The Monongahela National Forest will start selling permits to harvest ginseng Aug. 28 for a season that runs from Sept. 1 through Nov. 30.
The Monongahela National Forest will start selling permits to harvest ginseng Aug. 28 for a season that runs from Sept. 1 through Nov. 30.
Permits will be available at the six ranger stations spread throughout the forest, as well as at the supervisor’s office, Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The cost is $20 and allows the holder to dig up to 95 ginseng plants in the forest.
Amy Lovell, education specialist for the Monongahela National Forest, said the permits are a way to help protect harvesting on public lands for future generations.
“Wild ginseng populations have declined over the past decade,” she said. “We’re really concerned about the sustainability of the harvest in the forest. And also we can educate folks when they come in to purchase a permit on the best harvesting practices.”
West Virginians have hunted ginseng for generations, and Lovell said the forest sees the tradition being passed down from generation to generation.
“Oftentimes, when folks come to get a permit from one of the ranger stations, it’ll be almost three generations that come together, so a grandparent with their child and their grandchild,” she said. “It’s definitely a cultural tradition in Appalachia, and we just want to see it done sustainably in the forest so that it can continue for future generations.”
Lovell says the number of permits is limited and awarded on a first come first serve basis. Permit holders are required to harvest only mature plants that have fruited this year.
“We ask folks when they harvest the plant to leave the fruit on site, they can plant that fruit in the ground to help propagate that population,” she said. “This isn’t a requirement, but we asked folks to harvest no more than 25 percent of the legal plants in a patch. Research suggests that harvesting more than that can lead to population declines.”
Luke Manget, an assistant professor of history at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia, dug through community store records to gain insight into the wild herb trade in America, especially looking at ginseng and its connection to Asia.
Luke Manget, an assistant professor of history at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia, dug through community store records to gain insight into the wild herb trade in America, especially looking at ginseng and its connection to Asia.
Manget spoke with Eric Douglas recently about his new book “Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia.”
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Give me the 30 second primer on ginseng.
Manget: Ginseng is a deciduous perennial herbaceous plant that grows about 18 inches high and grows pretty prolifically in the mountains. Since the early 18th century, it has been in high demand in East Asia and particularly China. The Chinese have used Asian ginseng for thousands of years as a panacea. I mean, it was the most important medicinal herb in their pharmacopeia. Early in the 18th century, Jesuits working in Canada and China discovered that American ginseng was close enough to Asian ginseng that it could be substituted in the markets and East Asia. And so it started this trade that funneled Appalachian or North American ginseng to the markets in Asia. It was driven entirely by demand from East Asia and China.
Douglas: In the early 1800s, you’ve got people who’ve barely heard of China, are digging up ginseng and sending the crops to China, and making a living off of it or supplementing their income anyway.
Manget: And, in fact, ginseng from West Virginia helped open up trade relationships between the United States and China in 1784. This was right after the American Revolution. And people were moving into the region moving across the Ohio River, moving into the Ohio valley. And in 1784, a group of financiers outfitted this ship called the Emperor of China and it was going to be the first contact made directly between the United States and China. There are a lot of consumers over there; we were trying to figure out how to break into the market. They didn’t really want much of what the Americans produced, but they wanted ginseng. And so we loaded it down with 100,000 pounds of mostly Pennsylvania and Western Virginia ginseng and established a trade relationship with them.
Douglas: I guess the local settlers are taking it to the community store and trading it. And then the community stores are collecting it and sending it to Baltimore or New York?
Courtesy Photo
Author Luke Manget, a history professor, poses with ginseng.
Manget: Initially, there were itinerant merchants who traveled around hauling wagon loads of goods bartering for whatever they could get. Some of the first ones to come into the region would just send out word that they were going to come through with their wagon loads of goods. And people would bring them ginseng, skins and furs and some of the other stuff. I’m sure these merchants would have preferred, you know hard cash and gold and silver, but there just wasn’t a lot circulating. So they had to take whatever the locals could give them. And ginseng served as something of a currency in the early economy. Later on it became funneled to the country store, so the country merchants would open up these big stores, and advertise they would take in barter and then at the end of the year, they might have a merchant kind of come through from Baltimore buying up their ginseng.
