by Roxann Phillips, roxann@ancientearthwisdom.com
http://blog.ancientearthwisdom.com (Ozark Musings from the homestead)http://www.madisonwoods.wordpress.com (Fantasy Fiction works in progress)
October 2007.
A small excited crowd gathered around the open trunk of a weathered gray sedan parked in the Kingston, Arkansas, town square. The root diggers, men wearing baseball caps and cowboy hats, dressed in overalls and blue jeans, ranged in age from late twenties to over sixty. They were discussing the harvests they’d made. The root buyers were in town for the first time this season and diggers were bringing in the harvest.
The root buyers, Joe and Ruby Wood, stood beside a small television tray which held an old postal scale. Each person handed over their roots and Joe weighed them on the scale before making an offer. I spotted the red plaid shirt of someone I recognized and headed over to ask a few questions.
“Did you have a good take this year?” I ask Kenny Wright, a well-known root digger in the Kingston community. A tall, wiry man, Kenny scours the woods each September looking for ginseng plants old enough to sell. Kenny smiled broadly, wordlessly flashing his check for me to read: $1,500. He’s excited. The roots fetched a fair price, $525/lb, higher than the prices reached for the whole season last year.
I looked into the trunk of the old car and saw large paper bags, tops rolled open, filled with the tangled yellow masses of dry goldenseal roots. At least one gallon-sized Ziploc was visible, crammed full of dried ginseng roots.
After about thirty minutes the Woods packed up the television tray and scale and drove to another rural town to the south where the whole scene will take place again.
**********************
Three weeks later I’m at the Kingston town square again, this time sitting on the wooden bench in front of Grandpa’s Antique store. Another small crowd mills around the parking lot, some standing and a few sitting on the porch. I recognize some of the faces from the last time, but Kenny is the only one I know for certain. He joins me on the bench to wait. The buyers are a few minutes late today, but the diggers are sure they will show. Excitement is tangible, but demeanors are subdued. No one is speaking much to each other. No one wants to appear too eager to step to the front of the line when Joe and Ruby pull up.
The Woods arrive, pulling right into the space that Kenny just left when he moved his car to the other end of the square. Ruby smiles and waves to me from inside the car, but she’s not getting out today. It’s a crisp autumn day in the Ozarks and the sun feels good on her shoulder through the window while she reads a book. Joe steps to the back and pulls out the TV tray and scale. The transactions begin.
Kenny leans toward me and speaks quietly, “$805 is what I hear it’s going for today.”
I struggle to restrain myself from exclaiming my disbelief out loud. I wonder if he’s sorry he sold his a few weeks ago, rather than waiting until now.
“Do you have any to sell today?” I ask him.
“Not today. I have a little left, but I’m going to wait.”
He’s gambling that the prices go up, rather than down in the next few weeks. It’s a good bet. Prices usually open lower and then climb as the season progresses, responding to supply and demand. The demand, for the most part, comes from China. The supply comes from rural diggers. The roots gathered from the Ozarks only account for a small portion of the total exported wild ginseng from the United States. Most comes from Appalachian states. Roots and money pass through several middle-men between the digger and the Chinese end-user. By the time the roots make it to China, the obviously wealthy end-user pays upwards of $2,000/lb for wild American ginseng. The less fortunate end-user can buy cultivated Chinese ginseng or imported cultivated American ginseng. It is only the wild root that brings such high prices.
One of the younger men, possibly in his early forties, stands first in line. From the look on his face as he walks back to the group, with his paper bag rolled tight and tucked under his arm, he’s not happy.
“Only offered $50,” he said. “He said it’s just a little under an ounce. I’ve got more than that put into it.” He leaves, disappointed.
To pass the time the men start talking among themselves. Kenny nods over to one of the men, “You shouldn’t keep your roots like that,” he tells him.
The man looks down at his Ziploc, which holds only one root, and says, “You mean in the plastic?”
Kenny nods. “Once I had a whole lot of goldenseal dried and put up in plastic bags like that. Almost lost it all,” he explained. “The buyer was able to save it, but he told me to never store roots in plastic.” Kenny’s goldenseal molded because the plastic trapped moisture. He told the man to throw his roots in a cardboard box until he brings them to town.
The man nods in agreement. He only has that one root, just to see for the heck of it what one root will bring. He doesn’t share any more about it with the rest of us, though.
Kenny turns to one of the other old-timers he knows standing on the porch. “Hey, you had any trouble with packrats this year?”
“Yeah, I did. Done set out four traps this year and caught all four so far. You?” the old-timer asks in turn.
“Caught one whittlin’ on one of the roots just the other night. With prices such as they are, them rats don’t need any,” he laughs.
Just then I notice something. “Kenny, I don’t see any other women out here. Don’t any women dig roots?” This question rouses hearty laughter from all the men. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Am I breaking some age-old tradition? Is it taboo for a woman to be involved?
“Well,” Kenny drawls, “just maybe there’ll be a woman out here next year selling some roots – if you bring some in.”
They resume talking among themselves. I went over to talk to Joe as he finished packing his things away.
“Joe, do you know what happens with the roots once you sell them to your buyer?”
He took a serious look at me and told me, “No.”
“Do you have any idea how many times the roots change hands before they reach port?” I persisted.
Again, he said, “No.”
