It’s been bone dry lately. This morning I brought my camera with me so I could take pictures of the driveway flowers.
Ordinarily this would have been an “exercise walk” and I wouldn’t have brought the camera because that would have just caused me to stop and take pictures. Which would have defeated the purpose of the exercise, which is to get the heart rate up and sustained up for a little while.
However, I’m still not up to my old self after the tick fever episode, so exercise isn’t “exercise” in the same sense of the word yet. Ha. So I brought the camera and called all the stooping and squatting “exercise”.
Dogs waiting for me to catch up.
It’s been so dry. We hadn’t gotten any rain for weeks and the trees are already dropping their leaves. Later in the afternoon, though, we did get a really nice shower.
The creek isn’t flowing anymore and leaves are filling up the small pools.
The water goes underground in the creek once it gets this dry. It leaves only a few small pools here and there. I have to check regularly to make sure the horses still have their usual water hole, but so far it’s never dried up in certain spots on their portion of the creek.
When the water is low, it’s easier to find interesting rocks. This one has an inclusion that looks like part of a plant. Or something else. I’m not sure what it is, but it looks like a fossil of some sort.
Fossil in the rock.
In spite of the drought, some of the driveway flowers are still doing well.
An evening primrose flower.Evening primrose blooming in the morning.Goldenrods never seem bothered by the droughts.
Many people mistakenly think it’s the goldenrod causing their allergies. In reality, it’s the ragweed which blooms during the same time frame. I didn’t take any pics of the ragweed. It really messes with my sinuses and I didn’t want to get any closer to them than I had to.
This one is called camphorweed, but it doesn’t smell like camphor to me. It plain stinks. It ought to be called stink weed instead. The latin binomial gives a good clue to its nature: Pluchea foetida.
Camphor weed almost gone to seed.
Down in Louisiana, when someone speaks of boneset, it’s usually Eupatorium perfoliatum. Up here in the Ozarks it’s usually a different boneset. This one is Eupatorium serotinum, or late boneset.
This is the only boneset I’ve ever found in the Ozarks.
I know that E. perfoliatum is an herb once used to treat “breakbone” fever, or dengue fever. I’m not sure if our local variety has the same properties.
Once summer begins morphing into fall, the Lobelia inflata seed pods swell and ripen. I collected enough seeds of this plant last year that I didn’t need to gather more this year. It’s a valuable part of antispasmodic formulas I craft and really works quickly for muscle pain.
Lobelia inflata with swollen seed pods.
I wrote an article on this often overlooked plant for the North American Native Plant Society. It was included in the August 2017 issue of their members-only newsletter magazine called Blazing Star. I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail. I’m excited about this article because it also includes my drawing of lobelia and this issue is the very first color print version.
A prettier kind of lobelia that grows here is the Lobelia siphilitica, or Great Blue Lobelia. This one would look nice in wildflower gardens, but they don’t do so well in drought conditions. The ones growing near the creek still look good, but these are beginning to suffer.
Droopy great blue lobelia.
The asters always look pretty no matter how dry it gets.
Asters don’t seem to mind the drought.An asp on the asters.
I found an interesting new to me flower on my walk this morning.
Cuphea viscosissima has purple flowers with sticky calyxes.A small frail plant with purple flowers.The little hairs have a sticky sap globule on the ends.
I’ve never noticed this plant here before and I’m not sure if that’s because it was never here, or because I just never noticed it. Of all the driveway flowers I normally pay attention to, this is one of the smaller ones I’ve ever noticed.
It’s only about a foot tall, and fairly frail and the flowers are small. But the entire top half of it has little sticky hairs all over it. The seeds of this plant contains an oil that is being researched for biofuel and for use in cosmetics and food.
I couldn’t find much about it on the internet, but it’s a member of the Loosestrife family. The common name is Tarweed, or Blue waxweed. It’s one I want to learn more about.
Well, that was the end of my driveway walk. After taking that last photo I hiked my way back up the hill and didn’t stop again until I reached the house.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
I gathered up some of my favorite photos over the past few years and put them together in an ebook to see how it would work out. It’s available now on preorder at several ebook retailers.
There’s a program that’ll compile photos into the proper format for an ebook where you don’t have to double tap the photos to make them fill the page, and I wanted to give it a trial whirl.
