(Guide) How To Identify Ginseng - What Does Ginseng Look Like?

Contents open How Do You Identify Ginseng? Notice What is “Wild Ginseng” and How is it Different? What Does Ginseng Grow Around? What Does Ginseng Look Like? Ginseng Roots in Human Shape How Can You Tell the Age of Ginseng? How Do You Identify Ginseng?

You can identify wild ginseng by following the article below. It is important to be able sift through your own natural underbrush to identify the ginseng crop you are cultivating, so let’s learn a bit about how to distinguish the plant before you go digging up a cultivated crop.

Before you set out cultivating your own crop, however, you will want to make sure that you live near where ginseng grows natively. If you’re too far outside of growing zones, it will be more trouble than it’s worth. 

Popular spots for cultivating ginseng range anywhere from Louisiana to Michigan, even though the wild range of ginseng may not extend that far. A ginseng population map, such as the one linked above, can help you identify where it is possible to cultivate ginseng, as well as where it grows natively.

Generally, the older the plant, the easier it will be to identify it. Once your ginseng has matured, the leaves will become more bulbous and the serration won’t appear so severe, making it easy to tell apart from look-alikes such as wild strawberry seedlings, Virginia creeper, and even – yikes! – poison ivy.

There are many images online and in books that only showcase the root, which is the part that you would harvest the plant for. The root, however, is entirely underground. Do you expect to be able to pick that out from a laundry list of thirty other plants in the middle of summer? In the forest understory where everything is a shade of green, it’s difficult to tell anything apart.

Fortunately, it isn’t difficult to learn how to readily identify ginseng once you practice looking at individual plants, rather than a conglomerate of the forest floor.