Douglas: One of the things you’ve talked about in the book, is the concept of a community commons with gathering on community forest land. Can you explain that to me?
Manget: The story of root digging and herb gathering in Appalachia is essentially a story of the commons. These plants were not cultivated in private gardens, and after the 1830s 1840s, I mean, there’s no public domain left in the region. There’s no kind of public land, all of it’s owned by somebody, mostly in West Virginia, large land companies, absentee owners, speculators. So, it was all private property.
But on a local level, the locals treated the mountain sides primarily as something of a commons. And by that, I mean, it was widely expected that everyone in the community would have access to these forest and mountain sides. It was like a de facto public domain. Members of the community pretty much assume that any plant they found growing wild, that wasn’t planted by someone’s labor, right, that was the property of whoever found it, the harvester rather than the property of the landowner on whose land it was found. By the Civil War, it was a pretty established custom, although it was always subject to some sort of negotiations. After the Civil War, there was more pressure on the commons and it kind of changed the dynamics a little bit there. Now, of course, you can’t just assume that you can take them from people’s property, so it’s shifted along the way, but back in the 19th century, the commons was a pretty powerful institution.
Douglas: Which brings me to my next question. Where does ginseng farming stand today? Is it still a money making enterprise?
Manget: The cultivation of ginseng really ramps up around the 1890s. By this first or second decade of the 20th century, there’s kind of this craze for ginseng cultivation. And it was a big thing back then, and kind of subsided over time for a variety of reasons. Over the last 30 or 40 years, it’s definitely become more important in certain places. Wisconsin, I think, leads the country in ginseng cultivation. There’s a lot of bigger farms up there. In Appalachia, there are people that have the big patches of ginseng. Although most of them they’re doing what’s called forest farming and they’re growing wild ginseng. So they’re essentially growing it in the forest. And it doesn’t look like a garden, but they’re growing it in their woods and they got a big patch going. And it’s definitely their private patch. It’s definitely cultivated in some form.
Douglas: The markets are still there, though. There’s still a demand from Asia for ginseng root. And it’s still a moneymaker?
Manget: It’s still a money maker. There’s less of it than there used to be. And there’s more regulations now. In parts of western North Carolina, it’s declining and the Forest Service has actually prohibited digging for the last couple of years on forest service land in North Carolina just to let it rebound. So it’s a little harder to find, but it gets anywhere from $600 to $1,000 a pound now. So it’s still pretty lucrative if you can find it and dig it legally.
Luke Manget, author of “Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia.” is an assistant professor of history at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia.
Ginseng, Goldenseal, Cohosh, Bloodroot, Ramps – all plants native to Appalachia and all appreciated around the world for their medicinal and culinary properties. In West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia, these plants have been harvested in the wild for generations. But over harvesting of these slow growing plants could diminish wild populations. The West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative takes a different approach. The program teaches residents how to raise botanicals on their own forested land for a source of income and as a way to preserve the forests. And for the folks involved, it’s doing way more than preserving plants.
Learning From Family And Honoring The Past
At Sprouting Farms in Summers County, West Virginia, Ruby Daniels grows herbs like ginseng and cohosh, both as a source of income, and as a way to tap into her family’s history. In a special report as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, Heather Niday explored how herbalists and farmers, like Daniels, are teaching others to grow native Appalachian plants, like ginseng, cohosh and ramps.
Daniels’ grandmother taught her how to prepare the herbs for use in teas and salves to treat all kinds of ailments. When she began working on a master’s degree in therapeutic herbalism, she started connecting her grandmother’s lessons with the science behind the folklore.
It’s also become a way to honor her ancestors. Daniels is a descendent of enslaved Africans brought to Virginia in the early 1600s. They brought with them a vast knowledge of herbal medicine but weren’t allowed to use it. In Virginia in the mid-1700s, enslaved people were forbidden to use herbs, a practice that was punishable by death, said Daniels. Now, when she makes teas or tinctures, she connects the science with the spirit.
