A douple dip of paying dues...

AT first light my brother let me out about five miles from the truck. In between was all lovely woods, hopefully full of ginseng. Five hours later I staggered out of the woods with five paltry ginseng plants. This woods had taken the full brunt of the drought. All the plants Id found were just about gone and dried up. Two I found only because there was red berries on a bare stalk. No leaves at all. deciding to try and salvage the day I decided to go fishing at the site of the old kings dam. On the way down the bike trail I saw several deer and two wild turkeys. So I'm thinking hey thats a good start, its going to be a great evening. I get down to the river and wade in. Right away I catch a smallie and as I'm unhooking it I hear a deer blow behind me. I turn and see two deer bounding away from the rivers edge. Yep it's going to be a great evening... way away in the distance I can hear a storm. I'm thinking that sounds like its going around, should be just close enough to cool things down nicely. Just then the wind began to blow a bit as I made a few more casts. About that time lightning struck so close I just about jumped out of my skin. Two minutes later all the leaves were just about ripped from the trees as the wind hit hard. With the wind came more lightning. And rain. Buckets of rain. big buckets of rain. I backed up against a pile of rubble from the old dam to hunker down and wait things out. OK this will really turn the fish on after all this dry weather. Sure enough as I sat there I swear I saw fish swirling below the riffle between sheets of rain. But more flashes and thunder booming all around. Im ok with fishing in the rain but not lightning... So I sat getting wetter and wetter as it rained harder. Thru the heavy rain I could see the river coming up just a bit and coloring a little. Then poof no more rain. Even the sun began to peak out from behind the clouds. But across the hole I could see huge streaks of muddy orange water as runoff poured into the river. Ok I've got a vibrating crankbait with a rattle this will be ok. But withen minutes the whole river was orange and worse the storm had washed every leaf in the state into my section of river, you couldn't retrieve two feet without fouling on leaves. So driving home soaking wet and defeated I took the senic route home and drove upstream. Halls creek which had been dry yesterday was waist deep and going fast enough to drown in. All the way to Todds Fork the river was a mess. Crossing the bridge in Morrow looking upstream the river was beautifull. I bet the fishing was really something up there tonight...

Ginseng Hunting

The woods was a long rectangle bordered on all sides by roads but with the fork running thru the middle of it. Because of the steepness of the terrain along the fork there was left a strip of woods in places close to a mile wide and it was about eight miles lengthwise from road to road, broken up only by a couple tractor paths and one soybean field in a flat down by the water. My brother had dropped me off two weeks ago at the upper end and I'd walked the creek all the way out scouting things out. It might be eight miles by road but the fork twisted and turned almost back on itself so much that a walk started right after first light had me scrambling to get out by dark. This time I had a good idea of where I wanted to go and where I wanted to hit the creek, which was about halfway up. So I left the truck at the bottom and walked the road for an hour before cutting across to the woods. A small hollow led down to the main creek. This wasn't where I wanted to be but it was just downstream and a can't miss landmark to guide me in. About halfway down it started to rain. I was expecting showers and rain but this was something else entirely. It was one of those rains that make you pull over if your driving. No overpasses for me to park under tho. I found a big oak that leaned a couple feet to one side and backed up into the overhang the best I could to wait it out. After 15 minutes of feeling like a fire house was turned on me things began to settle down to just a rain and I started out again. When I reached the main hollow I did not go down inside it but instead walked the edge to where I was originally headed. For on my scout I had found something here that had stopped me cold. I'd worked up the hill seeing ginseng semi regularly then topped out on this little flat. Not really a good looking woods but there was some baneberry and maidenhair fern so I was still looking. Well I looked ahead and here was a big three prong, then I saw a four prong standing proud, then three or four other big plants all bunched up. About ten feet away there was ten or twelve more and I just felt real still and calm knowing where I'd be on opening day. So here I was in the rain and even before I found my spot I dug a half dozen big plants. And then I was there. In an square roughly a hundred feet by a hundred I guess I dug a pound of sang. I sat down next to a big four prong and had lunch, a half a loaf of raison bread. I've learned that I need lots and lots of carbs during a ginseng hunt and nowadays I tend to load up on bread of some kind. Up and down the fork from here I'd only seen a handfull of ginseng but I hadn't scouted down the hill towards the fork from here. I slowly worked down the hill zig zaging back and forth finding a plant here and there. Towards the fork the hill flattened out and the remains of an old woven wire fence stretched more on the ground than up, held up here and there by old rotten locust posts. The path of the old fence was marked by something else too. Growing right up thru the old wire was ginseng. Old big ginseng that had been there for decades. There were twenty or so in sight and I had to look further before digging those, I just couldn't help myself. Sure enough further along was another big plant and just in sight two more. Almost all of this ginseng was yellow or at least burned a golden shade of green by the drought. I had to be carefull or the top would seperate from the root while digging and I'd have to search and search for the root. No matter how much ginseng I found today it was obvious the year itself was going to be just okay because most ginseng would be gone for the year in a week or two. But right now those golden tops shown out thru the woods saying dig here, dig here. I forced myself to slow down and dig carefully, these were old big plants demanding respect with one to three inch necks of bud scars. Every year the new years bud leaves a scar and these build up in a neck and some of these plants looked to be as old as me. Finally after a couple hours I dug all the plants out of the old fence and had dug another twenty or so down to the fork. Bone weary I headed for the truck with two and three quarter pounds of ginseng, truely an opening day to remember.

