Technology
Special feature from the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast: "King of the Herbs"
In this special episode from the Smithsonian's Side Door podcast, explore the fascinating world of wild American Jinsang, a highly sought-after herb known as the 'King of the Herbs.' Di...
Special feature from the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast: "King of the Herbs"
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Happy summer plant people?
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While we're on break between seasons, we have a special episode for you from the Smithsonian's
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Side Door podcast.
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More than 154 million treasures fill the Smithsonian's vaults.
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But where the public's view ends, Side Door begins.
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And in this episode, Side Door goes searching for an elusive herb, wild American jinsing,
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and finds that scientists, conservationists, and criminals are also on the hunt.
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This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
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I'm Lizzie Peabody.
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Deep in the hills of West Virginia, Ed and Carol Daniels are growing a secret garden.
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Well, a secret farm, really.
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And it has to be secret because the plants they're growing are worth a lot of money.
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How many cameras do you have?
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I'm just curious.
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There's multiples.
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Yeah, ten.
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No, there's a lot more.
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I mean, there's cameras in hidden areas that aren't really good.
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How many cameras are watching us right now?
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Don't pin the woods.
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This herb only grows in a very small band of the United States.
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Mostly, the Appalachian Mountains, from Canada down to Alabama.
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That's part of what makes it so valuable.
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Another part is how it makes you feel when you eat it.
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It gives you more energy than most energy drinks.
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Actually, I have friends that race mountain bikes professionally, and they've got trouble
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they consider just doping.
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Really?
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Because it gives them so much energy.
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But it's all natural.
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Ed's not talking about any illegal drug.
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He's talking about American Jinsang, a small plant with a precious root that people have
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been using as medicine since well before Europeans set foot on American soil.
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It's so valuable that even with all this security, a few months back, a couple of people drove
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deep into the forest, snuck into Ed's farm with ski masks and headlamps, and dug up his
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Jinsang plants under the cloak of night.
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Carol estimates that thieves stole more than $50,000 worth of roots.
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What did it feel like to discover that?
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I was that your male.
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That was stating.
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I mean, to plant every single plant, one by one, on our knees, with our hands.
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It's a lot of time.
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It just goes to show that people are ruthless.
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If they think they can get ahead by still I'm from it, they will.
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Wild Jinsang is so highly valued around the world that it's been dug to extinction nearly
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everywhere except Apalajah.
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Demand for Wild American Jinsang is highest in Asia, where people refer to it as King of
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the Herbs.
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In America, it has another nickname.
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This is June Wynn, a curator of botany at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural
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History, and probably one of the most knowledgeable people about Jinsang on the entire planet.
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She says, wild American Jinsang is known as Green Gold because it can sell for as much
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as $700 a pound in the United States.
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And it sells for 10 times that in Asia.
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That's like the weight of a squirrel for the price of a used car.
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Or a trip to Maui.
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But here's the deal with anything referred to as gold.
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It's not easy to find.
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And Green Gold is getting a lot harder to find.
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In 1995, I walked in this area.
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I could have found 30, 40 Jinsang plants.
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Now I go, I found a one.
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So it's very, very hard to break in for me to see the extinction of the species in the wild.
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The money that can be made from wild American Jinsang is causing people to rip it out of
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the ground at a frenzied and unsustainable pace.
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And that's pushing it even closer to the edge of extinction.
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So this time on Side Door, we dig into the history of how Jinsang claimed its throne
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as king of the herbs and what's being done to protect its reign well into the future.
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That's coming up after the break.
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You probably have a vague idea of what Jinsang is.
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You might have seen it listed as an ingredient on an energy drink or on a packet of tea.
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Before I started researching this episode, I had no idea what Jinsang was.
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Other than the name of my aunt's dog.
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And this is what's led me to Ed and Carol Daniels' farm in West Virginia.
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I'm sitting on their front porch in an old wooden chair.
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It's cool and sunny and the leaves are dancing in the breeze.
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It's this beautiful fall afternoon.
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And Ed and Carol are telling me all about Jinsang.
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Jinsang is a medicine with unlimited powers.
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The word Jinsang literally translates to essence of man in Mandarin because people believe it cures whatever ails you.
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It gives you energy and it's supposed to be good for diabetes.
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It's good for your manhood.
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Immunity, stress, your whole body.
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It's a heal all.
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Some people call it a cross between Viagra, Prozac and Coffee.
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But Ed doesn't like the comparison to caffeine.
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It gives you the energy, but I think it's a cleaner energy.
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And it clears your mind a lot too.
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Wow.
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Caffeine, I think, sometimes clouds that up.
