90 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 
members of the carrot family, grows naturally in rich, damp 
soils, such as are usually found in forests, and may be asso- 
ciated with other closely related plants which the casual 
observer would mistake for true ginseng. The first season 
it is small and inconspicuous, being about two inches high 
and possessing not over four leaves. The second year there is 
produced a single stem, at the top of which are found one 
or more compound leaves, made up of from three to ten leaf- 
lets. By the time the plant is five or six years old it will 
a formed three or four leafstalks, each bearing several 
eatlets. 
The only part of the ginseng which is commercially valu- 
able is the root, together with a small inconspicuous under- 
ground stem. The latter bears scars from the previous 
annual leafstalks and by counting these the age of the plant 
can be approximated. Although a single ginseng has been 
known to pee from fifty to sixty years, the value of the 
roots usually decreases after the eighth or tenth year and it 
is customary therefore to dig them when from five to seven 
years old. 
Practically the only market for ginseng is in China and 
Korea. Here the plant is highly prized for its supposed 
medicinal value and the sometimes startling resemblance of 
the root to the trunk and limbs of a man (the Chinese name 
literally means “man-wort’’) has probably been partly 
responsible for the superstitious awe with which the virtues 
of ginseng are regarded. Not that a belief in the relation of 
the outward form of a plant and its effect upon man is by 
any means confined to the Chinese, however. The common 
names of many plants, such as “liver-wort’”’, “lung-wort’, 
etc., are remnants of the old so-called “doctrine of signatures” 
which was exploited to its highest degree by the Swiss al- 
chemist Bombastus Paracelsus, in the ister part of the six- 
teenth century. This doctrine flourished for centuries and 
even to-day remnants of it survive. In spite of the skepticism 
which prevails regarding the value of ginseng as a drug, 
there seems to be some reason for believing that it has a 
distinct effect upon the Chinese and that its use is justified 
upon other grounds than mere superstition. Wilson, in “A 
Naturalist in Western China,” says: “The famous drug, 
ginseng, comes from Korea and Manchuria and the best 
quality sells for its weight in gold. To the Chinese this drug 
is the radix vitae, restoring strength, vitality, and power to 
old and young. So precious is the ‘life-giving root’ that the 
plants are, in theory, reserved entirely for the emperor’s 
use. On the Chinese system this drug unquestionably acts 
