American Ginseng: Charismatic Flora of the Appalachian Understory

American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) is one of the most valued botanicals in the Appalachian forest understory. It has long been an important plant in the traditional medicine systems of many different North American Indigenous groups, and its close relative, Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng), has been central to traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

Europeans first became aware of ginseng populations in eastern North America in the early 1700s. By that time, wild populations of Asian ginseng had largely been decimated in China, owing to both widespread deforestation and overharvesting. These declines in Asian ginseng set the stage for the international trade in wild-harvested American ginseng.

The Cherokee word for ginseng is odaligali (ᎣᏓᎵᎦᎵ), which roughly translates to “it climbs the mountain.”

Scientific studies suggest that the ancestor of American ginseng originated in the mountains of northeastern China. It is believed that seeds from this ancestor species crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America more than 14 million years ago!

Considered to be a “pillar” of the Appalachian frontier economy, many mountain farmers in the late 1700s and early 1800s used wild-harvested ginseng roots as their primary medium of exchange at country stores. With the “sang” they dug from nearby forests, mountain families could buy the supplies and household commodities they needed for the year.

Nearly a century later, when the coal and timber companies acquired vast tracts of forest lands across the region, many in Central Appalachia were forced out of their subsistence farming lifeways and into the mills and mines. Census records from the late 1800s reveal, however, that there were some mountain residents who resisted being pushed into the wage labor force, instead choosing the occupation of “Sang Digger,” and retaining the freedom to make their living from the mountain forests.

Pictured here are Tom and Sophie Camel near Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 1919. As Appalachian historian Luke Manget has noted, Tom Camel is holding a mattock, called a “sang hoe,” for digging roots, and Sophie Camel is holding a bag, or a “poke,” for carrying the roots. Photo from Ruth Sturley’s scrapbook in the “From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont” collection at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville Libraries.

Photo from February 28, 1929 of Mr. A.P. Russell in his general store in Buckhannon, West Virginia, sitting beside a 1700-pound shipment of ginseng roots destined for China. Source: WildAmericanGiseng.org.