Amazon has a program that’ll do this, but it will only work to make a file to publish on Amazon. I wanted to be able to list the book in all ebook retailers.
Click to find a retailer near you!
I’ve only scratched the surface of all the photos I could do this with, but I’m learning how many photos I can put in one file before the file size becomes too large.
The next volume will contain about 50 photos. This one contains 20.
If you’re a photographer, you might consider doing something similar with your favorite photos. The program I’m using is at magicepub.com.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
In keeping with the “spotted” theme of my last post, here’s an orange spotted jewelweed flower. I’m always trying to get the perfect photo of this flower.
A dream set-up would be when the sun is shining just *so* on it, to give the illusion of stained glass. There would be some nice glistening drops of water at least in the frame somewhere.
In the meantime, I snap a pic when I see a pretty one.
Orange spotted jewelweed
Later on as the plants begin to make seeds, I’ll try to collect some. Today I collected common milkweed seeds and some Echinacea purpurea. I’ll get these packaged up in some pretty way to sell at the farmer’s market soon.
Seeds on the list to be collected:
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
Great Blue Lobelia (L. siphilitica)
Milkweed (Asclepias spp.)
Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana)
Perhaps next year I’ll be able to add our wild-simulated American ginseng to the list. This year all of the seeds I collected went back to replanting the hillsides.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
I feel about as close to a miserable death as I’ve ever been.
If not for Rob who has been vigilant in his care, and his promises to hold my hand if I have to go back to ER so they can dig around and fail to find veins again, I’m sure I would have already.
This all started about a week and a half ago. It’ll be a while before I’m back online.
If you notice anyone asking me questions here or on FB, please clue them in for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can keep my eyes open. Very light sensitive and under immense head pain and just trying to stay hydrated right now.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) at the creek’s edge in late August. It’s one of the showiest Lobelia species that grows in the Arkansas Ozarks.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Posting an article about nature immersion probably wasn’t the best idea in the world right now, with Harvey decimating Houston and south Texas. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the context in which the topic could be taken.
However, since the post is out of the gate, I’ll add some editorial to make sure you know I’m not referring to the kind of nature immersion that happens when dealing with a natural disaster.
Don’t let the phrase fool you.
What is Nature Immersion?
Nature Immersion isn’t so much a thing that you “do”, but an change in consciousness you encourage to “happen”.
It can happen while sitting on the back step. It can happen lying belly down on a sidewalk peering into the crack at the blade of grass struggling to gain traction in the grit.
Right now, some of you are saying it is full and well possible to be TOO nature immersed. That’s true, especially when dealing with something like Hurricane Harvey.
That is not what I mean by nature immersion, though. In the way I’m describing it is not an unwilling activity. It is voluntary and fully within your control.
While it’s hard to imagine, it can be done in the midst of a “natural” disaster if you take a few minutes to step out of the situation (when it isn’t life-threatening, of course).
If you manage to achieve it, then it could help when dealing with the overwhelming stress of coping.
Scatter anxiety in the presence of things of Nature that scatter light, like this grass seed head.
Immersing in nature can happen while sitting on the back step. It can happen lying belly down on a sidewalk peering into the crack at the blade of grass struggling to gain traction in the grit.
What is Nature Immersion?
You can do it if you’re on foot, or in a wheelchair. I just don’t think it would be safe to do it while you’re driving or operating equipment.
It is a form of meditation.
I’m not sure if the phrase “Nature Immersion” has been used in some official way by someone else or not, but I’m using it here to describe how I interact with nature to reach a state of mind I need to reach in order to gain clarity and calm so I can focus on my task at hand better.
Nature immersion and absorption is all about embodiment. It is about rousing one’s senses and surrendering to direct experience. It is about losing one’s self and living entirely in the moment. It is about becoming a child again, full of wonder and excitement. It is about attaining a sense of lightness and freedom, as an antidote to our complicated and noisy lives. ~ Lang Elliot
I love his definition. It’s perfect. Nature Immersion might conjure up to some as survival images, where a person is away from everything non-natural. But that’s not necessarily true. In fact, for someone not prepared for such an adventure, the idea of that kind of immersion could be quite stress-inducing!
