HIGH demand for ginseng root as a pick-me-up appears to be turning the plants
into dwarfs.
James McGraw of West Virginia University in Morgantown discovered this when
he compared 915 samples of ginseng from botanical collections spanning the past
two centuries. He found that over this period, ginseng plants have become
smaller—probably because people have tended to pick the large ones for
medicinal use (Biological Conservation, vol 98, p 25).
It is unclear whether the shrinking size of the plant, which is now listed as
a rare species, will hinder its fortunes in future. Although smaller plants tend…
