Ginseng where to find

Method 2. Get a permit or license, if necessary. Some states require you to have a state-issued permit to harvest. You are required to show your permit if you are requested to do so. Some U. Forest Service National Forests issue harvest permits for wild ginseng while other National Forests prohibit the harvest of ginseng.

Check with the National Forest in your area to know whether ginseng harvesting is allowed. National Parks is strictly prohibited. Identify mature ginseng plants.

You are only permitted to harvest mature ginseng plants. Mature ginseng plants are at least 5 years old and have 3 or 4 prongs. Also, look for plants with red berries. You can also count stem scars to determine the age of the plant. The plants you harvest should have at least 4 stem scars. You don't need to remove the plant from the ground to count stem scars. Simply, remove the soil from around the area where the root neck is.

Sell and export your ginseng. If you plan to ship your ginseng out of state, it must be certified by the State or Tribe where you harvested the roots. Export ginseng internationally. If you plan to export your ginseng, you must apply for a permit through the U.

Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition to your permit, you must have State or Tribal documents that certify that you legally harvested the ginseng. You will then have to get single-use permits for each of one your exports. Your application to export wild ginseng will be valid for one year. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Wild plants can take many years to flower and set fruit.

The flowers produce berries which turn from green to red when ripe in the fall. Helpful 6 Not Helpful 0. Ginseng plants can live 30 to 50 years. Additional leaves or prongs grow, each with usually 5, but occasionally more or fewer leaflets and a mature plant may have a stem up to 20 inches Helpful 4 Not Helpful 2. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. Exercise caution to prevent poaching. The best defense against poachers is secrecy.

Make sure your crop is on your private property, well-hidden and unlikely to be disturbed. As plants approach maturity, be especially watchful. Should you catch poachers, try to deter them and have them apprehended by law enforcement officers.

Helpful 5 Not Helpful 7. Helpful 31 Not Helpful Be careful when confronting potential poachers, and avoid using force or violence to repel them. Helpful 34 Not Helpful Since , ginseng has been listed as protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora CITES , the global treaty intended to prevent plants and animals with commercial value from being wiped out. Nineteen U. By federal law, roots can be exported only if they were dug legally in season from plants at least five years old.

State laws vary widely. Some states —including Illinois , Iowa , Maryland , Vermont , and Wisconsin —require harvesters to have licenses or permits to dig or sell wild ginseng. Other states require dealers to have licenses only for exporting ginseng across state lines. Larry Harding thinks licenses should be mandatory. Any citizen can collect ginseng on private property but not on Pennsylvania forest or game lands from September 1 to November 30—with permission from the owner, and only if the ginseng meets maturity standards.

Starting in , the Fish and Wildlife Service launched Operation Root Cause, an investigation to crack down on ginseng crime. A good portion of the people I dealt with had substance abuse problems. We found a lot of people with extensive criminal history. Sometimes encounters between landowners and poachers turn deadly. Kutter, 79, who claimed Grubbs was trespassing with the intent to steal ginseng, was charged with killing him with an AK rifle and sentenced to three years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

It would have been easy. In July he and local police hid motion-detecting cameras in his ginseng patch, hoping to catch a suspected thief red-handed. Harding said the man is his neighbor, Carl Friend, who has stolen from Harding in the past and has a prison record that includes convictions for multiple burglaries and weapons violations.

But the ginseng was already gone by then. Ultimately, Friend pleaded guilty to the parole violations and the ginseng theft. Penalties for poaching and illegally dealing ginseng range from a hundred-dollar fine and a revoked license to prison time. In a poacher taking ginseng from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Tennessee, was sentenced to six months in jail.

But prison sentences are rare. Many ginseng conservationists, and even some dealers, agree that the laws should be tougher. Four hours north of Friendsville, in Eldred, Pennsylvania, near the New York border, Dale Smith has been growing ginseng for 35 years and dealing it for Smith protects the ginseng in his woodland by dusting some of the large roots with a special blue dye powder that glows gold when illuminated with ultraviolet light.

If someone steals a marked root, the authorities checking shipments at the port can trace the color back to Smith. A single father with a disabled son, Smith, 55, has worked in a glass factory for 32 years.

One foggy morning in September, he invited me to climb aboard his ATV for a tour of his ginseng patch overlooking the Allegheny River Valley. At the top of the hill, in the shade of towering sugar maple, ash, beech, tulip poplar, and birch trees, he sifted through leaf litter and maidenhair ferns looking for any remaining ginseng plants to cut. Shane Trout, 35, started buying ginseng two years ago. Recently laid off from his job as a machinist, Trout is doubling down on ginseng, with support from a wealthy buyer and a growing audience of diggers following him on Facebook.

A mature plant is 12 to 24 inches tall and has 4 or more leaves, each consisting of 5 ovate leaflets. Leaflets are approximately 5 inches long and oval-shaped with serrated edges.

In mid-summer, the plant produces inconspicuous greenish-yellow clustered flowers. The mature fruit is a pea-sized crimson berry, generally containing 2 wrinkled seeds. In older plants, the root usually weighs more, are enhanced by form and much more valuable. Here is a photo of adequate "sang" habitat where ginseng plants are now growing. This site is a mature hardwood stand where the terrain is sloping to the north and east.

Panax quinquefolium loves a moist but well-drained and thick litter layer with more than just a tad of undergrowth. You will find yourself looking at a lot of other species of plants thinking they may be the prize.

Young hickory or Virginia creeper will confuse the beginner. So, American ginseng grows in shady woodlands with rich soils. Panax quinquefolius' range includes the eastern half of North America, from Quebec to Minnesota and south to Georgia and Oklahoma. Some ginseng diggers harvest ginseng after the fifth year of germinating from seed, but quality improves as the plant ages. A new federal CITES regulation now puts a year legal harvest age on ginseng roots collected for export. Harvesting at an earlier age can be done in many states but only for domestic use.

Virtually none of the remaining ginseng plants in the wild are 10 years old. The roots are dug in the fall and vigorously washed to remove surface soil.

It is important to handle the roots carefully to keep the branching forks intact and maintain the natural color and circular markings. The above photo shows a seedling that is too small for harvest.

This ginseng plant is 10" tall with only one prong. Leave it for as long as practicable 10 years if sold for export. The metal tool is also not appropriate as it could damage the root. Professional hunters use sharpened and flattened sticks to gently "grub" up the entire root.

The 18 approved States with wild ginseng harvest programs have regulations in place that prohibit the harvest of plants with fewer than 3 leaves 3 prongs. Ginseng plants with 3 leaves are at least 5 years old. One State Illinois requires wild ginseng plants to have 4 leaves and to be 10 years old.