How to Do Nature Immersion
It’s not so much a *way* or even a *thing*. It’s a state of mind. It’s also a place IN the mind. Nature Immersion is a zone of observation where nothing else exists at that moment except the observer (me/you) and the environment (nature).
Meditation is a kind of immersion, but I can’t think of how to describe the state of mind except as a sort of emptiness. With Nature Immersion, there is also an emptiness because you aren’t there to think. You’re there to allow an experience to happen without interfering with the experience. You’re there as an observer only.
The way I experience it is to walk until I find a good spot to sit down and do the “immersing” part of it. On or off the road or trails doesn’t matter. Destination doesn’t matter. Raising my heart rate isn’t the goal, so how fast I go doesn’t matter, either. And it doesn’t matter how far I have to travel to find the right spot.
Near or Far
Usually I aim for nearby, since the need to take this therapy arises when there are a lot of things needing to be done. That way I can get back to the task at hand when I’m done.
What does matter is that I let go of everything else I’m dealing with or trying to accomplish and simply experience Nature.
It’s not particularly important to be super-comfortable, but you do need to feel relatively safe. It might be necessary to overcome a fear of crawling, creeping, or flying things or at least learn to tolerate them being on or near you. By safety, I mean your rational mind should know that you won’t be injured.
A bug buzzing past won’t hurt you, but if you’re terrified of wasps your irrational mind will tell you to run because every buzzing sound will be a wasp in your mind. So you’d have to overcome that urge to bolt.
So find a place comfortable enough and tolerate any discomfort long enough to drift into the nature immersion zone.
Sit in on My Nature Immersion Session
You can come along with me today as I go outside to do a bit of Nature Immersion therapy.
Although I did bring the camera with me, the object today wasn’t to get a good photograph. That came after the “therapy” session. Sometimes the act of photographing things *is* my nature immersion, because I do find that I easily slip into the zone while I’m doing it.
Today’s Goal
The goal today was deal with anxiety and overwhelm. Anxiety makes me feel scattered. And I know the anxiety stems from having too many irons in the fire.
When tears flow at the slightest provocation, I know it’s time for an immersion.
When overwhelm happens to me, I head outside. I realize this does kind of seem like procrastination … But it’s not, really. When I have much to do, I can get the alignment and one-ness I seek in a few minutes right outside the back door.
Here’s the Steps
These can be done very quickly once you get accustomed to reaching the zone.
Stop
The first thing I do is sit down on a rock. We have a lot of rocks here, so that’s the handiest thing to do. Short of rocks, I’d sit on the ground or a log.
Listen
Then just listen to the natural sounds around. If there are other unnatural sounds happening, focus only on the ones originating from birds, insects, running water, or whatever is there from nature.
As you listen, you’ll begin to hear other things that at first were inaudible. It’s like layers to the sound. A different cricket from another spot singing with the first one you’d heard and paid attention to. Birds farther away. The various sounds a creek makes when it tumbles through the rocks – and the different sound it makes when it goes between the other rocks farther downstream.
Feel
Is the wind blowing, or is it calm out there? If it’s hot, you might be sweating. Just focus on the way your skin feels and how it is interpreting or interacting with your environment.
Are you leaned against a tree? How does the bark feel on the back of your head? Touch it. Rub a pinch of soil between your fingers. Is it smooth or gritty? Is there moisture underneath the moldering leaves?
Study the way your body feels, without moving around too much. How does your form fit into the space you’ve given it?
Look
Take the same approach with what you see around you. Naturally, you’ll focus first on the larger things closest to you. Maybe the tree. Or a movement that caught your eye.
Once you’ve studied the tree, look closer. Does the tree have bark on its trunk? What’s between the furrows?
Let your eye travel upwards to the canopy. Study the leaves.
Notice the veins in the leaves, the texture of the leaf’s skin, and how it hangs on the branch. Is it alone, or does it gather in groups of three, or five, or more?
Look farther, the farthest point you can see without moving. Look in every direction you can without moving to a new location.
Study what you see. See the little details you might ordinarily not notice about how the light strikes the ground in a scattered pattern. Or maybe it’s a focused shaft highlighting a shrub, or the blade of grass in the distance.
Study Closer
Then slowly observe and study a little closer, and move closer with your gaze.
Finally focus on the things closest to you. If you’re near a tree, study the way the leaves attach to the branch. Now look at something else.