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The roots are the most prized part of the ankle high plant because people believe that's where all its powers are found.
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People in South Korea like to cook with fresh Jinsang root.
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People in China dry the root into a powdered medicine.
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Ed takes Jinsang every morning in a tincture form.
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When I ask what that means, he slides a massive glass of handing jar towards me.
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What's in there?
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This here's probably moonshine.
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Moon shines soaked Jinsang roots.
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Ed's own formula made with local moonshine and Jinsang grown on his farm.
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The alcohol absorbs the medicine from the root giving you a nice liquid Jinsang tonic.
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The stronger the alcohol, the stronger the medicine.
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Ed is what you might call a connoisseur of Jinsang.
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He doesn't touch Jinsang from big industrial farms, which is where most of it is grown.
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For him, Jinsang's got to be wild or grown on his property in wild conditions.
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I try to keep it as wild as possible.
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And we don't feed it.
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It's just naturally fed from the beach trees and the maple trees.
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And it has an earthy taste.
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Yeah, what does it taste like?
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You want to try it?
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Ed twists open the rusty metal top of the mason jar and dips the spoon in.
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Carol passes it to me and explains what to do.
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Put it underneath your tongue and let it sit there for like 30 to 60 seconds.
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Okay, put it right under my tongue.
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Okay, so the first thing I taste is moonshine, which is not far off from rubbing alcohol.
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And the next thing I taste is, well, it kind of tastes like a forest.
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It's very hard to describe this taste.
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It's like something I recognize, but I can't like what it is.
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Yeah, I can't place what it is.
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You've done more Jinsang today than I've done in years.
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I can't believe he does so much.
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Wait a minute.
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No, the bit.
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You'll be up for a week.
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You might go home and clean till sometime next week.
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Well, I didn't know.
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Now you do.
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To be clear, I slept just fine.
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But I definitely felt a jolt of energy, which is part of what has made Jinsang so sought after for millennia.
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Records of it date way back to ancient China, where soldiers would eat it before battle
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and then put it on wounds after the fight.
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People back then used it to treat all sorts of ailments.
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Digestion, tiredness, the effects of childbirth, and then one of the big ones that you'll find is, let me say, male performance problems.
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This is Betty Balanas, curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
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She says wild Jinsang used to be all over China, but its healing properties were so highly prized, people dug it out wherever they found it.
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One Chinese doctor is quoted as saying, a person would rather take a handful of Jinsang than a cartload of gold and jewels.
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And around a thousand years ago, wild Asian Jinsang became so hard to find in China, it effectively went extinct.
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It was saved just for royalty, the emperors, because it started becoming so scarce and so valuable, because it was so highly regarded.
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If there wasn't a Chinese dynasty named after your family, you probably were not going to get your hands on Jinsang.
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And that was kind of the way things went for centuries, until a long came, a French Canadian priest.
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One day in 1716, father Joseph François Lafitteau was just hanging around in Montreal, flipping through a book of medicinal Asian herbs as one does.
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And he stopped on an illustration of a Jinsang plant, a little thing with green leaves, red berries, and a big solid root, like a twisty carrot.
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And when he read the description, he thought, all healing powers? Hmm, that's pretty cool.
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So he kept reading and realized, hey, this plant grows in the same general climate that we have right here in Canada. How about that?
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So he sat down his book and he headed out into the woods. This is a passage from his journal.
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After spending three months looking for the Jinsing, by accident I found it. It was ripe in the color of the fruit attracted my attention.
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I pulled it up and with joy took it to an Indian I had engaged to help me hunt for it. She recognized it at once, as one of the plants the Indians used.
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Now, father Lafitteau had no idea of what he'd found was actually Jinsing, but it was remarkably similar.
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And he learned that local indigenous tribes were using it for the same things as people in China, things like helping with digestion, giving energy, healing wounds, bolstering manhood.
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So, you know, it was out there and Native Americans were using it. And in a lot of Native American cultures it's considered a sacred plant.
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If this was the same plant that people in China were calling King of the Urbs, Lafitteau would be one happy priest.
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So he set out to confirm that what he had found was indeed Jinsing. Today we just Google it.
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But back then it was hard to share and verify information halfway around the world. Well, unless you were a Jesuit.
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So the Jesuits were kind of like the Internet of the day?
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What?
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Wow. I like to call it that. Anyway, they communicated with one another.
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Father Lafitteau sketched up the plant and mailed the picture out to the network of Jesuit priests stationed across China.
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After months of waiting, he got a reply.
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Bingo.
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So it was Jinsing?
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Yes.
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And things kind of took off from there.