This and that ginseng

I'm constantly asked what does ginseng look like so I thought I'd post a little photo gallery of sang images





Some mature ginseng plants





Small ginseng too little to harvest





Ginseng thats turned yellow in the fall just before the top dies down. This is when ginseng is the easiest to find as you can sometimes spot it twenty feet away or in weeds where you would miss it green.



A small three prong starting to turn



A giant root that had two four prong tops




Some really old "trophy" ginseng plants

The oldest ginseng plant on earth...

this is the story of Renshen(chinese for man root)....

In the year 1781 the woods along the Little Miami River were a wonder. Here the steep hillsides cut by the melting of the last ice age were covered in a rich cove forest. A small unnamed creek spills from the flat woodland above the gorge of the river cascading in tiny foot high waterfalls down the hillside. Here under these mighty trees scattered among the bloodroot and goldenseal were yellowed leaves glowing in the fall sunshine. The yellow belonged to ginseng. Hundreds of plants ranging in age from just a year or two to close to a century dotted the rich slope of the cove.

Among the dried browns of the early fall woodland floor another yellow was present besides the golden ginseng. This yellow flitted along catching small insects. It was a small warbler feeding and fueling itself as it headed south during it's fall migration. A small green inchworm measured along the stem of a big four prong ginseng plant. The slight movement caught the eye of the warbler and in an instant it was at the base of the plant hopping and jumping at the little worm. Fluttering up catching the inchworm it dislodged some of the bright crimson berries barely holding on. A berry landed with a plop right at the small birds feet. Allmost without thinking the warbler gulped the seed down.

The next morning was cold and wet and windy. The lovely little bird spent the day resting and feeding nearby, taking a well deserved break from it's long journey. Late that evening the weather cleared and the sun came out. On a steep cliff small wasps gathered in the sunshine and drank from the wet soil of the cliff. The warbler flashed in catching a wasp and perched on a tiny rock outcropping devouring it's meal. Right before leaving it made a little room for the meal by depositing a dropping containing the ginseng seed on the steep cliffside.

Two days later another rain came washing the seed down the rocks into a small pocket in the rocks. There the seed sat all that winter and the next. The thick shell that protected the seed from being digested inside the bird meant that it took two years before the seed would sprout. Finally the next spring the seed sprouted and Renshen was born. A small plant Renshen was then just an inch or two high that year, looking like nothing more than a stray bean sprout from a salad. Renshen shared it's tiny pocket in the cliff with a small fern and some moss, there really wasn't room for more. Large trees hung out over the little cliff and the steep hillside shading Renshen. Alone on the cliff Renshen was safe from disease from nearby plants and safe from the digging of small animals. In its airy perch Renshen recieved even the slightest of breases even when the rest of the woods was still. This prevented any mold or fungus from bothering Renshen.

Slowly Renshen grew, the fern died of old age and rotted providing a tiny burst of compost into the tiny pocket. In 1793 Renshen was a small plant barely six inches high with two small prongs. In the rich woods thirty feet away a ginseng plant two years younger than Renshen was a hearty three prong a foot tall. That year Renshen produced two seeds that fell bouncing down the rock face to the forest floor below. In the year 1800 Renshen was still a small plant with a small root barely two inches long but finally a three prong while the big plant thirty feet away in the woods was dead. There Renshen sat barely growing at all, not even sprouting in 1808 during a very dry spring, just lying there dormant waiting.

In 1812 a mouse nested in a rotting log on the clifftop above Renshen. In july a grey fox smelled the strong scent of the mouse and began to dig at the rotten log. Small pieces of rotten wood began raining down the cliffside and several caught just right filling Renshens little hollow. That fall Renshen produced twenty seven seeds the most it would ever produce. The next spring Renshen turned thirty, each year marked by a tiny scar that built up one on top of the other as a little neck above the bulblike shape of the root. This was the first year the little neck of scars was longer than Renshens actual root. There were still older plants in the woods but not many. Though about a hundred yards away on another very steep spot grew several plants between fifty and a hundred years old.

