Araliaceae
Panax ginseng
Asian ginseng · Korean ginseng · Ren shen
- Part used
- root
- Native range
- Northeastern China, Korea and far eastern Russia. Effectively extinct in the wild
- Morphology
- A slow-growing perennial to about sixty centimetres, with whorled compound leaves and a cluster of red berries. The fleshy root is often forked in a way readily read as a human figure, which is what the name refers to.
What is in it
Evidence
A large literature with small and inconsistent results. Some signal for fatigue and for cognitive performance in short trials; Cochrane finds the evidence insufficient. Trial quality is uneven and many studies come from regions where the herb has cultural prestige.
Safety
Generally well tolerated. Insomnia, headache and hypertension are reported, and there are case reports of mania in susceptible people. Effects on blood glucose are documented and matter in diabetes. Oestrogenic effects have been reported and are not fully characterised.
Interactions: Reduces the effect of warfarin; Additive with stimulants; May lower blood glucose, compounding antidiabetic drugs; Reported interaction with monoamine oxidase inhibitors
Regulatory: Permitted as a listed medicine ingredient. Cultivated material dominates trade; wild Chinese and Russian populations are protected.
How the traditions classify it
Three systems, rating the same plant. Where they disagree, none of them is correcting the others — they are separate frameworks that arrived at their categories independently.
Historical use
Used in China for at least two thousand years as the pre-eminent tonic, and valued so highly that wild roots have been treated as objects of extraordinary worth. The genus name Panax is from the Greek for all-healing, and shares a root with panacea.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.
Worth knowing
Ginseng is the clearest case of a plant whose price is set by a shape.
The root branches, and a branched root read as a human body — a signature reading that the Chinese name records directly. Wild roots that look most like a figure have sold for sums that sound like typographical errors, and that valuation has stripped the wild populations to almost nothing while cultivated ginseng, chemically similar, sells for a fraction.
The evidence is a good example of a literature that never resolves: enough small positive trials to sustain the market, not enough large clean ones to settle anything, and a strong regional publication skew that nobody in the field disputes.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.