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Turns out Jinsing wasn't just in Canada. In 1738, Benjamin Franklin got so excited that Jinsing was growing in Pennsylvania.
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He declared,
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We have the pleasure of acquinting the world that the famous Chinese plant called Jinsing is now discovered in this province.
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The discovery of Jinsing on American soil turned out to be pretty clutch when colonists declared their independence and sent King George packing.
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The newly formed United States desperately needed a strong trade partner outside the vast British Empire.
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And well, America had something China wanted.
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The first economic venture to China, the ship was full of Jinsing.
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Over the next few decades, China was all about getting that sweet, sweet American Jinsing.
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The Empress of China even sent her surgeon to Virginia to collect 30 tons of the root.
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And this Jinsing trade created a new source of income for people in the Appalachian Mountains.
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It was a boon.
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It became something that people knew about and could fall back on in times of need.
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Digging Jinsing was like an old school side gig, the uber driving of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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And it also provided a much needed source of income for people who had no land or formal education.
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After the American Civil War, formerly enslaved African Americans sold and traded Jinsing to start building a new life.
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Even to this day, Jinsing is sort of a step stool to help some people in Appalachia climb out of poverty.
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Ed Daniels is one of those people.
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Growing up poor, I'd see kids with new clothes going to school and always wanted to be that kid.
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So I went out and dubbed Jinsing and sold it.
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And I was like, wow, I got new shoes now, I got new pants.
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And boy, I was 14, 15.
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I was like, man, I'd like to have a car.
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And I got into it really heavy for a couple of summers and dubbed Jinsing and saved up my first car,
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which was a 74 Volkswagen Beetle for 500 bucks.
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And I was so proud of it because I'd earned the money from digging roots.
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But as logging, coal mining and other jobs get harder to find in these regions,
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more people are digging Jinsing to make ends meet.
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And that worries Ed about the future of the plant.
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And I've went into places that, as a kid, the whole hillside or that cove was just green.
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You get back now, it's not green.
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It's done.
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You dig it out, it's gone.
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So what can be done to save wild American Jinsing from going the way of its Asian cousin?
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We'll explore that just ahead.
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Plus, I head to the forest to see if an amateur digger like myself can strike green gold.
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That's coming up after the break.
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I'm trudging along a muddy trail just outside Washington, D.C. with June Wynn,
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botanist with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
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We're close to the city.
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You can actually still hear the freeway.
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You can't hear it.
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You can't hear it.
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June is taking me Jinsing hunting.
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And I tell you where we are, but the first rule of Jinsing hunting is that you don't tell people where you're Jinsing hunting.
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We want to tell people where we were.
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We'll just say we were in a place.
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You'd see here, you f***.
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Don't say it on the mic.
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Here's what I can tell you about where we are.
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It's an old forest with lots of different plants and trees.
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Jinsing is an extremely slow growing herb that loves the plant.
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And these old trees provide plenty of it.
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Jinsing also tends to grow on slopes because it likes to get plenty of water but not sit in water.
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So, June, tell me what we're looking for.
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How will I recognize a Jinsing plant when I see it?
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It's quite an unusual plant that it is often three or four leaves at the top of the plant.
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They form an umbrella structure.
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No other plants in these forests would be like that.
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It is unique.
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And often it has a cluster of red fruits in the forest.
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It's like seeing a hallowed hill.
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It's really nice and exciting.
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So, we're looking for a plant with green leaves that form a sort of umbrella.
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And in the center of the leaves are red berries.
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But when we went hunting in September, most of the berries were gone, making it really hard to find a plant.
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This isn't it, is it?
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June?
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Right here?
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No, that's a little few.
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Dang it, these hickory trees keep fooling me.
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But eventually, after scanning the forest and putting all my focus and attention on finding Jinsing,
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through sheer determination, mixed with a little luck, I still did not find anything.
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But June did.
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So hey, that's a win.
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Oh, you found one?
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Yeah, we found one.
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Look at this one.
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Oh wow.
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It's an old plant.
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The root goes there.
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See, it's a very old, well-grown plant.
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The plant is only about the height of my ankle.
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But June estimates it's probably 15 to 20 years old.
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It's hiding between two fallen trees that have formed a V-shape and created a nice little cradle for to hide in.
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The June plants do not like attention.
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It's like they like to hide somewhere.
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So they are very precious here.
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Very precious.
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June likes to call Jinsing precious.
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Kind of like you describe a ruby or an emerald.
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And I think that's a great word for it.
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It's extremely valuable and hard to find.
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And when you do see a plant in the wild, it feels special.
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Kind of like when a wild animal feels comfortable enough to take food out of your hand.
