Deer love wild ginseng! So much so that they they are threatening the supply:

" An abundant deer population with a hearty appetite for American ginseng threatens the survival of the widely harvested medicinal plant, a study by West Virginia University biologists suggests.

Ginseng, a wild herb that inhabits eastern deciduous forests from Maine to Georgia, faces extinction within 100 years if foraging by deer continues at its current rate, James McGraw and Mary Ann Furedi report in Friday’s (Feb. 11) issue of Science, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Without more effective deer population control, ginseng and many other valuable understory herbs are likely to become extinct in the coming century,” the authors conclude.

American ginseng, or Panax quinquefolius, grows under forest canopies in well-drained, nutrient-rich soils. The plant consists of green leaves, red berries and gnarly roots whose touted medicinal qualities range from improving mental performance to being a cure-all.

Asians have sworn by these medicinal qualities for centuries, and the high demand for ginseng in that corner of the world has made it a cash crop in Appalachia. More than 10,000 West Virginians go into the woods each fall to find ginseng to sell; for some, the harvests provide an important income supplement. In 2002, more than 6,400 pounds of ginseng with a value exceeding $2 million were harvested in West Virginia, according to the state Division of Forestry’s Web site."