Conscientious herb gathering

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Roots are often the most commercially valuable botanicals unfortunately, since their collection is the most ecologically precarious operation in wild crafting. The damage ran be lessened by gathering roots in the fall, after a plant's flowers have gone to seed. Also, if you hunt even the more common species-sassafras, blue and black cohosh, goldthread, May apple, blood-root, wild ginger, etc -.it's best to spread your impact by digging here and there and from the center of a bed where it will be easier for the plants to fill in again.

Some roots (those of Solomon's seal and goldenseal, for instance) grow horizontally. If these are broken and the portion with the stem and next year's bud replanted, the plant will usually survive.

Goldenseal ( Hydrastis canadensis , sometimes called yellowroot) is becoming rare and should be treated with reverence. Therefore, those who use it medicinally may be glad to know of another species- Xanthorhiza simplissma, also known as yellowroot - which grows in the southern part of goldenseal's range. According to Joseph Meyer, author of The Herbalist, goldenseal is found " in shady woods in rich soils and damp meadows from southern New York to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Missouri, but principally in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia" . -MOTHER,)

As far as appearance is concerned, the similarity between the two plants stops at the yellow color in the root. Hydrastis, a lover of rich upland soils, has a non-woody stem and only one or two unbrella-like leaves per plant. Xanthorhiza has a woody stem and a number of divided compound leaves and grows in sandy earth near riverbanks. Different as they look, the two have many of the same medicinal properties and are often used interchangeably. By choosing the much more common yellowroot whenever possible, we might be able to reduce tee pressure on goldenseal.

Another root-ginseng-is probably the most famous of botanicals and also the rarest. Most people in Western cultures find very little noticeable effect from this plant unless they have been taking it over a long period of time, or unless their diet is of very pure (usually vegetarian) foods. In the Orient, though, ginseng is highly valued for its healing, energizing, rejuvenating and life prolonging properties Our native wild root is desired considerably more than many of the Far East's own cultivated grades, and almost all the ginseng gathered and grown in this country is exported. With the market value at over $50.00 a pound for the dried unrefined roots, both herb lovers and money lovers seek this plant. Special efforts, therefore, must be made to preserve it.

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