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Naturalist William Bartram wrote in 1791,
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the Cherokees speak of Jinsing as a sentient being,
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able to make itself invisible to those unworthy to gather it.
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I am apparently unworthy.
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But June, on the other hand.
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The Jinsing, I think, is a nose that I won't harm them.
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So sometimes I think a Jinsing plant jumps into my eyes.
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I hike with my husband that he cannot see the plant's eye kind.
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So it's amazing.
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She's also, of course, a highly trained botanist who has been researching Jinsing since the early 80s.
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And over those 30 plus years,
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researchers and scientists still haven't solved the mystery behind Jinsing's medicinal power.
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Because the compound in the Jinsing root is very complex.
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If you test one compound or another one individually,
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sometimes it's very hard to demonstrate whether or not the plants have the effect.
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You know, this is a very controversial issue.
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People do agree, however, that wild Jinsing is more powerful than farmed Jinsing.
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June says there's a simple reason for that.
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The denser the root, the more concentrated the power.
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Farmed Jinsing grows really fast and loose, fertilized soil,
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making it big, but not as dense.
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Wild Jinsing, on the other hand, grows really slowly and tightly packed soil,
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making it small and very dense.
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So a tiny wild root may be just as powerful as an enormous farmed root.
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This is why wild American Jinsing is so prized.
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But because it's so rare and so valuable,
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there are tons of restrictions about when and where you can dig it.
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Every state has its own set of laws,
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but you can really only harvest wild Jinsing on private land.
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And there's a Jinsing hunting season, just like an animal hunting season.
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That's usually four months in the fall.
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And then there are rules about where you can sell wild Jinsing.
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If you're a digger and it's hunting season,
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you can sell to a certified Jinsing dealer.
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And then those dealers turn around and sell the plants to people in China or South Korea.
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It's a very mysterious kind of...
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We've talked to a lot of Jinsing dealers.
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They're very hesitant to tell us.
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They never tell us exactly who's buying it.
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This is Smithsonian's Betty Balanis again.
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She says dealer operations can range from highly professional outfits
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to some guy in a pickup truck in the Walmart parking lot.
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Wildlife Rangers have sent her photos of Jinsing deals going down.
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They'll send us pictures of people buying a big load of Jinsing
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and it'll be like really dark out.
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And we're like, is this legit?
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Because Jinsing is so highly regulated,
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it finds itself in a lot of shadiness,
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even after it's left the forest.
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In 2015, a US Fish and Wildlife agent went undercover as a Jinsing dealer in Pennsylvania.
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In his report, he wrote,
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quote,
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Jinsing is used like currency for payments for just about anything.
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Drugs, firearms, you name it.
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I think all of us involved in this are concerned.
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This is Leslie Stark, stopper of Jinsing shadiness.
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That's not actually her job title,
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but that's basically what she does.
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I'm the program manager for the North Carolina Plant Conservation Program.
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Leslie's job is to outsmart poachers who want to steal wild Jinsing plants
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from North Carolina's public lands.
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And she has a pretty nifty method
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for thwarting these illegal Jinsing diggers.
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It's really complicated. That's possibly the best term for it.
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So it's a multifaceted system for permanently staining Jinsing roots.
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The uncomplicated version is that Leslie finds roots in the wild and dies them,
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kind of like the exploding impact in all the bank heist films,
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but without the explosion.
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So you find a Jinsing plant growing in native soil.
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And with your fingers or tools, you will excavate the root.
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And then we use a multi-step process I'm not going to describe in full detail,
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because it would probably compromise future cases on how exactly this works.
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So we apply...
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It's a secret.
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Okay.
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So we apply these different materials to the root itself, to the skin of the root.
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And then we simply re-barry it and walk away.
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Over time, the die becomes invisible.
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So the person digging it illegally won't see it.
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But when they try to sell it to a dealer,
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the dealer has a device that can scan for the ink.
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And if the dealer finds a dyed root, they know they're standing face to face with a poacher.
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Our dealers are our first line of defense.
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Outside of observing an actual illegal harvest in that moment,
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this is the next step where this illicit activity could be detected.
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The die is also make it easier to prosecute poachers in court.
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Otherwise, there would be no way to prove the roots were dug illegally.
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Court cases that are actively using this marking technique have had a near 100% conviction rate.
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I mean, it's...
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Oh, wow.
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It really stands up well.
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In a court of law, that's brilliant.
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Dying roots and limiting the amount of gin saying that can be harvested
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are great ways to protect what's left in the wild.
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But it doesn't help to restore what's already been dug up.
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That's where Ed Daniels comes back into the story.
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A lot of juveniles in here.
