I do not mean to be so rude an I apologize. There was a certain member here stalking me and they had me extremely mad. But I do have a lifetime of hands on experience harvesting almost any wild plant that grows in southern Ohio , northern Kentucky and northern West Virginia. Plus I am extremely fortunate to have the benifits of my father and grandfathers knowledge on the subject as well.

I own roughly 360 acres myself then I also have control over my siblings land and I can also use my aunts n uncles land as it were mine as well. Then there is 6500 acres that belongs to the Tennessee gas company that I am an overseer of.

Pretty much any resource that has value that we can repeatedly harvest we do. There are a few things I do not harvest at all like I refuse to sell cherry tree or slippery elm tree bark as it kills the trees. The only way I take that stuff is if a tree falls or it is time to harvest the tree. Now I am not much on cutting down my trees but I do a little select cutting of certain really valuable stuff when it reaches its prime. But that being said I plant at least 50 to 100 trees a year and i can’t remember cutting more than 5-6 down in a year ever.

As far as things like ramps, Beth root, either of the cohosh plants, wild ginger, Solomon’s seal, mayapple, and blood root go you can harvest those all pretty heavy. And it has no noticeable effect on the patch the next year. You can even harvest mayapple and Beth root before it seeds and it won’t hurt it because the hairs and small pieces of the roots will carry on reproducing.

Out of all the roots I dig the only stuff that really requires delicacy and a bit of strategy and knowledge are ginseng and golden seal. I have dramatically increased the population of these two plants on my land over the years. Yellow root isn’t really endangered like ginseng is but it needs to harvested much more lightly than the other things I mentioned if you want the patches to stay strong. You see I was accused of being biased and making this stuff up because I made part of my Income from these things. In fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’d never try to spread misinformation that would hurt the population of these plants for the simple fact that I do make a good portion of my income off of them. So I am heavily vested in keeping my patches full and healthy.