Ginseng (true ginseng)

Family Araliaceae. Occurs in the Far East, in Primorsky Krai and in the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai. Grows in montane mixed and cedar forests, in thickets of shrubs and ferns, more often on loose, humus-rich soils of gentle slopes.

Description: ginseng is one of the best-known medicinal plants of Eastern medicine. For millennia it has been used by people to cure a wide variety of ailments and to maintain vitality in old age.

A perennial herbaceous plant with a thick, fleshy, slightly branched root and a solitary stem terminating in two or three long-petioled, palmately five-parted leaves. The roots consist of a head, a long neck and the actual spindle-shaped root, which at the bottom branches into two shoots. Often by their shape the roots resemble the figure of a human. The flowers are white, gathered in a simple umbel. Fruits — red berries with white flat seeds. Height 30-70 cm. Flowers in July.

Ginseng is one of the most famous medicinal plants. Among the people it was called "root of life", "stocil", "gift of the gods", and in Chinese books — the king of forest plants. The fame of ginseng is well deserved, and here is why.

This plant of the family Araliaceae grows in shady coniferous-broadleaf forests in the south of the Far East, in northern Korea and in northeastern China. Ginseng is not only a rare but in many ways an extraordinary plant. Many beliefs, legends and fantasies are associated with it. Even the appearance of the plant is unusual — its aboveground shoot is a thin stem 40-70 cm tall, bearing at the top an elegant rosette of 4-5 palmately compound, five-fingered leaves on long petioles. In the center of this rosette, on a long peduncle, bright red drupe-like fruits with five stones inside ripen. These fruits are extraordinarily attractive to birds — the sole dispersers of ginseng.

Interestingly, ginseng seed germinates very slowly, even when it falls onto favorable soil. Sometimes this takes 2–2.5 years! A young ginseng does not flower before its third year of life, in July, and the fruits ripen in August-September, and it is then, in August, that the most important part of the plant — its root — is collected.

The mass of the largest ginseng roots reaches 400 g, and one root found during the construction of the railway at Suchan weighed 600 g.

The root and rhizome have very interesting features. These two underground organs in ginseng coexist well together for most of its rather long life. In herbaceous rhizomatous plants such coexistence is encountered quite rarely. Repeatedly branching, the root together with the rhizome sometimes acquire completely astonishing forms, often resembling a little person with an elongated neck, thin arms and legs and a plump body.