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The small gin saying, as you can see.
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Oh, yeah, these tiny little guys.
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Yeah. There's one. Here's one.
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We're back on Ed's farm, which if you remember,
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doesn't really look like a farm at all.
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It just looks like a forest.
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Oh, I see. So this is all...
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Because this looks accidental, but it's all...
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Yeah, I made all this.
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Ed's growing gin saying in as natural a setting as possible.
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He spreads wild gin saying seeds onto the forest floor
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and lets nature do the rest.
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By growing plants like this, Ed is hoping to ease demand
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on the truly wild gin saying.
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I could dig this root up and show you there's no difference
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than the roots that's coming out of the wild.
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Ed's also part of a growing number of gin saying hunters turned
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gin saying stewards.
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He says he took too much wild gin saying when he was younger.
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And now he wants to give back.
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And that involves more than just sowing seeds.
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So, and I use this as our teaching area.
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Ed regularly invites nearby schools to bring students to his farm.
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And within these fertile young minds,
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Ed plants ideals of working in harmony with mother nature.
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He teaches children how to grow and harvest gin saying sustainably.
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The single most important lesson,
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leave the root in the ground.
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Instead, pick the leaves.
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The top is what we want to get people into.
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And it's big medicine.
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It has the same value as the root.
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It's just everybody's always dug the root.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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So there's really no need to dig as many roots as...
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That's what we're trying to teach.
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To be more sustainable.
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Research shows that gin saying leaves and berries
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have the same medicinal powers as the roots.
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Yeah, you need more leaves to equal a root.
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But they grow back every year.
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But when you dig a root, it's gone forever.
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And Ed is hoping future generations will understand the trade-off.
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Because he wants to see wild American gin saying
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stick around for a long time to come,
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as medicine, a source of income,
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and a vital part of the ecosystem.
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But as with many natural resources,
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there's a tension between protecting it and profiting from it.
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Do you see a time when
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wild American gin saying could be sustainable?
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In the environment.
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I'd like to say yes.
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I think it's going to be here for a while yet,
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but it's getting dug out.
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I think a gin is the reason
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that if we do not protect it,
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then they will become extinct.
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Like in China, you can no longer find a single wild point.
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But unlike in Asia,
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there's still wild gin saying
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left in American forests.
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It's not too late to protect and conserve it.
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With smart stewardship,
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wild American gin saying
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and the communities who depend on it
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can thrive from millennia to come.
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We needed to conserve these valuable resources,
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so not only our generation can enjoy these resources,
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our children, the future generations
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can continue to benefit
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from these important resources.
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You've been listening to SideDor,
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a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
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To learn more about wild American gin saying,
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check out our newsletter.
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You can subscribe at s-i.edu slash SideDor.
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You can also see some photos
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from our hunting adventures with June
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and our visit to Ed and Carol's farm.
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We'll also share a link to Folklife's ongoing project,
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American Gin Seng, local knowledge, global roots.
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For helping with this episode,
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we want to thank Ed and Carol Daniels,
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Betty Balainis, Arlene Reiniger,
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June Wen, Shavan Stars, and Leslie Stark.
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Our podcast team is James Morrison, Natalie Boyd,
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Ann Kananon, Caitlin Schaefer,
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Tammy O'Neill, Jess Sotic,
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Lara Koch, and Sharon Bryant.
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Episoded artwork is by Dave Leonard.
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Extra support comes from Jason and Jennifer at PRX.
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Our show is Mixed by Taric Fuda.
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Our theme song and episode music are by BrighmastersCylinder.
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If you want to sponsor our show,
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please email sponsorship at PRX.org.
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I'm your host, Lizzie Peabody.
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Thanks for listening.
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Before I forget, you mentioned a man route.
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What is a man route?
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It has the characteristics of a man.
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You can see the shoulders, the head, the arms, the legs,
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and especially the male penis.
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Oh, really?
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Yes.
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It has to have a penis?
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Yes.
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And that's the true man route.
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Are there any women routes?
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Probably a lot more than the men.
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Oh.
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So they're not as valued.
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Oh.
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Sorry.
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Man, even a small vegetable sculpture of a man
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is worth more than a sculpture of a woman.
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I did not say that.
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I'm just telling about the man route.
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From PRX.
Topics Covered
American Jinsang
wild American Jinsang
Jinsang benefits
herbal medicine
Smithsonian podcast
energy boost
Appalachian Mountains
Jinsang trade history
Green Gold
Jinsang cultivation
conservation efforts
Jinsang extinction
natural remedies
Jinsang market demand
Jinsang recipes
Jinsang medicinal properties