Thread by @gauravsabnis

This weekend I got a tad excited at #OurWawar when I saw these. And funnily, it connects to this show!

Long time followers will know I was/am a big fan of #Elementary cos I thought it Was more like the original procedural stories than the unnecessarily complex Cumberbatch one. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Living in NYC added an extra layer of enjoyment to #Elementary cos they very truly genuinely made it an NYC show, using a lot of actual stuff, news, and other peculiarities of the region, that could not work in England. Very well written well researched episodes.

One of my favorite episodes, very much Arthur Conan Doyle DNA, had a Catskills element in it.

A dude has been killed. They can't figure out why. He doesn't have anything of value. In fact he was about to shut down a bankrupt business which has a lot of cheap forest land.

After the market mandatory couple of wrong leads, Sherlock by the end figures it out after visiting the Catskills land, which is supposed to be cheap, not worth killing someone over. Why the business partner has never been a suspect.

Sherlock recognizes American wild ginseng!

Despite the seemingly exclusive Chinese connection, ginseng was also a separate native species in what is today USA, and was used a lot by the Lenape and other first nations as medicine.

Wild American ginseng goes for about $1500/kilo (versus cultivated ginseng $50/kilo).

So the mystery in that elementary episode is solved when Sherlock sees that land is full of ginseng, probably worth a couple of million. The business partner did do it. After he made the same realization after visiting the seemingly useless land.

Cool plot, right?

I had looked up American ginseng after that and learned that the best conditions for it are well drained moderately sloping loam soil that faces North.

You know who owns well drained moderately sloping loam soil that faces North? This guy. 😁

Green is back at #OurWawar.

So the last couple of weeks I've been spending a lot of time trying to see if I can find wild ginseng lol and retire early. With plant ID apps.

This wasn't it. This is just regular Virginia creeper. No retirement yet.

There's a couple of factors that make ginseng hunting a legit hobby and even profession of its own. And most states including NY have strict regulations about harvesting wild ginseng on public lands if you come across it.

Not many things in the world cost $1500/kg.

The ginseng looks a lot like some 5 other plants (including the extremely common Virginia creeper) that are hardier so over 99% times, it's not ginseng.

Another thing is, deer love eating ginseng. And #ourwawar gets a lot of deer.

Possible we have em & they get eaten fast.

Btw I don't think there's any clinical evidence of ginseng having any real medical benefits. Just a nice flavor. But public seems to believe it is magical.

$1500/kg 😳😳

Is it a thing in India too, @theliverdr?

I'm not encouraging any extinction. Nor do I have any plans of harvesting the stuff even if I find it on my property. This thread is from a cool stuff perspective, not commercial. Any ginseng on my 4 acres is safe. Except from the deer. Who don't kill em.

https://twitter.com/nazani14/status/1668277516081979392?s=19

That retirement talk was just a joke. My whole deal with #OurWawar is to leave it as it is.

It would be so cool to find wild ginseng tho!

What we do plan to harvest are black walnuts, come fall. We have some 20 fully grown flowering black walnut trees😁
But just to clean em and distribute them among friends and family.

But yeah, the deer factor.

They love eating the ginseng leaves. But they don't pull out the root. But they do eat the leaves. And #OurWawar gets deer grazing literally everyday.

So there's a chance there's tons of ginseng root all over all our property, hehe.

Sidenote: In researching the history of our Catskills land, I learned that the first few white folks to live here would literally make a living off the land. Chop and sell fallen wood. Harvest & sell mushrooms, walnuts, acorns. Trap turkeys, hunt deer, catch fish, sell em.