Week 40 #52Weeks: Harvest

Given the number of farmers in my family tree would lend one to believe that some great stories or traditions handed down about harvest but that isn’t the case.  What I have learned is some of the largest crops in East Tennessee were Indian corn and tobacco.  However, there is a plant that may have been another ancestral harvest as it has crept into some of the articles of our Appalachian culture—wild American ginseng.

Wild American Ginseng Photo © Eric Burkhart

My last trip to Tennessee introduced me to the popularity of American ginseng as my cousin, Pam Epperson, mentioned it.  As I researched some material for this topic, I discovered it was mentioned in one of the moonshiner articles I shared.

Source: The Sneedville News, 27 May 1921

The ginseng gathers are known as "sang hunters" so why do they want this plant?  A look back at the history reveals its wild popularity in Asia where it has been used as a medicinal herb for over 5,000 years.  According to the Appalachian Ginseng Foundation (AGF) manual, it is a valuable root that can turn into a productive crop generating a good profit for its growers.  The manual also discusses the connections to the past as it has been gathered and dried for centuries in Appalachia and may have been one of the first plants to be traded by early pioneers.  

There are two different species of the plant, one that grows mostly in China and Korea, called Panax Ginseng, and the North American counterpart called Panax Quinquefolium.  The plants resemble each other but the chemical composition is slightly different, giving American ginseng a slightly more soothing effect.  Both species contain adaptogens that are believed to help our bodies combat disease and stress.  They are both found in deep forests and are difficult to locate and that could be the reason why young Wiley Seal and Tom Johns discovered it near a moonshine still.

According to the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), American ginseng has been protected since 1975 under an international treaty known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).  In Tennessee no license is required to dig wild ginseng on private land but you must obtain the landowner’s permission.  Ginseng may not leave the state of Tennessee without an export certificate.  Harvest season in Tennessee is September 1 to December 31 and, going back to the newspaper article, the young men were sang hunting in late May of 1921.  This is long before the plant became more protected was under state regulation. 

According to the AHPA, researchers estimate that each harvested wild ginseng plant needs to produce over 30 seeds to replace a harvested plant so never harvest a seedling or juvenile plant or plants less than 5 years old and to dig up plants that have red fruit.  The Association asks that diggers always leave some mature plants in the patch where you dig.  It is said that a ginseng hunter is born and not made and so I'd like to share a little something from, The Pennsylvania-German, Vol. 11 by Phillip Columbus Cross, Henry Addison Schuler, Howard Wiegner Kriebel, January-December, 1910. 

It seems to me I’d like to go

Where the bells don’t ring, nor whistle blow, 

Nor clocks don’t strike, nor gongs don’t sound,

And I’d have stillness all around