“I listen to my inner healer. Commonly I might say, ‘Oh this person might need peppermint,’ but when I really work with them another herb is calling to me and I add that. When it all comes together, that formula makes sense for them.”
Daniels was born and raised in Maryland but spent her summers at her grandmother’s home in Beckley, West Virginia. It was there in her grandmother’s kitchen that she first started learning about native plants.
“I was always hanging around her and then I’d talk to her; she would always say ‘the moon gotta be dark when you plant potatoes and onions,’ so that’s a new moon, she was a moon planter, she planted by the moon. She just was so earthy.”
Her grandmother inspired her to experiment with her own concoctions, even as a young child.
“I was wild,” Daniels recalled. “I’d get apple blossoms and just make up recipes — so I was making herbal baths before I knew that’s what I was gonna be. She just let me. Once I got older and interested, I’d just talk to her. You know, there was always somebody in the Black community that knew some type of remedy for something.”
Sprouting Farms, where Daniels works, is part of the West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative, a program that teaches residents how to raise native plants on their own forested land as a source of income and as a way to preserve the forests.
Credit Heather Niday
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Ginseng bed at Ed Daniel’s Farm with tree limbs are laid across it to discourage deer from eating the plants.
Tapping Into The Forests To Earn Money
As part of her training in growing botanicals, Daniels is working with the Yew Mountain Center in Hillsboro, W.Va. She said this educational aspect of her work is a way to help her community and give back to the land. “By conserving endangered plants like ginseng, or blue cohosh, or black cohosh, false unicorn…that’s how I would like to work with the community and bring some type of way people could have an income.”
Ginseng, goldenseal, cohosh, ramps, bloodroot. These are valuable, well-known plants that grow wild in these mountains. While some state residents may be able to identify them, many of them face threats because of things like overharvesting, habitat loss and climate change.
The Yew Mountain Center offers seminars and hands-on training about how to cultivate wild plants to build a forest farming business. Mature goldenseal root, for example, sells for up to $40 per pound and demand is growing during the pandemic.
Larger herbal manufacturers are looking for a stable supply chain. Yew Mountain Center director Erica Marks said herbal companies want to assure their customers that the plants are from sustainable and verifiable sources. “It’s very pragmatic, because it’s their supply, their products depend on it.” Marks said part of the forest farming program is teaching people how to become certified growers to get a higher price for their crop.
Credit provided / Yew Mountain Center
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Yew Mountain Center
Erica Marks and Will Lewis
It starts with knowing the locations where the herbs will grow best, said Will Lewis, forest farming coordinator at the Yew Mountain Center. “The main thing you want to look for is a semi-mature mixed hardwood forest, where you’ve got some older trees,” Lewis said. Trees like sugar maple and other plants like trilliums and mayapples can also signal the forest is healthy, a place where wild plants will grow well.
Many of the native plants grow well with calcium, Lewis said. “Sugar Maples’ leaves have higher calcium, so every year fall when those leaves break down in the soil, it’s kind of like a calcium fertilizer,” said Lewis.
On a gentle slope just up the hill from the Yew’s lodge, three-inch-tall goldenseal plants grow about three feet apart. The plants start as seeds closely planted together in nursery beds. After a couple of years of growth, they’re transferred to the forest, usually in the fall when sufficient rain has fallen to create a moist, loamy soil.
Forest farming is an investment in time. Most of these plants take several years to flower and produce seeds. Erica Marks said finding a place to grow these plants can also be an issue in a state with a lot of privately-owned forest land.
“That is a nut we need to crack,” Marks said. “How do we increase access for people who want to do this?” Marks said one solution would be if growers could work out special forest farming leases with landowners.
Master Growers Teach The Next Generation Of Growers
Marks said the forest farming program at the Yew Mountain Center is still pretty new. So, they get a lot of help from veteran botanical growers, like Ed Daniels (no relation to Ruby Daniels). He and his wife Carole own a forest farm near Pickens, W.Va. and produce a variety of botanical oils, tinctures and salves that they sell online and in some local stores.