Is there a bug rustling underneath the leaves, making movement you can perceive with your eyes? Don’t physically seek it, just observe as life around you carries on in your presence.
Look between the leaves or underneath them if you can do so without manipulating them.
Crumbles of detritus gathered in the cup of this mushroom cap.
Immerse
When I slip into the immersion zone it’s as if everything else in my life falls away for that moment in time. It’s just me and the object of my observation. It feels like a shift in consciousness and I travel to another world for a few seconds or minutes.
It is almost a physical sensation, a “zoom”, when I enter the nature immersion zone.
A little bit of it stays with me when I return to my ordinary consciousness and get back to work.
Spending a quiet moment outside in nature, away from it all, heals.
I know I am whole again when details becomes clear and a deep sense of calm fill my body and mind.
It was zooming in on these tiny orange mushrooms that brought me into the Nature Immersion zone for this event.
Nature Immersion makes me feel focused and whole.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Two years ago I made a nature drawing of American ginseng in October, with yellowing leaves against the dark backdrop of the Wild Ozark forest.
Repeating the Same Nature Drawing
Since that time I’ve learned a little more about certain techniques I can use with my pencils, specifically blending, and so I wanted to re-draw the picture so I can enter it into a contest.
Usually I like to scan each step as I go along with a drawing, but for this one I forgot. This one picks up at the blending of the background stage.
Background First
You can see in the image that most of the drawing hasn’t been blended, only the very bottom part.
Although I have some color on the leaves and plant itself, I have barely begun on that part of it and have a lot more color layers to add before blending for that part begins.
Background stage: Beginning the blending.
Needs More Detail
Once I finished blending the ground background, I decided I wanted to add some more form to the surroundings. So I added a christmas fern, one of ginseng’s habitat companions. Now it balances out the empty woods surrounding the main object.
Looking at it from Different Perspectives
When I scan each step, I’m doing more than just recording a step in the process.
When I look at the picture in another format, like on the computer or the small screen of my phone, I can see things I didn’t see in the original.
The first image I posted showed me that the background was too empty.
The next one showed me where I have spaces that are too light or need *something*.
Ground floor background blended.
At the base of the fern and on the lower levels of the background above the floor, it needs to be darker and I’d like some vague suggestions of more fern to the left.
Here it is again, with the background blended, after I added darker lower levels and a bent fern frond to the left.
Background finished. “Ginseng in October” nature drawing in progress.
Foreground Next
The next step will be the dried leaves at the bottom. Those two dead leaves are the foreground. Once I get those done, I’ll start working on the ginseng plant.
Halfway There
Here it is again with the dead leaves done, and the background finished. I’ve just begun working on the ginseng now.
I really like drawing autumn and winter leaves. Here’s the dead leaves, closer:
Signing off for today. So far, this has been several days of work. Today was the first day I spent the entire day on it, though.
Tomorrow I should be able to get this wrapped up and I’ll post the finished scan …
And here’s the finished drawing:
The first drawing
I didn’t know about blending at all yet when I drew this first one. But that really didn’t matter at the time to me, because I drew it in situ, and it was only meant to be a journal entry. It was late in the afternoon and dark in the woods, and finding the plant to begin with was unexpected.
Ginseng in October, the nature journal entry
I’m glad I have it now to go by, since I didn’t get any photos of the plant that year. Now I can’t find the same plant at all.
The Blending Process
The blending takes a long time. It’s tedious and it makes my arm and eyes hurt if I don’t take plenty breaks. So just finishing the background alone could take several days of steady work at blending.
I’m not sure if there’s an easier way to do this step or not. I saw on one tutorial video that the artist used mineral spirits. Well, I tried that and it didn’t blend very well at all. Perhaps we used different brands of pencils.
The Tools
I use Prismacolor. The only set I have right now is the Premier Soft Core and a colorless blending pencil. I need a set of the VeriThin, but that will have to wait until after the taxes get paid for this year.
The paper I’m using is a water-color paper for Epson printers. It comes in very large sheets that I have to cut down to size. Our printer does fine work for smaller art prints, like those I use on my note cards. And this is archival quality acid free paper. However, for larger than 5 x 7 prints, and especially those I sell as “art”, I use Scott’s Frame and Art (Scott Imaging) in Fayetteville.
