaned him out.

The loot: ginseng. Its worth: $2,500.

Green gold, they call it. No other herb growing in the woods hereabouts is worth as much. For centuries, Asians have revered its gnarly, pale roots for their supposed invigorating and rejuvenating powers -- so much so that the wild crop in that part of the world is nearly gone.

So it's ginseng from America they now crave. Not the wimpy, cultivated variety. They want the thicker, larger, wild plants. Nearly 90 percent of the wild ginseng harvested in the United States -- most of it grown in the South -- goes to Asia. Demand has driven prices skyward -- to $350 or more per pound. That has turned America's national parks -- where harvesting is illegal -- into a poachers' paradise.

In the last nine years, say officials at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- which straddles North Carolina and Tennessee -- poachers have made off with about $5.3 million worth of ginseng.

The national forests also have proved to be fertile ground for poachers. And Southerners who grow ginseng on their private property often are victims.

Singleton, who at 70 is tall and frail, loved his ginseng patch. He had more than 100 plants in his yard when the poachers sneaked in after dark Sept. 17. He'd been growing them for nearly 20 years.

The thieves took exactly what they had come for: the thick roots. They littered the ground with wilted leaves and broken stems as they rushed away.

At the other end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, up in Virginia, six people were prosecuted last month for removing ginseng plants from federally protected lands. They were fined and ordered to pay restitution. For one of the thieves, it was his second conviction.

Jim Corbin, plant specialist for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, isn't surprised at second convictions. He knows how hard it is for some people to turn away from the profits reaped by poaching. "Once they dip their hand in the pot, they can't keep it out," Corbin said. "But they are going to be a lot more cautious (the second time). They'll find different hunting grounds."

He knows firsthand the difficulty of prosecuting poaching cases.

In 1993, Corbin was asked to testify in a case involving two men arrested in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They had been apprehended on the park boundary, carrying nearly two pounds of ginseng. They testified that they had found the plants on adjoining land where it was legal to harvest, and didn't realize they had strayed into the park. The court felt there was enough reasonable doubt to exonerate them.

Corbin was furious. "A plant can't stand up and say, 'I came from Joe Blow's patch,' " he said. But it set him to thinking of a way to mark ginseng so that there would be no question about its origin.

First, Corbin tried attaching tiny metal strips with ancient Navajo symbols to the plants' roots. But the encryption was so small, it required a microscope to read it. Too cumbersome.

Next he requested hundreds of soil samples from ginseng-growing areas and analyzed them. The data showed that the ginseng plants thrived on calcium and magnesium. So he mixed these two minerals with an orange dye laced with coded silicone chips.

The coding identified the origin of the plant.

Corbin took to the woods in 1995 with a team of state and federal employees. Wherever they found ginseng, they uncovered the roots, sprayed them with glue, sprinkled on the dye and then gently re-covered the roots with dirt.

At the first rainfall, the roots absorbed the dye.

The orange coloring was permanent. There was no way to cut it out. (Corbin's formula is now at work battling poachers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, New York, Missouri and in the province of Ontario, Canada. Arizona has adopted it for tagging petrified wood.)

Ginseng dealers across North Carolina were alerted to watch for orange roots. And if officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- which monitors the export of ginseng -- spot any orange roots, the entire shipment is returned to the dealer.

Corbin's orange dye seems to be working. Several North Carolina dealers say that they have seen no orange roots this year.

The record year for wild ginseng in North Carolina was 1997, with a harvest of 11,000 pounds. "That was right after the price went up to $500 a pound," Marj Boyer, state ginseng coordinator, said. The price dropped off in 1998 and 1999. The yield for those two seasons totaled 14,200 pounds.

Figuring that an average of 350 plants will produce about one pound of roots, that comes to 8.8 million plants dug up from 30 or so western North Carolina counties. There is no way to know how many of them were poached. "Ginseng is not listed by our state as endangered or threatened," Boyer said. "But since it is exploited so heavily, it is kind of a special problem".

Gary Kauffman and Allison Schwarz, botanists with the U.S. Forest Service, are members of Corbin's team. On a recent sunny afternoon, they drove into the Shining Rock Wilderness, about 13 miles south of Waynesville. Kauffman was armed with the tagging equipment: a can of spray glue in his right pocket, a vial of orange dye stuffed in the left.

After a short hike, they started a steep ascent. They know the leaves on ginseng have yellowed. Once they fall, it will be impossible to find the plants until spring.

Climbing up a dry rock waterfall, they reached a plateau. "This is where it likes to grow," Kauffman said, pointing to a bowl-shaped area. "It stays moist here, and there's a lot of diversity of herbs".

He knelt beside a small bloodroot. He brushed dirt from its roots, sprayed them with glue, sprinkled on the bright orange dye and patted the earth back into place.

"Here is where it was," shouted Schwarz. "A big plant was here". The person who dug the ginseng up had placed a rock there to disguise the hole.

"Now you know what we're up against."

John Garrison, a National Parks ranger, works with Kauffman, Schwarz, and others in the marking group. During his 18 years as a ranger, he has watched the poaching level increase dramatically.

Until the last few years, Garrison said, he didn't think much about people stealing ginseng. He would give them a ticket and send them on their way. Then he started apprehending people who were camping out for days for the sole purpose of collecting ginseng.

Copyright © 2000 Bergen Record Corp.

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Last revision January 17, 2000.