Warming up to ginseng

Panax Ginseng Extract We started our tea tasting last week by warming up with some ginseng tea, and I mean warming up quite literally. We were chilled and felt warmed after only a few sips. Funnily enough someone had just asked me about growing ginseng the other day having heard it grows wild. I don’t believe in coincidence so I took it as a sign to write about this plant. Yes it is native in Canada but that’s in Manitoba and Quebec, and in the U.S. through Alabama to Oklahoma and south to Florida. Ginseng likes the cold winters and the deciduous forests. The plants aren’t fast or easy to grow. Seeds can’t just be broadcast anytime; they need to have a cold period of at least four months after sowing. Roots should also be planted in the fall for best results. This root crop doesn’t like full sunlight and does best planted individually in the dappled light of hard woods, as it would be found in the wild. They also like the forest soil with its high pH, between 5 and 6.5. In winter they need leaf mulch (not oak, the leaves are too strong for sprouts to push through) and good drainage is an absolute must. It is a slow grower. It will take anywhere from five to seven years to grow a root of marketable size. When you think these herbs can live to be 400 years old they’re comparatively fast sprouters. In our time it’s a long wait. This slow growth is due to the fact that the stem of this rather non-descript plant (though it does have glossy green leaves) grows from a bud at the top of the root. It takes years for this bud to grow above ground because as it grows the root shrinks, sometimes at a comparable amount. This concurrent growing and shrinking results in wrinkles around the root neck. Like rings in a tree, these wrinkles can be counted to find out how old the herb is. They grow to about one foot tall and mature plants form red berries in the late summer and fall. Each of these berries holds about two or three seeds. There are three types of ginseng. The two true ginseng are Panax ginseng (China, Korea, Japan) and Panax quinquefolis (North America). Evolutionary botanists are curious as to how ginseng came to grow on opposite sides of the Earth. There is deliberation the plants might have been separated when the continents split apart, something to ponder over a cup of ginseng tea. The third is Siberian ginseng, Eleutherocoues senticosus, which is in the same family but not the same genus, although it shares biochemical properties. In China, (where it has probably been used medicinally since prehistoric times) the ancient Chinese had their own “Doctrine of Signatures” (the belief that a plant’s appearance would identify what medicinal use it might have). In this case the root looks like a human body. This phenomenon is probably a result of ginseng’s aforementioned growing habits. There are many purported miraculous qualities associated with this strange knobby root. Since ancient times ginseng has been supposed to bring long healthy life. There is also a belief it increases physical and mental abilities. None of these claims have been scientifically proven beyond a doubt. Scientists in Russia are convinced of this root’s abilities and it is part of their Olympic athletes’ and cosmonauts’ diets.