As you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about at-risk herbs and what we can all do to support these botanical allies. The issue of overharvesting in the wild is a key reason why Mountain Rose Herbs is increasingly turning to cultivated herbs when possible and why we support certified organic forest farming, particularly for hard-hit herbs like North American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius). We know that to ethically procure these valuable botanicals, they must be consciously and mindfully gathered and harvested. We only work with growers and harvesters who have been fully vetted, who we can trust to cultivate, harvest, and handle our plant allies with the respect and care they deserve. With that in mind, we’d like to show you what successful forest farming looks like.
North American ginseng is right at home in Pennsylvania’s lushly green Appalachian foothills. This is where we source our certified organic, forest grown ginseng. Our forest-farming partner, Randy, has been growing and harvesting ginseng on his land for more than three decades.
On our most recent visit to Randy’s forest farm, we noted that the certified organic woodland is surrounded by a tall fence, erected to keep out the deer that love to snack on ginseng. Field mice are also fond of it, and throughout the woodland we saw screech owl nesting boxes nailed to trees as a way to invite natural rodent-hunting predators. Other birds, as well as black bears and raccoons love to eat ginseng berries too, but Randy told us he thinks these animals actually help disperse the seeds throughout the forest via their scat.
The Appalachian foothills of Pennsylvania are home to a variety of valued woodland botanicals that coexist with ginseng, including black cohosh, Solomon’s seal, goldenseal, and poke root. As Randy and his business partner, Cliff, showed us around, they spotted a rotting sugar maple log. Randy used a makeshift metal digger—a ‘seng hunting tool that Cliff had devised from an old golf club—to gently push aside blackberry brambles to show us a particularly fine ginseng plant shooting up against the log. Randy believes that the calcium that these two symbiotic botanicals release into the soil helps the ginseng thrive. On this autumn day‚ the plant’s leaves were past their prime, but we were excited to see showy red berries hanging below its distinctive five-lobed leaves.
Both Randy and Cliff grew up with ginseng. Like so many families in this economically depressed region, both of them began collecting ginseng as young boys. “My dad showed me when I was just a kid,” Cliff told us. “My uncle did it too. Just to make an extra dollar. Just to make ends meet.”
When they were young, they often went ‘senging on public lands. However, when regulations were put in place to curb the overharvesting of this valuable root, harvesting ginseng in state parks and other public lands became illegal. This change is what prompted Randy to buy a plot of northwestern Pennsylvania woodlands and begin the practice of forest farming.
He was a young man when he and his late wife bought this 80 acres of Appalachian woodlands and started planting their first forest grown ginseng. After losing his wife, he continued to caretake the land and the plants, always leaving some of those first plantings in the ground as a tribute to her, the love of his life. Now at 60 years old, he has tended this land for decades and knows his property intimately. He tracks the age of his plants based on age-related signs like the number of growth rings that encircle the neck of each root.
Randy was the first certified organic ginseng grower in Pennsylvania, and in 1995 became the first harvester to be issued a permit to export this valuable herb across state lines. He was also a pioneer in providing supply chain transparency by being one of the first woodland farmers to have his botanicals Verified Forest Grown and Certified Organic through a third-party certification agency accredited with the National Organic Program that audits his Pennsylvania ginseng stands and also our handling of the herb here at our Oregon headquarters. Every root that Randy and Cliff harvest is weighed on scales certified by the Department of Agriculture, and the entire shipment must be inspected by Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources before being sent to us.
During our autumn visit, Randy and Cliff carefully harvested the ginseng plant’s berries. They will bury them in a bucket of sand underground and leave them there for eight months so that the seeds can germinate at a consistent 50°F. When Randy and Cliff head out ‘senging, they bring the previous season’s germinated seeds with them. For every root they harvest, they plant 20 seeds. This is to ensure that at least one of the seeds will take hold and produce a new root. These men have planted literally millions of seeds in their decades of forest farming. When a new plant emerges from their seed planting, they will wait at least seven years before harvesting the slow-growing roots.
In the summer, they also harvest ginseng leaves by snipping off three of the five leaves from select plants across the forest floor. Although people tend to think about the powerful root when they hear the word “ginseng,” the plant as a whole supports a healthy response to stress and was traditionally used in East Asian Medicine as an adaptogen for overall wellbeing and to increase energy and stamina. The ginseng leaves offer a way to enjoy some of this herb’s beneficial properties without harming the whole plant.
Randy and Cliff wait to collect the roots until after the leaves have begun to yellow; the changing colors (or “senescence”) signal that the nutrients have left the leaves and moved down into the root to prepare for winter. After harvest, the men clean the roots in fresh, local spring water and lay them out on drying screens in a homemade dryer. Whereas the summer leaves took about six hours to dry, the roots will remain in the dryer for seven to ten days.
Sustainably cultivating, harvesting, and handling ginseng in this manner, in its native, wild habitat, takes enormous dedication and patience; a farmer’s upfront investment won’t see a reward for years to come—which explains why forest farmers like Randy and Cliff are still a rarity. Even if someone already owns appropriate land, want-to-be forest farmers will be faced with the unavoidable fact that ginseng matures slowly.
As Cliff explained, “With Mother Nature, there’s no way to cut corners.”
“I like growing ginseng because it’s peaceful,” Randy told us. “Every time I dig a root, I just want to look at it. You raised it for that long, so you appreciate it. But then again, you plant the seeds back, making the population a lot greater. Mountain Rose Herbs knows that I have watched the seeds I planted 33 years ago since day one and still watch over them.”
He’s right, for a long time, we didn’t feel like we could ethically carry wild-harvested North American ginseng. The plant simply had too many pressures working against it. While ginseng can be found in woodlands throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada, it is listed as being "commercially exploited" in Tennessee; of "special concern" in Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Tennessee; "vulnerable" in Pennsylvania; "exploitably vulnerable" in New York; "threatened" in Michigan and New Hampshire; and "endangered" in Maine and Rhode Island. It is considered to be one of the highest-selling medicinal herbs, and much of the North American supply is shipped to China and other Asian countries, which were forced to turn to Panax quinquefolius after depleting much of their own native ginseng species. American ginseng was listed in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in 1975 because people recognized that, in the absence of trade controls, the level of wildharvesting at that time would make this native herb susceptible to extinction. The CITES ginseng program is now managed at the federal level by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
We are beyond pleased to say that the specialized forest farming practices that Randy and Cliff are using in Pennsylvania give us new options. Now we can offer a superior, ethically wild-grown and wild-harvested North American ginseng that is farmed in a way that does not damage the environment or the wild plant populations—and we know that because the entire supply chain, starting at the source, is traceable and built on transparency.
We want to help fund future development initiatives and the growth of ginseng forest farming in our nation’s woodlands. With this in mind, we donate a portion of our Forest Grown Verified ginseng to United Plant Savers. We believe that forest farming represents a promising economic and ecological path and we want to see this emerging industry thrive.
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