Stay Tuned
I’ll post updates to the work as I make progress. Let me know if you have any tips!
ETA is the end of the week because there’s a deadline involved for the contest I want to enter.
If you’d like a print, stop in and see me at the Downtown Rogers Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, now open year-round!
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Want to know how to find ginseng? Look for the right habitat. The easiest way to do that is to look for companion plants.
September 20 2017 – It’s full-swing harvest season now, and plenty of you are out in the woods looking for ginseng.
I hope you’re either on your own property or have permission from the landowner, wherever you are.
In some of the locations where ginseng is native, the berries are red and this makes spotting the plant from a distance a little easier. The plants begin to take on a yellowish color, too, which is another visual aid.
However, in other locations, plants may already be past the fruiting stage with only a red berry clinging here and there. Although the plants may be yellowing, they may already have dropped some leaves or bugs have eaten some of them, making it harder to know if the plant you see is actually ginseng.
Be good stewards
A short version summarizing my idea of sustainable harvest plan is farther down on this page.
Many people are asking where exactly can they find or go to dig ginseng. If you’re asking that question, you probably won’t like the answer.
Please Note
Legal season for digging for ginseng is Sept. 1 through Dec. 1. If you have the proper habitat, I encourage you to plant wild-simulated ginseng using seeds from as local as possible a source. We usually plant our seeds in fall before it gets too cold.
How to Find Ginseng?
First look for the right habitat. Look for the kinds of places it likes to grow.
Where does ginseng grow?
Ginseng grows in moist deciduous forests of eastern North America, but only in locations that provide the perfect combination of deep shade, moist loamy soil, and the right mix of trees. It loves the north-facing slopes, but also grows on east, west, and rarely on south-facing slopes. Most often it likes the lower third of a slope, generally not the mountain tops. Here’s a map from the USDA (the map doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but the link is correct) that shows where it grows in the United States.
If you want to know if your state allows the harvest of ginseng, you can check to see if it’s on the map here. If not, then there are no regulations, which often means there is no legal way to do it. You’d have to contact the Plant Board or your local USDA office to ask more questions.
Where EXACTLY can I find ginseng?
You probably won’t like the answer. No one is going to tell you where you can go to find a specific patch of ginseng. The reason why is because if someone knows the plant well enough to tell you where it is, they’ll also know it’s endangered and easily exterminated from a single site. That person usually is either digging and maintaining the patch for themselves, or is protecting/stewarding the site so it can continue to thrive.
If you don’t have property of your own with suitable habitat, or know someone else with the proper conditions, you probably won’t have anywhere to dig or grow. Some states might allow digging on public lands, but many don’t. Arkansas does not.
So if you are someone who just became interested in digging some ‘sang to make some money from the roots, you’re most likely out of luck.
However, if:
you have land (your own or a friend’s) & you want to know if ginseng is present or could be
you’re looking to buy property and want to know if it contains good habitat
you’re working with others to build a sanctuary
Then the rest of this post might be very helpful to you.
Keep an eye out for my 2017 Ginseng Prices page if you want to stay abreast of current digger/dealer prices this year. You can read last year’s price watch here.
Start Broad – Look for the Ginseng Indicator Plants
If you want to know how to find ginseng, first learn to find proper habitat.
Increase your odds
Check the USDA map to see if ginseng grows, or has ever grown, in the area of interest. For example, if you live in Arizona, it is highly unlikely that you will ever successfully grow this plant. If you want to try, then you’ll have to recreate the kind of habitat that supports it.
Shade and moisture
First look for mature trees. The following are present in the areas I’ve found ginseng:
maple
redbud
pawpaw
oak
hickory
poplar
dogwood
cedar
It needs to NOT be all oak/hickory/cedar/pine. Ginseng will grow on any slope. North-facing is best, but it’ll grow facing any direction if the shade and moisture are right. It is most often right on north-facing slopes. There are sometimes “folds” on south-facing slopes that create mini-habitats on the north-facing inside of the fold.
Found the right forest?
Once you have the right kind of trees and good moisture that comes from the right shade, then look for companion plants.
