This is what one of my 9 year old wild sim plants looks like...
it was a somewhat mid sized 3 prong (as many of my 7-10 year olds are)... nothing special just a decent 3 pronger.
It grows slow here on my place.
The root I think had a nice shape to it - somewhat ballish, with some forks, and some decent neck showing up at this point.
That was one of the first ones I dug to check out... and then later after the rain i did did a few more of those on some land I will be selling in a year or two.
In Scotts book he mentions 7 years for harvest on wild sim... but that obviously is in ideal growing location (which my place is not). It grows here, but slow... slow. My soil is not near ideal fertility for seng, and my light conditions are heavy timber... so lower light. The combination of lower light and less fertile... makes for SLOW growth on ginseng.
I knew that starting off... so no suprise to me. This is about what i was expecting.
Overall pleased with the looks of the top and root... for this 9 year old... but I think ideally this plant really needed another 5-10 years growing on my place to be a real quality seng root.
TNHunter