There Renshen sat, year after year, decade after decade. In 1843 Renshen turned sixty and the woods rang for the first time with the loud whistle of a train down the hillside by the river. Renshen was then the oldest plant anywhere around as men had been for a while taking time off from the hard work of farming to spend an afternoon digging ginseng for some much needed extra money. Ginseng had been dug and traded with far a way china for over a centery even then.

Over the years the wooded hillsides around Renshen were selectively cut so that eventually even the trees in the forest were younger that Renshen. Protected in it's rocky perch, the hardy plant sat, not even sprouting in two hot springs right after the closest trees were cut. In 1883 Renshen turned a hundred and up along the neck of scars another tiny bulb of a root began to grow. In total with the three inches of neck and two root bulbs Renshen weighed allmost an ounce. That year a jack in the pulpit sprouted alongside Renshen in the crevice. The jack lived for a decade with Renshen on the cliffside before leaving Renshen alone again.

In 1983 the train whistle stopped as Renshen outlived even the railroad and the next year Renshen turned two hundred. Renshen was now the oldest ginseng plant in the world as the only ginseng plant older was bulldozed off a mountaintop in West Virginia in a coal mining operation.

It's now 2010 and Renshen lives on in it's rocky home, protected from man and beast and disease. Ginseng doesn't seem to die of old age, it takes something like a landslide or a man or a disease to kill one. Over ten inches of tiny age scars twist and contort in Renshens little pocket of soil. If Renshen was found and dug without being broken how much would it be worth? Old roots, ancient old roots over a century old have sold at auction with less than a dozen bringing hundreds of thousands. Renshen? The first million dollar ginseng root? Hopefully we never find out....


A three ounce fifty year old..

sang hunting

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"The Cherokee speak of the plant as being a sentient being...
able to make itself invisible to those unworthy to gather it."
William Bartram, 1791



Walking the woods and hollows looking for ginseng or "sang" has been a tradition among the country folk all up and down the length of Appalachia. From the hill country of southern Ohio over into West Virginia down thru Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, heading into the woods to dig a little Christmas money or maybe shoe money has been around as long as people have walked these woods. One story that is never told is the fact that Daniel Boone spent a year digging ginseng and buying it from white explorers and natives, eventualy filling an entire flatboat with 12 tons of seng, worth a small fortune at the time. Unfortunately a boat wreck on the Ohio got most of his collection wet and he lost money on the deal, otherwise the regions history might have been written quite differently. While searching thru my own family tree I found several references to digging sang. I found a story told by Mrs. Fannie Coomer, born in 1833,in which she spoke of spinning cloth from their own sheep, of making their own clothing, quilts,raising livestock, and growing their own food. And if something extra was needed, of digging ginseng for some spending money. My own grandfather took me sang hunting when I was young and my father filled the woods behind our home with beds of ginseng. Now every fall I head into the woods to follow in this tradition. Some years digging just a bit for something to do, and in lean years, digging harder for that elusive Christmas cash.
Ginseng itself thrives in what is called the Appalachian mixed mesophytic forest. But what makes ginseng so hard to find is while you may find the occasional plant here and there thruout this vast forest type, to find a sackfull (or even a pocketfull for that matter)you must hunt out little subtypes of forest, little pockets of just the right habitat. All the books say look on a north facing slope but it's a bit more complicated than that. While a north facing slope may be a good place to start, any slope will hold ginseng if it's like the words of that old bluegrass song,"where the sun comes up about ten in the morning, and the sun goes down about 3 in the day". What ginseng likes best are deep cool rich coves and hollows in already rich cool woods. The best ginseng woods are dominated by maples with poplar mixed in. Woods predominated by oaks and hickories are in my experience poor places to find alot of ginseng. A better and easier way to find the right places to hunt tho is to look for the right companion plants. Any type of cohosh, goldenseal, ramps, and maidenhair fern are good indicators of guality ginseng habitat. Of these maidenhair fern may be the best, but around here at least, ginseng is almost more of an indicator of maidenhair fern as it is rare. The best, most sure fire, companion plant though is baneberry or "dolleyes". A good way to scout a big block of new woods is to cruise thru fairly fast looking for baneberry and then when you find some stop and look for the harder to find ginseng plants. You may find a little ginseng without baneberry or a little baneberry without ginseng but the only reason you will find alot of baneberry without ginseng is that someone has dug the ginseng already.
Ginseng has been used by the Chinese for over 5000 years as a general cure all and also specifically by herbalists to treat problems with a person's "Yin" and "Yang" and bring them into balance. Lately several studies have shown ginseng may indeed have health benifits but these still ignore the big picture of restoring general well being and balance that the Chinese actually use the root for. The Cherokee used ginseng for colic, dysentry, and headache, and described it as "the little man", amazingly similar to "man root" which is how the Chinese described the root.
In 1702 a Father Jartoux was in china and observed the valuable trade in and uses of ginseng there, later in 1716 while working with Iroquois in the North America he discovered the plant growing here. Fur traders began gathering the valuable root and buying it from the Native Americans and a tradition in North America was born. John Jacob Astor sent a ship loaded with fur and ginseng and reportably made $55,000, the equivalent of millions today. Most ginseng today is still bought by a network of small fur buyers which in turn sell to larger traveling dealers which then sell to the relatively few exporters. By the time the root finds the consumer in China it sells for many times the $300 to $500 dollars a pound a digger here may receive.
Ginseng is considered rare and the harvest is regulated in the different states by a confining the harvest to a short season of just a few short weeks prior to the top turning yellow and dying in the fall. It's my experience that ginseng seems just about as plentiful now as when I was a boy, that the level of hard work combined with itimate knowledge of the forest required to harvest it serves even better than a season to limit overharvesting. The next time your out for a hike in early autumn and meet an oldtimer in bib overalls with a homemade knapsack and a long digger for a walking stick strike up a conversation, you might just connect with a bit of Appalachia's grand old past.
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A young two prong ginseng plant, each set of leaflets on a plant is called a prong. Only plants that have large three or four prongs should be harvested.
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Ginseng turning yellow in the fall. The week or two when the tops turn yellow before dying is "prime time" for digging, making the plants easier to spot in the dense undergrowth.
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Some ramps. A prime indicator of good woods in the springtime, though they die down by ginseng digging time they are a great scouting tool.
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Jack in the Pulpit
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Squaw Root is usually a sign of a hillside not really suitable for ginseng greatness though the odd plant may be found there.
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Good ginseng territory is allmost always good terrapin territory as well.
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A morning's hunt layed out on a log at lunchtime.
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A giant with two big four prong tops growing off the same root.
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Baneberry
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A mature plant with red berries. Ginseng should not be harvested before the berries mature.
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A very old ginseng root
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Another mid thigh-high giant
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Maidenhair fern
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Baneberry. Don't eat those pretty berries by the way, they will stop your heart and kill you!
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Three and a half pounds of dried ginseng. A entire years collection for me from last year.
$1400 at todays price
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A ginseng top thats been browsed by deer. Allmost every hunt I'll find several of these mangled tops. I've also been digging one root and rolled out another that I didn't know was there because the top was browsed off or the plant was simply dormant that year. There is alot more of this kind of ginseng out there than one might think. I've also been digging one plant and dug another too close to leave undisturbed that I thought was a seedling that I would replant only to find a big root but tiny set of root scars on top, like the top of the root had been broken off or eaten by an animal and was regrowing. I think these types of ginseng also help keep the plant from being dug out.