Companion plants
It’s good to know the companions because ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) can be a difficult plant to spot. If you’re out looking for ginseng, you’ll know to look harder if you’ve already spotted the companions. The plant seems to show itself to some but not to others. I’ve spoken to many people who have never found it on their own even though they stood side-by-side with someone else who could point it out to them. I’m that way when it comes to hunting morel mushrooms. I cannot find them, even if I look exactly in the right kinds of spots. According to people who find them, morels have their own kinds of companion plants (and trees). During spring morel hunts, my friends come back with bags of gathered morels and I stand there empty-handed. Not so with ginseng. I can find that one!
Finding the clues: Ginseng Companion or Indicator Plants
In one of my other posts about ginseng, I talked about choosing the best site to plant. Those tips can also help you find ginseng if you’re hunting it. And here’s a post that might help explain why you’re not finding it. Here’s another page that shows the ginseng plant as a seedling, two-prong, three- and four-prong, if you’d like to see how it looks as it gets more mature.
♥ Ginseng indicator plants, also called companion plants, are those plants, shrubs and trees that like to grow in the same sort of environment as ginseng. They keep the same company because they require the same habitat.
For a general post on what a ginseng plant looks like, go here.
If you have questions about ginseng that aren’t answered in this post, try my page on Questions About Ginseng.
And if you were confounded by look-alikes all season last year and want a little help, check out my latest book “Ginseng Look-Alikes”.
Finding the first ginseng plant
When I first go out to the woods, even in a place I know has ginseng, I have a difficult time spotting the first ginseng plant. They have a way of growing that makes them hard to see, but once you’ve found the first one it’s easier to find more. I think the first one somehow trains the eyes to see that form. It’s like this every time I go out. I have to find one first, then the rest become easier to see.
See how the ginseng plant has a horizontal form?
If you’re scouting woods for likely places to either plant or find it, here are a few of the companion plants you’ll want to keep an eye out for. They’re much easier to find than ginseng itself. Look for goldenseal, black cohosh, pawpaw trees, American spikenard, virginia snakeroot, bloodroot, blue cohosh and wild ginger.
Poster available from Wild Ozark. Email for prices/sizes. [email protected]
Photos of the companions
Here’s some of the ones I see most often around here in the Ozarks:
Want More Ginseng or Companion Plant Pictures?
There’s lots of photos on this blog if you’d like to just browse around a bit. Click on the “Ginseng Blog Posts” icon to get all of the posts that mention ginseng.
A Note about Poison Ivy
Poison ivy is NOT an indicator plant. In fact, if you see too much of it, it’s an indicator that there is probably too much sunlight in that location.
Poison ivy recently moved in and choked out a good ginseng habitat on our property. Before the ice storm of 2009, there was dense shade in that little holler. During the ice storm many of the trees fell and tops were snapped off, which then let in much more sunlight than had been there prior. And that’s what allowed the poison ivy to grow so densely there. It has taken nearly five years for the forest to recover to a point where the shade has returned to proper density.
Natural Setbacks
The ginseng suffered and much of it died or went dormant because lost trees opened a gap to direct sunlight for too many hours per day. Most of the ginseng companion plants can tolerate more sunlight than ginseng.
Maidenhair and Christmas ferns can tolerate more shade than can ginseng. But the ivy can also tolerate shade and thus it is still there even as the tree’s limbs have stretched to fill in the canopy.
If we avoid more ice storms, it’ll eventually fade back toward the brighter areas and leave the deep shade alone. With a little help from the companions, you’ll be able to find suitable habitat for one of our greatest natural treasures, wild American Ginseng. The knowledge you gain will help you become a better conservationist if you choose to grow your own “virtually wild” ginseng rather than dig the wild.
Practice Ethical Hunting and Harvesting, and Consider Growing Your Own
♥ Ginseng has a legal harvest season. Ethical practices will help the plant to continue in the wild.
Please follow the laws of your state regarding how and when to harvest. For the state of Arkansas, those rules are here (it’s a PDF file). I also go over specific practices to help the plant survive in my book Sustainable Ginseng. You might wonder why someone who conserves the wild ginseng wants to hunt it.
Except when our personal stash is low, when I find wild ginseng (in season), I don’t dig it. I record where I found it and observe the habitat, photograph the plants and environment.
