Asian Ginseng

Asian ginseng is a herbaceous perennial, thirty to sixty centimetres tall, native to the mountains of the Russian Far East, north-east China and the Korean peninsula. Its leaves are divided like an open hand into three to five toothed leaflets, a single rounded cluster of small flowers stands above them, and the fruits ripen into round red berries. Below ground is a spindle-shaped taproot, usually branching once or twice, which is the part harvested, most often after five or six years of slow growth. The wild plant is protected in Russia and China, so most ginseng sold is farmed. Its species name is read as 'man-herb' or 'forked root', and a French Jesuit writing from China in 1711 reported that the Chinese name meant 'form of man', after the shape of the root. In Asia it has been taken as medicine for thousands of years and was long counted a cure-all. Chinese myth makes it a gift from the gods to a woman longing for a child; Korean legend says it must be dug with a blade of wood, since metal would spoil its virtue; other tales have the plant glowing and roaming at night. In medieval and Renaissance Europe it was prized as an aphrodisiac, the most human-shaped roots fetching the most. In magic it serves fertility, love, healing and protection: a root bound with pink or red ribbon goes into love and fertility spells, or a small piece is carried to draw romance.