TOPIC: Very interesting find today

A friend called me last night and said that he found what he believed was ginseng while deer hunting yesterday. I let HIM describe what the plant looked like (learned this he hard way) and he was spot on with the description of sang. I asked him if he was going to go dig it and he said \"heck no it's a LONG way from the road\". I asked if he cared if I went and dug it and split it with him he said sure go dig it but declined the split. He's a good friend. So with only a close Lat and Long on my Garmin I skipped sleeping today (night shifter) and began what turned out to be a 1 hour and 30 minute hike. I instantly started finding good sang and went to work and then came to a briar patch and I thought I better look since I found it the last trip out in Black Berry briars. Sure as sugar there was sang 36\" tops, stems as big as pencils and some still hanging onto dozens of berries. I fought the briars away and started in on them but, something didn't FEEL right. The ground was jet black but, I guess you could describe it as grainy or gritty feeling and then I found out why. This sang was growing in COAL. What I thought was an old road bed must have been a rail road bed from when they logged this area who knows how long ago and this spot must have been some kind of coal dump. The sang was white as snow once they hit the water. I dug for about 2 hours then took a bath in the creek which turned black and started to head back and when I got home I counted the growth rings on the biggest sangs and all were in the 12-15 yr old range. I picked out the coal bed sangs and there were 11 of them and they were the youngest of all the sangs but were the biggest sangs. I am going use them for seed stock and they weighed 33 oz. I planted them in my seed bed and I sure hope they do as well in REAL dirt as they did in COAL. The rest of the sang that didn't come from that spot were in the 30 yr old range (counted several to get an estimate) so could the coal make a sang grow quick and big but give it a short life? I wouldn't think that someone would skip all the other sang for 15 years and only dig the coal sangs. You couldn't miss the others as they were gorgeous healthy looking 3 and 4 prongers. I had 56 sangs left that didn't come from the coal and they weighed 1 lb and 6 ozs if that tells you anything.

BTW, this is public land if that helps.

2 firsts for me in as many weeks.

It could be that seng simply wouldn't grow in the coal dump area until 12-15 years ago.

Edit to add: the blackberry briars are a sign that spot was getting more sunlight than the rest of the seng as well.

Just my opinion.

Never can tell what you are going to run into.