TOPIC: Good companion plant or not?

Can someone help identify this plantlike stuff? Is it a bad or good sign for planting seng. I only have an area about 2500 sq.ft.of this stuff and the only trees directly where this is growing is sugar maples. Some oaks just out of where this stuff grows. Its apparently an evergreen as I took the picture today. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

jimsenger66,

I think this is called Club Moss and it's true name is Lycopodium digitatum Dill.
I see it in the mountains from time to time, but I've never seen ginseng growing near it. Some other members say ginseng does not grow near it in the wild, but I don't know that to be a fact. It might be a good idea to clean it away from where you are planting. You won't really know until you try it.

Hugh

Hugh,
Thanks for the quick reply. I've heard of that but never put the plant (if its a plant even) to the name. I will take your advice and remove a swath of it and plant a couple feet wide by ten feet long test plot this fall. I'd say it may not do so well if it's never near wild seng but worth a couple hundred seeds to find out. I havn't seen seng within it either but sometimes I'm not the most observant individual. Don't really want to take it all out as I like having different understory in the woods so if it works I'll utilize 3/4 or so of that area and leave the rest. It might have some herbal remedy use.

Come spring I will have another plant that I hope someone here can identify. I've spent lots of time trying to find pics on google images to no avail. It looks like a miniature burdock leaf (3x8\") but stays short to the ground and has multiple leaves come from the root and is very dark green. I have a slew of it at the lowest dip in the cove for a couple hundred feet and am afraid it might be a sign of too much dampness for seng even though cohosh and seal is growing amongst it. I have no picture for now as it has died down. Probably end up doing what you recommended with the club moss.

i sometimes see that plant in areas that have been cleaned up in the past for farming or whatever reason it seems to grow mostly in reforested areas i have found some ginseng growing with it but never a lot but it can grow there if the conditions are right . my father says they used that plant to clean pots and pans when he was a kid he called it scowering rush or something like that.

on my last post i know horses tail is called scouring rush but thats what my father used club moss for so thats what he called it perhaps mistakenly. so if i was going to plant in the area the clubmoss grows in i would remove all the clubmoss first good luck

I see that on my home place here and on some other property that I own and it does grow in or near areas where seng does.

Not sure I have ever found seng growing right in with it, but have found it in the same general area.

Never knew what it was officially called.

TNhunter

Here's a link for this, might be TMI for some... history, names, and medicinal usage.

www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_club_moss.htm

I'm with the others here. I've seen it in the area where ginseng grows, but not close by.