Maybe a more direct question would get a better response. “Okay, Joe, do you know how much the roots bring once they reach China?” I ventured.
“I can’t tell you that!”
I know Joe to be a friendly man, so I could tell that I had really crossed a line that time. In this business there are many such lines. I might have crossed all of them now.
Ginseng diggers, on the whole, are very secretive, especially so about the locations their patches. Some dig on their own property, and some wander the mountains to dig. For many, fences and property boundaries don’t apply, since they feel that the plants were put here by God for them to dig and no one can own plants, even if they do own the property. I did learn a few tricks of the trade once I learned how to ask the right questions of the right people in the right way.
For example, I learned how to keep a patch secret after harvest. When a digger passes through a patch and digs all he wants, he will break off the leaves from the remaining plants so no one passing through afterwards will be able to find them. He carries the leaves out with him, or drops them somewhere away from the patch. This actually works in favor of both the digger and the plant. With prices so high, some diggers who pass through later might be tempted to overharvest the roots. If they can’t find the plants because the stems and leaves are gone, they can’t dig them. Thus, the plants will survive to grow another season and the original digger will have plants to harvest next year.
There are state and federal laws in place to help ensure ginseng’s survival, too. Ginseng must be at least five years old to dig. The law requires diggers to plant any seeds remaining on the plant. Almost all of the older diggers do this without thinking, and most will even take it a step further. For example, in the year 2007 we had a late freeze in April. This caused the flowers to be late coming on and berries matured later. Responsible diggers delayed harvesting until the seeds ripened enough to plant.
When ginseng suffers over-harvesting, it is sometimes a result of being stolen, or poached, in the same way that a game animal can be poached by hunting it out of season. Ginseng has a harvest season, which begins on Sept. 1 and ends December 31 in Arkansas and Missouri.
Poaching occurs when ginseng is harvested out of season, or is stolen from private property or public lands without a permit. When poachers take ginseng, they do not replant the seeds (the seeds are usually unripe anyway) and they are likely to be digging immature plants. The persons doing the stealing and/or poaching are obviously not planning to dig in that spot again next year. Apparently, they just want to get it while they can and get the money without regard for future crops. Because of this problem, ginseng diggers and growers keep the locations of their patches a closely guarded secret.
Most ginseng diggers are conscientious and will do all they can to ensure that there will be another crop to harvest in the following years. The local folks harvest the same areas over many generations, usually passing the lore from father to son, without harming the plant population. A thief in the night can eliminate entire patches in a few hours time.
Penny Frazier, of Goods from the Woods, summed it up perfectly, “People with land tenure take care of their resources.”
The Woods commented that they’ve bought about the same amount as last year, so they didn’t notice a decrease in their take this year, which indicates perhaps that the abundance of ginseng hasn’t changed in this area. One thing that concerns them, however, is that the old diggers are not going to be digging much longer because of age or declining health, and the younger generations do not seem interested in such an activity. The Woods wonder if they will be able to continue their buying activities for many more years.
Most people will never experience a scene like the one I observed that Saturday afternoon in the town square, unless they live in a very small town. This tradition has been handed down for generations from father to son. Perhaps next year my own entrance to the trading will add a new dimension to the practice of root digging, selling, and buying. A woman will be participating in Kingston’s root selling next year!
Note: On 11/24/07, $825/lb (dried) was being paid to diggers for American Ginseng in Kingston, Arkansas. This year (2008) the buyer paid $400/lb on the first buying day of the season at the same location. He said that he anticipates being able to offer more on the next session.
GINSENG PRIMER
Ginseng is a slow-growing perennial plant native to the southeastern United States, including the Ozarks. It only grows naturally in dense shade (the tall shade of old deciduous trees is perfect) and moist, but well-drained, soil. It grows best on the north and northeastern sides of the hills and mountains, preferring the lower slopes, but it will also grow in other locations provided the very specific environmental needs of this plant are met.
According to the American Botanical Council, wild American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) is a plant with an uncertain future, at risk of declining to the point of no return. The federal government has placed wild ginseng on the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) list. Authorities carefully monitor the plants and animals on this list to make sure that exporting them in trade does not cause further decline of the species. Some of ginseng’s forest companions are also being considered for inclusion or are already on that list: goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), and bloodroot (Sanguinara canadensis). Maidenhair fern, although not on the At Risk or CITES list, is also a forest companion. These plants are called “indicator plants” because where they are found, ginseng usually can also be found.
One of the reasons ginseng is endangered is that it has such strict habitat requirements. Much of the Ozarks provide good habitat, but logging and development have taken a toll.
OVER HARVESTING
How much is too much when it comes to harvesting? Research from the University of Missouri at Columbia has shown that the minimum population of a colony needs to be 100 plants of various ages. A colony of this size can withstand a 25% reduction and stay self-sustainable. Since ginseng plants in a colony are all clones of each other, they do not need outside pollination from different gene pools. Reduction comes in the form of loss to insect or animal predation, loss due to weather or other uncontrollable events, or harvest. According to these guidelines, virtually everyone I know or have spoken with is over-harvesting the ginseng. No one reports seeing wild colonies of 100 plants anymore. The wild plants I’ve found tend to be in groups of three or four, maybe at the most five to ten plants, separated from the next colony by yards or acres.
copyright 2008 Roxann Phillips all rights reserved