Although she\u2019d purchased them before at farmers\u2019 markets, it was Hall\u2019s first time harvesting ramps herself. It felt particularly significant to do so right beside the headwaters of the Delaware River, which supported the Nanticoke and Lenape tribes in pre-colonial times, she said. With her harvest, she made soups and stews, ramp butter to eat with a venison roast, and ramp salt that she\u2019ll share with relatives to strengthen her community\u2019s connection to the plant.<\/p>\n
The approach to harvesting that she saw at Delaware Valley Ramps echoes the practices central to Indigenous relationships with the natural world, she said. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, for example, advocate taking just the leaves so bulbs can continue to propagate.<\/p>\n
The gentle manipulation of a landscape can help a plant species feel more at home, encouraging it to grow into the space it\u2019s allowed, Hall explained, as long as one rule is always followed: \u201cNever deplete it to the point that it can\u2019t repopulate itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeanine Davis, an associate professor in horticultural science at North Carolina State University, has kept that principle in mind for more than 30 years, ever since a botanist in her state government asked for her help studying ramps as concerns grew about their declining population.<\/p>\n
Within a decade, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, straddling North Carolina and Tennessee, made ramp harvesting illegal; three national parks in West Virginia followed suit in 2022<\/a>. Although studies on the subject are scant, Burkhart said populations have diminished over time, but in Pennsylvania, at least, the issue is not overharvesting but the fact that favorable ramp habitats have been developed for other uses.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeday, if we continue doing this, we won\u2019t have ramps. It would be one more piece of the forest that\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Back when she started studying ramps, Davis said the general consensus was that they couldn\u2019t be cultivated, but she helped show they can indeed be grown, given the right conditions\u2014including slightly acidic, moist soil and sufficient shade. She\u2019s now researching how different harvest practices\u2014say, the number of leaves or portion of a bulb taken\u2014affect a population.<\/p>\n In addition to her work with the plants themselves, Davis has studied the role they play in the mountain communities that have celebrated ramps for generations. There, she said, they are \u201clike a spring tonic,\u201d rich in nutrients and minerals, including vitamins A and C. A 2000 study, she noted, found that thanks to their naturally high quantities of selenium, ramps have the potential to reduce cancer<\/a> in humans.<\/p>\n Davis remembers the \u201cmind-boggling\u201d volume of ramps she saw the first time she attended one of many annual festivals in Richwood, West Virginia, about 25 years ago. \u201cPickup truck after pickup truck full of them,\u201d she recalled. She was impressed by how the festival was truly a community effort, with the entire town seemingly involved in some way.<\/p>\n In time, though, as ramps gained broader popularity, \u201cWhat we\u2019d always thought of as a food for country people, hunters, and fishermen was suddenly a gourmet item,\u201d she said. Although she\u2019s enjoyed seeing more people appreciate the plant, its success poses a challenge for conservation efforts.<\/p>\n On Schwartz\u2019s property, ramps are part of a spring understory populated by fiddlehead ferns, morel mushrooms, and flowering trilliums and bloodroot\u2014the type of biological diversity that indicates a healthy forest ecosystem, according to James Chamberlain, a retired research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service who studied ramps for 25 years. Given the ramp\u2019s fickle growth habits, its presence in a landscape suggests a stable and supportive tree canopy and healthy soil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Steve Schwartz considers himself an accidental forager. Eighteen years ago, he bought a property in Equinunk, Pennsylvania, to gain access to the Delaware River\u2019s vaunted wild trout fishing. Then he discovered ramps growing abundantly on his property and has been selling them since 2008. (Photo credit: Ben Seal)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Chamberlain worries that ramps may soon go the way of ginseng, another plant once abundant in the Appalachians that he said has been \u201cgenetically extirpated from the forest\u201d by unsustainable harvest practices.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeday, if we continue doing this, we won\u2019t have ramps,\u201d Chamberlain said. \u201cIt would be one more piece of the forest that\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n However, a 2019 paper that Chamberlain co-authored in Biological Conservation<\/em> suggested wild cultivation and good stewardship practices could reverse that trend<\/a> in ginseng and other wild-harvested plants like ramps. He believes forest farming can be part of supporting the sustainability of ramps and other wild plants, when done right. But doing so requires careful and respectful management of a patch that allows it to sustain itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSharing an Ecosystem<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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