Credit Heather Niday
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Ed Daniels on the porch at his forest farm near Pickens, W.Va.
Daniels is also a master artist in the West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, through the West Virginia Humanities Council. As part of that program, he’ll work with an apprentice over the next year to pass on the skills he’s acquired over a lifetime.
“As a young kid I grew up in a poor lifestyle,” Daniels said. “Ginseng was a way for me to earn money to get my school clothes and shoes and jeans.”
Daniels admitted that a desire for money pushed him to take more of the wild ginseng than he should have. As he got older he saw the effects overharvesting had on wild ginseng. Areas where he used to find wild ginseng were depleted. To atone for the mistakes of his youth, Daniels said he plants about 70,000 ginseng seeds every year.
Mature ginseng plants produce a tight cluster of bright red berries. After the berries ripen and fall off, the plant is left with a scar near the top of the root. Daniels said the scar on a fresh root is proof the plant was harvested in season. That’s important because ginseng can only be legally harvested in the fall; it’s the most highly controlled botanical in West Virginia.
And it’s by far the most lucrative. Daniels said in the current market, high quality dried ginseng root can fetch up to $800 a pound.
Daniels is also interested in what ginseng can do for those suffering from opioid abuse. “I’m treating three guys right now in the town that I live in who have suffered and are currently battling opioid addiction,” Daniels said. “The doctors took them off. They’re using our CBD oil and the ginseng tinctures.”
Daniels said the ginseng is helping the men to wean themselves off the opioid drugs. Ginseng has been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of conditions, but there’s only a handful of Western studies looking at the impact of ginseng on easing opioid withdrawal. Daniels said he doesn’t claim to know how it works, only that he’s seen results.
“It gives [me] a warm feeling when someone uses it for the first time and two-three weeks later [says] what a change it’s made in their life in comfort and they’re now able to sleep at night.”
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a collaboration with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
Ginseng harvest season has arrived in West Virginia.
The ginseng season begins Friday and runs through Nov. 30. The state Department of Commerce says that by law, only ginseng plants with three or more prongs are old enough to harvest. The number indicates the plant’s age.
Diggers have until March 31 to sell the roots to a state-registered ginseng dealer. That’s also the deadline for diggers who don’t sell their ginseng to obtain a weight receipt from the Division of Forestry allowing them to possess ginseng from April 1 through Aug. 31.
Ginseng must be certified before leaving the state. Only registered dealers can obtain proper certification to transport ginseng across state lines.
Ginseng root is thought to have medicinal properties, and has sold for hundreds of dollars a pound.
Ginseng diggers are heading to West Virginia’s forests as the season for harvesting the plant opens.
West Virginia’s ginseng season begins Thursday and runs through Nov. 30.
The state Department of Commerce says that by law, only ginseng plants with three or more prongs are old enough to harvest. The number indicates the plant’s age.
Ginseng diggers have until March 31 to sell the roots to a registered ginseng dealer in the state. That’s also the deadline for diggers who don’t sell their ginseng to obtain a weight receipt from the West Virginia Division of Forestry. The receipt allows diggers to possess ginseng from April 1 through Aug. 31.
Ginseng must be certified before leaving the state. Only registered dealers can obtain proper certification to transport ginseng across state lines.
A suspect in a ginseng investigation faces charges of shooting at officers who were trying to serve warrants.
Division of Natural Resources Capt. W.W. Brogan III tells the Charleston Gazette-Mail that DNR officers arrested Bill Wolfe following a brief standoff on Saturday night.
Brogan says the officers went to Wolfe’s home in the Oak Hill area to serve warrants related to illegal ginseng activity. He says Wolfe became agitated and fired a shot at the officers.
Brogan says the officers fell back and Wolfe barricaded himself in his home. The suspect surrendered about 15 to 20 minutes later.
Wolfe is charged with felony wanton endangerment, obstructing an officer, and multiple misdemeanors related to the ginseng.
