A friend asked me to take a bag of seng to the local buyers for him.
I took it in and the buyer dumped the bag on the scales, looked it over, said it was "tame" seng and that he did not want it.
Now I'm not a digger but it looks like all the other seng I see around here.
Here's a pic with a D cell battery.
What's wrong with it?

If im not mistaken "Tame" means not wild but cultivated ginseng. Not as sought after as true wild ginseng. The large cuts make me think it wasnt handled the best when dug either imo.

poor looking ginseng, even for woods grown. To many pieces broken into and looks poorly handled. I have a good market on nice woods grown seng.

Should I tell my buddy to pitch it or is it still sellable?

Someone would buy it...dont expect even close to half what regular ginseng is goin for tho.

It is probably worth something, but not much. I don't know if it would even bring 50.00 a lb. Probably less because of all the broken pieces. It is hard to tell just what that stuff looks like through those pictures.

it does look pretty roughed up

I know absolutely nothing about ginseng, but, I'm wondering why your friend asked you to take it to the buyer instead of taking it himself. Possibly a little suspicious?

x2 Id ask him where he got it? seems fishy enough someone putting are that hard work into finding it and then askin someone else to sell. And then it turns out to be cultivated seng. Either grew it or stole it from someone who does. imo

I did wonder about that. I don't do roots and I wondered why he would ask me to make the sale.

UPDATE: I went through the roots and several look like they were punched with a fork. I called my friend and asked what happened and the story makes sense if you know the guy. I've known him since grade school.
The guy has a different view on life. He quit school in the 8th grade because he was 16 and tired of school. The best I can describe his point of view is that he thinks of HIMSELF as a nice guy and that everything he does is fine because he's a nice guy. If he gets in trouble its because someone else was jealous of what he was doing, not because he was wrong.
Now he says a friend of his asked him to go along and dig some seng. He was promised that there was a huge patch and they would both make a killing. They spent a couple hours walking through some hills and fields in western Indiana and then walked into a large patch of seng on a hillside. They worked fast and dug everything there.
Now my friend hasn't really dug roots for as long as I have known him, but he does sometimes have roots to sell from somewhere. He says that after they dug up the patch they walked out and went to his friends house to split the take. He agreed to a 2 for 1 split as the other guy found the patch. All the other guy told him was to make sure it dried out good. As near as I can tell the other guy gave him all the damaged roots and all the little fine shreds to make up his share. My friend then broke them up smaller to help them dry and even poked some holes in them as well.
And then he mentioned that he got busted a few years ago for having roots out of season, or trying to sell roots out of season, something like that so he thought I wouldn't have any trouble like he might.
He is a real winner.
He's one of those guys you had to grow up around to put up with him. He's not a bad guy, but you have to be careful what he talks you into. He just doesn't see things the way most of us do.

That's a shame...probably would have been some nice 'seng if handled correctly.

He sounds more like an aquaintance then a friend. I would avoid all contact with him, since it sounds like he would be willing to have you go to jail to possibly make some money for him.

Keith

If that's only 1/3 of the harvest.....anyone ever find a patch of wild seng that produces THAT much? Seems like that is a lot of roots....sounds like the other guy knowingly robbed someone's "woods grown" patch and wanted a helper to get in and out ASAP...

Could be wrong...I don't know a ton about seng and haven't found any big patches...maybe its not far fetched to get 3x that amount of roots from a wild patch...?


Either way I wouldn't touch anything of that guys anymore....could very well have got you jammed up...

There is a difference between wild seng and tame sang. Wild seng has growth rings that really stick out, like the rings of a tree. This stuff in the picture has no growth rings, thats how you tell the difference.

V3n you need to tell me your buddies name....

Sounds like we found out who's seng patch was robbed..

so ive been told, "tame" sang doesn't produce the rings on it like wild sang does. they all get the stem scars, the those rings that people talking about leaving a little dirt in is basically the defining difference. never dealt with tame sang, but that's just what ive heard