TOPIC: TN GoldenSeal season

Here is the same patch, it took 2 growing seasons for my goldenseal seed to produce a plant with true leaves. I will state that no fertilizers are being used and the ground was not tilled.

I have a question about Golden Seal and please understand that most of my hunting for it as well as Ginseng is conducted at elevations of 2,000 feet to as high as nearly 5,000 feet! In many years of hunting Ginseng in the mountains, I only found one patch of Golden Seal but it was wiped out by someone who dug each and every plant in the whole patch. My questions is, where is the best places to find Golden Seal (lower elevations, wet areas, low hills or ridges or higher elevation areas)? Most of the Golden Seal that I use to see when I was a teenager are long gone.


Frank

Huntsman,
After reading your question it got me wondering so I broke out the handheld gps that has 12 seal patches on it and they were all between 1000 and 1250' elevation. I remember the spots as a picture (in my mind)quite well even though it had been several years since I've been there but they were all on moderate slopes and not really damp but not dry either. All directions of slopes as well as I broke out google earth to see what direction the patches were facing. Hope they are still there as I would like to hit em up for seeds this year. I have found patches of up to 5000 square feet in the county adjacent to mine before and they were all lower elevation and darker (deeper in the woods).

Huntsman,
Got my really wondering if the slope direction (whatever that fancy word for that is) really was the way I was seeing it on google earth. Well, things aren't always the way they look on them sat images. Pulled up each coordinance and drug my curser all directions from the pinpoint of the coordinances I put in and EVERY slope was facing either east, north, northeast or was pretty much in the bottom (not a real bottom as these valleys go a long way). Wanted to point out that max elevation in these seal areas is 1225+- (never over 1250 in this whole multi-county region) and in these seal areas as low as 950 (lowest in whole multi-county region is 600)with the patches being at the elevations mentioned in the last post.

Huntsman,
My goodness just read them last two posts and confused myself. Here's the exact elevations. It's only 11 and all were facing north, east, northeast, or on a lowest point (somewhat). Max elevation in the area of the seal is 1250 and min is 950.

1. 1104
2. 1132
3. 1209
4. 1163
5. 1150
6. 1100
7. 1031
8. 1052
9. 1029
10. 1033
11. 1046

Hope this helps, Jim