*Not American ginseng. This is Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia).
Recently, I thought about a forest I visited 8 years ago, and I wondered if two American ginseng plants were still growing there.
To get an answer, I decided to visit the forest and see for myself.
The only problem was that I never dropped a pin on a map, and I wasn’t sure exactly where I found the plants 8 years ago.
But after an hour of intense searching under a canopy of tulip tree and red maple, I finally found them.
“What luck!” I thought to myself.
Interestingly, I was also surprised to see quite a few other plants that looked like ginseng. Some of these lookalikes were even growing right next to the real thing.
This made me wonder: If I’m getting confused out here, I’ll bet other people are too.
So, I decided to film a video breaking down how to spot a few ginseng lookalikes, as well as how to identify true American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) in the wild.