That old bag, a story from last spring

It's just an old canvas knapsack, a glorified bookbag really. Nothing at all like the nylon and aluminum monstrosity I carry on backpacking trips. The left strap I sewed back on last year when it started to tear away, more out of sentimentality than for practical reasons. I'm sure I could get a better newer one for less than thirty bucks, though nowdays you can spend literally as much as you need to feel sufficiently outdoorsey enough. The last time I checked them out at Bass Pro you could get a gortex model with a built in "hydration unit" and "multifunctional comfort suspension" for just a bit more than you might spend buying a functional 22 rifle.
Anyways the reason I started writing all this was just this morning as I was stuffing it with a lunch and a waterbottle I found a rock. This rock was a fossil really, some sort of shell from when my part of the world was under some ancient sea. I remember originally finding the rock because a large ginseng plant had grown atop it and i had to pry the root and fossil apart last fall.
Now it was finally spring and the old pack was going back to the same woods today. Not for ginseng but for another treasure, ramps. Ramps or wild leeks for you non-hillbilly types are one of the earliest plants to pop up in spring. Fried potatoes and ramps are a delicacy well known only in the hills and hollers of appalachia.
During early spring the old pack is kept out in the shed because you can smell the strong oniony smell of ramps from ten feet away and I risk the boss lady throwing it away if I tried to keep it in the house.
Lunch is a peanut butter sandwich and a tangerine. Those along with a raincoat, camera, waterbottle and a small digging trowel go in the big main compartment. In the small pocket on the back go a compass, knife, and my cell phone and car keys. The cell phone is inside a ziplock bag and turned off. Cell phones have no place in the woods, just like radios in a campground. I sort of have a place in mind for lunch, a small indian mound hidden back in the woods that I think of as somehow being mine.
If fate, or whatever Gods watch over hillbillys like me, smiles on this little adventure maybe I'll also bring home a sack of morel mushrooms. It's a little early but not intirely out of the question. Dipped in milk and rolled in half flour and half cornmeal and fried, they would turn the potatoes and ramps into a feast fit for the gods.
I guess the biggest advantage of having a beat op old knapsack over the latest hi- teck version is you really don't mind if it ends up smelling like fresh ramps and springtime woods.