sang
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sang noun Ginseng, a perennial wild plant (Panax quinquefolium) whose roots are harvested mainly for export to East Asia, where an extract is a reputed cure-all, used especially to treat fatigue, loss of memory, depression, and impotence,. Most commonly known in the mountains as sang, the small, delicate plant has long been a source of income, and the lucrative hunting and harvesting of it in the wild has become regulated by both state and federal governments. [< Chinese jen2-shen1; DARE labels this usage “chiefly South Midland”]
1826 Royall Sketches These counties, remote from commerce and civilized life, confined to their everlasting hills of freezing cold, all pursuing the same employments, which consist in farming, raising cattle, making whiskey, (and drinking it,) hunting and digging sang, as they say, present a distinct republic of their own. 1892 Allen Cumberland Gap 249-50 Formerly digging "sang," as they call ginseng, was a general occupation. For this China was a great market. It has nearly all been dug out except in the wildest parts of the country, where entire families may still be seen “out sangin'." They took it into the towns in bags, selling it at a dollar and ten cents — perhaps a dollar and a half—a pound. This was mainly the labor of the women and the children, who went to work barefooted, amid briers and chestnut burs, copperheads and rattlesnakes. Indeed, the women prefer to go barefooted, finding shoes a trouble and constraint. It was a sad day for the people when the "sang" grew scarce. A few years ago one of the counties was nearly depopulated in consequence of a great exodus into Arkansas, whence had come the news that "sang" was plentiful. 1960 Price Root Digging in Appal 15 Ginseng (Panax quinquefolium), though virtually ignored as a cure in the United States, is collected for sale to the Chinese (90 per cent of current exports go to Hong Kong, 5 per cent to Malaya) and is the most valuable of all wild drug plants in the United States, either in dollar volume or in price per pound. Ginseng exports total more than 100,000 pounds a year, and current prices paid collectors are $12 to $16 per pound. The generic name Panax reflects the plant’s status as a panacea among the Chinese, who value the root for its gnarled and twisted appearance ... and for its frequent resemblance to the human body or its members. The discovery that American ginseng could be sold as a supplement to the native Chinese supply is credited to a Jesuit in Canada, early in the eighteenth century. It formed an important cash crop for the frontier farmer, who could sell it as a by-product of forest clearing. Ginseng is a sensitive herbaceous perennial that demands a rich mull soil and well-watered woodland shade. Through most of its range summer drought restricts it to north slopes and sheltered coves. 1984 Dykeman and Stokely At Home 57 A chief medicinal herb was an unusual wild plant known as ginseng. Called “sang” in mountain vernacular, its value lay in the manlike shape of its dual-pronged roots.