WHITE COTTAGE, Ohio -
Through the window of his shop, Joe Gillogly saw Oden Anderson approaching for his annual visit.
"This guy really knows where to find the 'seng," said Gillogly, who buys and sells wild plants in this Muskingum County hamlet southeast of Zanesville.
Anderson, 78, of Cumberland, Ohio, and his wife, Leone, walked through the door with 4 pounds of wild ginseng root.
"Are you open?" asked Anderson, who brings his haul of root to Gillogly each fall.
While Gillogly sells most of the herbs to pharmaceutical companies, he sells the ginseng to merchants of Chinese extraction - who grind it to powder and export it to Hong Kong for use as medicine, an energy rejuvenator or, most commonly, an aphrodisiac.
This year, he is paying more than $300 for a pound of dried ginseng root.
The demand for the root has grown so much that prices peaked at more than $500 a pound in 1995. The potential for profit has led to a decline in the size and quality of roots, Gillogly said.
The woodland plants with palmate leaves range from 1 foot to 4 feet high, are native to North America and Asia and grow throughout Ohio, especially in the eastern half of the state. Among country folks, harvesting, using and selling ginseng and other roots are longtime traitions.
"I've been digging 'seng all my life, since I was 5 years old," Andersonsaid. "My mother taught me."
While out this year, Anderson said, "I pushed beyond a beaver pond and found a whole bunch."
The haul included a 19-year-old and a 23-year-old root - rarities these days.
Twenty years ago, Gillogly bought ginseng roots as large as 5 ounces. Today, he said, the norm is quarter-ounce roots that are only a few years old.
"It takes years for ginseng to get any size and a lot of years for it to get to a really good size," Gillogly said.
Overharvesting or harvesting plants that are too young are all leading to fewer, tinier plants and smaller, lower-quality roots, Anderson and Gillloglly said.
Ohio law prohibits the digging of ginseng with fewer than three prongs, or stem leaves - growth that takes up to six years. Also illegal is the digging of plants with unripe berries.
Gillogly said, in the middle of the woods, though, who's to know?
Cultivated ginseng , the kind that is planted and fertilized for quicker growth, is considered much lower in quality and fetches $15 to $20 a pound raw. Wild ginseng growing at a woodland edge - where it may receive more fertilizer from runoff from a nearby farm field and more sunlight - fetches about $100 a pound, far less than the out-of-the-way "wood'seng."
Guy Denny, chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, said ginseng remains fairly common but overharvesting is a problem.
"They're looking for fast money," Denny said of some diggers. "They destroy itfor everybody else."
Longtime diggers such as Anderson replant small roots and plant the berries, but newer diggers don't bother, Denny said.
Under international treaty, the federal government requires states to regulate ginseng harvesting.
Ohio's annual ginseng harvest has ranged from 7,000 pounds in 1987 to 12,800 pounds in 1992. Diggers harvested 9,495 pounds in 1995, said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Adams, Lawrence, Muskingum, Pike and Scioto counties are among the largest producers. To give ginseng time to reseed and plants remaining in the wild to grow larger, Gillogly thinks the ginseng season - from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31 - should be shortened or digging halted for five years.
Instead of temporarily halting the season, Denny thinks dealers need to help ensure that the law is observed.
"By the time the plant gets rare enough to be listed as a state threatened or endangered species, there won't be any industry."
- BY : Mike Lafferty - Dispatch Staff Reporter
- SOURCE : The Columbus Dispatch1996.10.31
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