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Author: James McGraw Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820362689 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Wild American ginseng, America’s most famous medicinal plant, is in trouble. In plain prose, James McGraw explains why as he translates the latest in ecological and conservation science findings on this unassuming understory herb. As the world’s foremost authority on wild ginseng, McGraw is uniquely poised to present this story based on over twenty years of uninterrupted field research. McGraw traces the dramatic ecological history of ginseng in North America, documenting the ginseng-centric view of a world increasingly dominated by both direct and indirect actions of humans. Far more than a story of a single plant species, ginseng becomes a parable, a canary in a coal mine, for what is happening to our dwindling wild species across the globe. Documenting lingchi (death by a thousand cuts) in human interactions with wild species, McGraw shows us the evidence of our slowly eroding biodiversity and our diminishing global biotreasury. Beyond merely documenting our destruction of nature, McGraw also offers a pathway to an optimistic future for ginseng and the wild species with whom we share the planet. He illuminates how a dramatic expansion of our commitment to sharing the planet with our fellow planetary companions is the key to preservation; and now is the time to do so.
Author: James McGraw Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820362689 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Wild American ginseng, America’s most famous medicinal plant, is in trouble. In plain prose, James McGraw explains why as he translates the latest in ecological and conservation science findings on this unassuming understory herb. As the world’s foremost authority on wild ginseng, McGraw is uniquely poised to present this story based on over twenty years of uninterrupted field research. McGraw traces the dramatic ecological history of ginseng in North America, documenting the ginseng-centric view of a world increasingly dominated by both direct and indirect actions of humans. Far more than a story of a single plant species, ginseng becomes a parable, a canary in a coal mine, for what is happening to our dwindling wild species across the globe. Documenting lingchi (death by a thousand cuts) in human interactions with wild species, McGraw shows us the evidence of our slowly eroding biodiversity and our diminishing global biotreasury. Beyond merely documenting our destruction of nature, McGraw also offers a pathway to an optimistic future for ginseng and the wild species with whom we share the planet. He illuminates how a dramatic expansion of our commitment to sharing the planet with our fellow planetary companions is the key to preservation; and now is the time to do so.
Author: Kristin Johannsen Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813171393 Category : Health & Fitness Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
American Ginseng has a strange and perilous history. It has one of the longest germination periods of any known species, and only two environments in the world have offered the ideal growing conditions for wild ginseng. The first was the forests of northern China, which disappeared over a millennium ago, and the sole remaining habitat is the Appalachian Mountain region of eastern North America, an area now threatened by logging and mining. Chinese legend says that ginseng is the child of lightning. The two elemental forces of water and fire fight in an eternal struggle, pouring down rain and snow and blasting the earth with lightning. If that lightning happens to strike a spring of water, the water disappears and in its place grows a ginseng plant—the fusion of yin and yang, water and fire, darkness and light, and the life force that moves the universe. American ginseng has become perhaps the most treasured of all herbal medicines, promising good health and longevity to those who consume it. Fortunes have been made and lost on the plant, which was America’s first export to China—before our nation even existed. The strange, twisted, man-shaped root today commands as much as two thousand dollars a pound in the hot, noisy ginseng markets of Hong Kong, and a wealthy collector might pay as much as $10,000 for a single, perfect specimen. Ginseng Dreams: The Secret World of America’s Most Valuable Plant unfolds ginseng’s past and its future through the stories of seven people whose lives have become inextricably bound to it: a huckster, a field researcher, a farmer, a ginseng “missionary,” a criminal investigator, a broker, and a cancer researcher. Each of these individuals brings a different perspective to the elusive root—and each is consumed by a different dream. Kristin Johannsen threads her way though remote woodlands in the Appalachians to observe the fragile plants slowly putting out leaves as part of a three-year growing cycle, during which time the ginseng is vulnerable to both poachers and growing suburban sprawl. She contrasts this with the huge commercial growing fields of Marathon County, Wisconsin, where among potato fields and paper mills, ninety percent of the country’s ginseng is produced. Johannsen explores the brisk black market trade in the panacean root and the efforts to save the wild species and its native habitat, and she ends her story in the laboratory, where researchers are investigating ginseng’s anti-cancer properties. An absorbing journey into the many worlds of this mysterious and potent plant, Ginseng Dreams tells the extraordinary story of America’s little-known natural treasure and the spell it casts on those who seek it.
Author: W. Scott Persons Publisher: ISBN: Category : Gardening Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Ginseng, known as 'sang in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, is a native plant from Maine to Georgia and from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest. Ginseng grows wild in several parts of the world and has been used as a medicinal plant in the Orient for ages. It remains a valued crop around the globe. Persons uses a step-by-step process to show how and where the plant grows. He then shows how these conditions can be duplicated in a controlled manner even in areas of the world where ginseng is not indigenous.
Author: Madison Woods Publisher: Wild Ozark, LLC ISBN: 0996198172 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 27
Book Description
A short visual guide to the plants most commonly mistaken for American ginseng. Includes: Virginia creeper, Ohio buckeye, poison ivy, elm, hickory, and wild strawberry.
Author: Luke Manget Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813183839 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
The harvesting of wild American ginseng (panax quinquefolium), the gnarled, aromatic herb known for its therapeutic and healing properties, is deeply established in North America and has played an especially vital role in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. Traded through a trans-Pacific network that connected the region to East Asian markets, ginseng was but one of several medicinal Appalachian plants that entered international webs of exchange. As the production of patent medicines and botanical pharmaceutical products escalated in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, southern Appalachia emerged as the United States' most prolific supplier of many species of medicinal plants. The region achieved this distinction because of its biodiversity and the persistence of certain common rights that guaranteed widespread access to the forested mountainsides, regardless of who owned the land. Following the Civil War, root digging and herb gathering became one of the most important ways landless families and small farmers earned income from the forest commons. This boom influenced class relations, gender roles, forest use, and outside perceptions of Appalachia, and began a widespread renegotiation of common rights that eventually curtailed access to ginseng and other plants. Based on extensive research into the business records of mountain entrepreneurs, country stores, and pharmaceutical companies, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia is the first book to unearth the unique relationship between the Appalachian region and the global trade in medicinal plants. Historian Luke Manget expands our understanding of the gathering commons by exploring how and why Appalachia became the nation's premier purveyor of botanical drugs in the late-nineteenth century and how the trade influenced the way residents of the region interacted with each other and the forests around them.
Author: Kim Derek Pritts Publisher: Stackpole Books ISBN: 9780811724777 Category : Gardening Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
This guide to ginseng cultivation and the history of its use includes instructions on creating a ginseng garden, establishing healthy growing conditions, and finding the plant in the wild.
Author: James McGraw
Author: James McGraw
Author: Kristin Johannsen
Author: W. Scott Persons
Author: Madison Woods
Author: Eric P. Burkhart
Author: Kim Derek Pritts
Author: Luke Manget
Author: Walter Hepworth Lewis
Author: Kim Derek Pritts
Author: Christopher S. Robbins