Why I study
I use the information I gather to become more successful at growing it and I share what I’ve learned with my blog and book readers. From the plants I’ve seeded on our property, I also plant the ripe berries and redistribute them to places I want to establish new colonies. (Never gather all of the seeds of a plant, and never dig without planting the seeds.)
To know where to plant, it helps to know the preferred habitat of ginseng. My hope is that you’ll become interested in growing wild-simulated ginseng, and for that you’ll need to know the kinds of places ginseng likes to grow.
♥ Wild-simulated, or virtually wild ginseng, is simply the practice of planting seeds and allowing them to grow naturally.
A Summary of Sustainable Practice for Wild-Simulated
No tilling, no fertilizing, no weeding (except perhaps in the beginning to clear out underbrush). Then in 7-10 years, begin a sustainable plan for harvesting.
That plan would include taking no more than 50% of the seed-bearing plants from each colony, and only a small portion of the oldest plants. Always replant the seeds from those plants in the original area.
This harvest plan would also be what I consider to be a good way to “steward” the wild if you intend to harvest it when you find it.
If you have questions, please leave a comment or use the Contact link in the menu to get in touch. I’m always happy to help if I can.
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About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
A few days ago I took a walk out to the deep woods to see how the wild ginseng and habitat companions were doing.
The wild plants are in pretty hard to reach areas and I don’t get out there very often. When we plant seeds, we try to keep enough distance between the wild-simulated and the wild to avoid genetic pollution.
For more information on genetic pollution and diminishing variability in wild ginseng, here’s a couple of references:
http://wildginsengconservation.com/GeneticPollution.html (You’ll have to copy/paste that link – can’t make a live link because it’s not a secure site, and mine is)
The last time I took a look at this particular habitat area, it was in May, I believe. Ordinarily I can drive the 4-wheeler closer to the departure point. Not so on this trip today.
The trail ahead. Definitely not good ginseng habitat right here.
The trail had become overgrown with brambles. My quest to find wild ginseng in August was going to take a little longer than I expected.
I used a machete and hacked away for a while.
Bloody and sore after a few minutes, with still no progress, I called it quits and took off on foot uphill, toward the right. As soon as I got away from the trail, and started heading uphill, the going was a lot easier. No more brambles, at least.
I went out at late afternoon, so the light was already dim in the deep woods. Although I went looking for ginseng, I am always on the watch for other interesting plants.
Here’s one that caught my eye. There were only a few of them, all confined to one small area, much in the same way wild ginseng grows in small confined areas.
The photo isn’t very good because the light was very low right here. And I’m not good enough at using my camera to know how to compensate correctly for that, yet. Nothing I tried yielded a good focus.
Triphora trianthophora orchid, whole above ground plant.T trianthophora, a new find for me. It’s also called Three Birds Orchid and is endangered in many states but not in the Ozarks, or Arkansas. Still, I only saw a few.
The place where I found the orchids looked like it should have been a good place for ginseng, too, but there were none that I could see.
I did see some ginseng companion plants, though. Here’s Doll’s Eyes:
Actaea pachypoda, also called Doll’s Eyes or White Baneberry. This is one of the most reliable ginseng habitat indicators here in the Ozarks.
There was also maidenhair fern, blue cohosh, christmas ferns, goldenseal, and bloodroot present. I didn’t take many photos because daylight was fading fast and I still hadn’t found the ginseng.
However, a shaft of sunlight filtered between the tree canopies to fall on the nettles, and it made a beautiful photo so I had to stop for that:
Wood nettles in flower. These sting. I know this from experience.
Wood nettles are a great indicator of rich, moist, loamy soil – perfection for American ginseng. But there was still no ginseng in sight. I walked eastward a little longer, then downhill toward a spot I was fairly sure I could find some plants.
One of the wild ginseng plants with only green berries.Mature 3-prong American ginseng with ripe berries.
So I found a few plants and took a few pictures, and then it was time to get back to the trail before the sun went down much more and made it too difficult to find my way back!
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Not enough time to make a decent post lately, so figured I’d at least put up a few of the photos I’ve taken in the past few days of August. Click on them to make them larger.
A Herd of Swallowtails
Action at the local Watering Hole
Showing off the Color
Kings River was beautiful in the early morning light and rising mists.
A 3-prong ginseng in August, a bit worn for the wear.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program; an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
