Sir Edwin Arnold, 1832-1904
Asians originally revered ginseng for much the same reason Europeans venerated mandrake. The roots of both plants can appear man-shaped. The word "ginseng", in fact, derives from the Chinese "jen shen" ("like a man"). It official name "panax" comes from the Greek "panakes" ("panacea"), meaning a remedy for all ills.
There are three varieties of the plant popular today: the Asian panax ginseng, the American panax quinquefolius ("five-leafed"), and the Russian eleutherococcus senticosus. Although Russian ginseng is not a panax, it also belongs to the aralia (ivy) family and its effects are similar. It must be a spinier plant, though, since senticosus means "thorny". Eleutherococcus might be loosely interpreted as "Mongolian seed". Nicknames for ginseng include manroot, life root, ninsin, garantoquen (the Native American name), 'sang, 'seng, and red berry.
It was so popular in Asia that the supply eventually ran low there. A Jesuit priest stationed in Manchuria, Father Jartoux, described ginseng and its value in his writings. A Canadian Jesuit, Father Lafitau, concluding that his climate resembled Manchuria, set out to see if he could locate a similar plant. When he succeeded, the Jesuits made a tidy profit exporting American ginseng to the Chinese.
By 1748, shipping agents were paying $1 per pound for ginseng and selling it for $5 per pound in Asia. In those days, that made the herb the colonies' most valuable export. (A recent article I read puts the current price at about $350 per pound for wild ginseng, only about a tenth that for the domesticated variety.) It's no wonder that everybody began to keep an eye out for the herb with its distinctive cluster of red berries. One story has Daniel Boone losing 12 tons of ginseng roots when his boat upset in the Ohio River. (Talk about a sinking feeling!) That may simply be a legend, since 12 tons is a heap o''sang! It generally takes at least three pounds of fresh root to make one pound dried.
Native Americans had a habit of bending down the fruited stems, to assist in propagation of new plants, before digging the roots. But the colonists were not so foresighted, and the American woods were virtually stripped of the plant. Although a number of hillbilly superstitions grew up around 'sanging-such as that one should skip the first three plants discovered--ginseng never became as popular here as in Asia. Perhaps people have always been too busy shipping it out to try it!
