NEW KIND OF `GOLD' FOUND IN PLANTS

BURFORDVILLE -- There's still gold in those hills if you know how to recognize wildflowers and plants.

These days, people are prospecting for golden seal, bloodroot, sassafras, snakeroot or, most prized of all, ginseng, which is expected to command a price of more than $225 per pound this season.

But even more mundane plants like golden seal, which is ground up and sold in capsule or liquid form as a palliative for ulcers or sore throat and even is used as an eye wash, can command $25-30 per pound for roots, as much as $4 per pound for leaves.

The gathering of roots and herbs is called wild crafting, and for most it's a family tradition. But with the increasing popularity of natural healing techniques, the wild crafters are finding a burgeoning market for their harvest.

A large shed near the spot where Highway 34 crosses the Whitewater River between Jackson and Burfordville houses the fur and hide company the Flannery family has run for more than 20 years. They also buy roots and herbs and dig for them themselves.

Their shed contains 100-pound barrels of brown and stringy dried golden seal root, and screens loaded with still-green drying tops. Eventually, all of this will be sold at auction to botanical or pharmaceutical companies.

Doug Flannery, an operating engineer like his father Bob, learned about digging for roots from his grandfather. The whole family, including Doug's mother Loyce, brother Tim and sister Joy, is involved.

Doug, whose wife Kay works in the physical therapy department at St. Francis Medical Center, doesn't use the herbs as medicine himself. But he says the people who taught him did.

"They dug it up and ate it," he said of ginseng. "I know of people who scrape it like a carrot and eat it."

He and Kay have made hundreds of dollars in an intense weekend of digging golden seal. But it's work, not a lark in the woods.

The plants must be found, dug up, brought home and washed. Foreign objects are picked out and the roots are put on a screen for ventilation.

At the current level of moisture content, each pound of dried golden seal root requires a harvest of 2 1/2 pounds.

The Flannerys do much of their buying around Christmas. "A lot of people wait until right before Christmas. They want to make Christmas money," he said.

Many of the diggers live far out in the countryside, places like Piedmont and Vulcan. "Those little towns aren't anything but a sawmill or a factory," he says.

While city dwellers short of money have few options, "Out here you can scratch up something out of the ground," Flannery says. "For a lot of people it's survival."

A good harvest of ginseng is better than that. Prized for its supposed energizing effect, much of the ginseng harvested in the United States is exported to China, where stores of the plant have been depleted by over-harvesting.

In Illinois, ginseng diggers must buy a license for $7.50, and the harvest is subject to state inspection. No license is yet required in Missouri. In both states, the ginseng season begins in September, after the plant has had a chance to seed.

Poachers are a problem. Flannery claims that some cross the Mississippi in boats from Illinois to hunt undetected in Trail of Tears State Park. Ginseng is known to grow in the park, but no harvesting is allowed.

Flannery carefully guards the whereabouts of his own ginseng patch out in the wild. He allows the plants to mature for years before harvesting.

Ginseng can be cultivated. A friend of Flannery's just planted 800 ginseng seedlings.

The Flannerys are the primary buyers of roots and herbs in the region surrounding Cape Girardeau. In Southern Illinois, Jonesboro-based Virginia and William Casey buy golden seal and other plants on behalf of a buyer who lives outside the area.

"We just put it in our back room," she said.

Darrell Schmieg, a junior high school social studies teacher who lives in Red Bud, Ill., north of Chester, also makes weekly forays through the southern counties looking for herbs and roots to buy.

"A lot of people I do business with are hunters," he said. "They see it while hunting."

Some of the herbs are used in research. "Sheep sorrel I buy in your area. They are using that in cancer research," Schmieg said.

Mayapple, he said, once was used in birth control pills. Mullein leaf, which looks much like domestic tobacco, is effective in treating sprains.

He suggests that anyone who wants to become involved in wild crafting should obtain the book "Missouri Wildflowers," published by the Missouri Department of Conservation.