Barbara Breshock and Amy Cimarolli
American Ginseng: Local Knowledge Global Roots
WV Foresters, Co-leaders of WV Women Owning Woodland.
As co-founders of the West Virginia chapter of Women Owning Woodlands (WOW) in 2018, Barbara Breshock and Amy Cimarolli are career foresters blazing a trail for women in the traditionally male-dominated world of forest management. WOW provides training, support, and a voice for women who own woodlands and are interested in learning to manage forests. Throughout the Central Appalachian region WOW members like Barb and Amy are stewarding woodlands for many purposes including to enhance habitats for forest botanicals, including cohosh, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple, wild orchids, and, of course, ginseng.
“We’ve come upon a piece of the old field that’s been left open. We’re standing under an old butternut, so it’s cooler and shady. You can tell it’s an old field, like Barb said, there’s the musclewood, and there is a small yellow poplar and spice bush. . . .I needed a place I could easily get to that I could fence. My forest is steep and rocky. I couldn’t put a [deer exclosure] fence in up there, but I fenced this place to get a stand of ginseng going. They’re going to be my mother plants to produce seed. And I’ll take that seed up into the forest.” -Amy Cimarolli
Barbara Breshock, Amy Cimarolli and I step out of Amy’s Subaru, onto Amy’s 100 acres of mixed forest and farmland in Tucker County, just south of Canaan Valley, near Davis, WV. On this overcast day at higher elevations favorable to maples, birch, and hemlock, the cool air rings with the songs of common yellowthroats, cardinals, chorusing crickets, and white-eyed vireos singing from the shrubby edge of the old field. We are here to check on Amy’s ginseng patch, started from seeds procured the previous fall with the help of Will Lewis at the Yew Mountain Center in Pocahontas County. The rich soil favorable to ginseng is indicated by the presence of companion species. Her plan is to grow these “mother plants” to supply seeds for ginseng patches she will locate in the coves higher up on the mountain.
The term “mother plants” signals Amy’s interest in the reproduction of the non-timber parts of the forest ecosystems, which in industrialized forestry has gotten short shrift. In many Central Appalachian communities, the propagation, tending, and harvesting of understory species has traditionally been the province of women. Historically barred from decision-making about woodlands by laws that prohibited women from owning property, women are turning to Women Owning Woodlands to acquire skills need to manage forests, as women.
The US Forest Service and the National Woodland Owners’ association began co-sponsoring WOW in response to two trends, well-documented by research. First, women, who have historically been excluded from land ownership and forest management, and who tend to outlive men and face decisions about land management when their husbands are deceased, flourish most when learning in comfortable settings with other women. Second, women tend to view their land holistically, in terms of benefits to community, ecosystems, and economy. WOW provides training, support, and a voice for women who own or are thinking of buying woodlands, through workshops on topics ranging from tree identification, to generating income, to hiring and supervising contractors and obtaining conservation easements on wooded acreage.
Many women in the Central Appalachian region, including Barb and Amy, are interested in conserving woodlands through management strategies that restore and enhance habitats for forest botanicals, including cohosh, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple, wild orchids, and, of course, ginseng.
Ginseng is helping to guide Amy’s forest restoration plan, which prioritizes the removal of invasives by first clearing the places where ginseng would love to grow. “Spending a couple of years on this land that is new to me, I realized that everywhere there’s a gap, the invasive shrubs are there, because of the former owner’s timber harvesting project that did not include dealing with these invaders before opening up the stand’s canopy. After the harvest, wildlife move them. And I realized I would need a hundred years to eradicate them. So some of my favorite plants helped me decide where to focus first.” Invasives are not without opportunities, as Amy points out. For example, Japanese barberry roots, rich in berberine -- a bioactive compound also found in goldenseal – offer an alternative that could relieve some of the pressure on wild populations of goldenseal.
Affirming her principle of site selection, Amy finds a first-year seedling with three-leaves, known by old-timers in the coalfields (where Barb’s forest is) as a “biddy’s foot.” “I planted them an inch apart,” she says, looking for more. “There’s one there. And one there. And one here – yay!!!”
Amy, who works for the West Virginia Land Trust, takes a multi-pronged approach to forest management. Expunging dense stands of invasive barberry, autumn olive and Japanese spirea is a Sisyphean, spiritually depleting task. Beginning with places most conducive to native botanicals such as ginseng and golden seal, Amy has been working with small patches. “It’s really cool to get to know a piece of the land intimately,” Amy reflected. “I appreciate the soil after having my hands in it. Just seeing how loose it is, and dark, and moist. You see why things like to grow in it. . . In choosing this place, I relied on the plants that were here.”
We head up the mountain into deeper riparian woodlands, accompanied by the song of the scarlet tanager, to inspect patches of newly planted goldenseal roots (also procured with the help of Yew Mountain Center) and an experimental ginseng plot. In mid-summer the intermittent streambed is dry enough to stand in.
Amy points toward the northeast facing slope above us. “You can see the logs – the tangle of big hemlock logs-- and that’s where I crawled into to put my ginseng. And I have some golden seal in between those logs up there.” Scampering up the hill, Amy calls out the names of indicator species: maidenhair fern, squirrel corn, jack-in-the-pulpit, rattlesnake fern, and cohosh, some of which the deer have nibbled down to the base.
Amy reaches the latticework of logs laid over the place where she’d begun propagating golden seal (through root propagules) and ginseng (through seeds). Did the logs discourage browsing deer? “I’m seeing all of this as nibbled,” reports Amy. “I’m thinking these logs aren’t stopping them. Oh! I see some ginseng babies with my golden seal. And there’s jack in the pulpit.” Amy has cycles of life in mind, including her own. “This is definitely a long-term project. I have the energy now to do it, so it’s a good time to make investments, so maybe when I’m elderly I can still get up here and harvest some golden seal for my sore throat, or some ginseng for my tea.”
Barb, now retired from decades of work as a forester with the WV Division of Forestry, has planted ginseng seeds, ramps, and golden seal on Three Springs Farm, her woodlands in Raleigh County. As an outdoor woman, she also contributes to the conservation of ginseng by learning to hunt deer. “I felt guilty as a forester that deer were doing so much damage to the forest, and I wasn’t doing anything to help!”
Black cohosh, celebrated as a supplement for women going through menopause, is also favored by deer.
“Well,” I said, “Maybe does (female deer) have to deal with menopause too?”
Amy smiles. “The old doe, maybe she knew something.”
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