Most medicinal plants in trade are picked wild, and labels rarely tell you

Key takeaways

• The wildlife trade group TRAFFIC estimates that 60% to 90% of the roughly 3,000 medicinal and aromatic plant species in international trade are gathered from the wild¹.
• More than 98% of commercial black cohosh came from wild plants, and in Forest Service experiments, leaf area and stem counts in heavily dug plots were 80% to 90% lower after the third year of digging².
• As of August 2026, United Plant Savers lists eight “Critical” plants, including false unicorn and lady’s slipper orchids, that it says shouldn’t be wild-harvested or bought, apart from research and traditional Indigenous use³.
• In a 2024 CITES study of online listings for 15 regulated medicinal plants, fewer than 1% of ads mentioned CITES or any permit⁷.
• Cultivated sources are the safest bet for at-risk herbs; for wild ones, look for FairWild certification and know that USDA Organic sets no numeric harvest limit⁸¹¹.

Picture more than a million kilograms of roots pulled from the woods of the eastern United States. That was the black cohosh harvest over just nine years, 1997 through 2005². No other medicinal plant tracked by the American Herbal Products Association, the herb industry’s trade group, topped it².

Almost none of it was farmed. More than 98% of the black cohosh sold commercially came from wild populations².

U.S. Forest Service scientists wanted to know what that digging does to a forest. They removed set shares of black cohosh from test plots in Appalachian woods and watched what grew back². The answer: the plant can handle light, occasional harvest, but not heavy or repeated digging².

Black cohosh is not an odd case. Most medicinal plants sold around the world still come from the wild¹. No labeling standard requires a product to say so, and a TRAFFIC expert told the news site Mongabay that many companies don’t know either¹⁴.

This guide shows which herbs are under pressure, what the rules and certifications cover, and how to buy and gather in a way that leaves plants for the next generation.

Most medicinal plants in trade still come from the wild

In 2018, TRAFFIC, a group that tracks the trade in wild plants and animals, published a global overview of wild plant ingredients¹. Its estimates:

• People have recorded medicinal or aromatic uses for roughly 30,000 plant species¹.
• Around 3,000 of those species are sold across borders. Most of them, an estimated 60% to 90%, are gathered in the wild¹.
• Reported global trade in medicinal plants alone topped $3 billion in 2015, roughly triple the 1999 figure, and TRAFFIC calls that an undercount¹.
• Scientists have rated just 7% of these species for the Red List kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s main extinction-risk tally. Among the rated species, one in five is threatened¹.

The United States sits on both ends. It ranks among the top five exporters and the top five importers of medicinal plants¹.

Demand also changes how plants are gathered. TRAFFIC points to heavy machinery now used to pull wild licorice root, as more intensive methods replace traditional ones¹.

Keep this in proportion. A 2024 report for the treaty that governs wildlife trade noted published findings that medicinal plants, overall, are less likely to face conservation threats⁷. The trouble concentrates in particular species, often slow-growing ones harvested for their roots.

Roots are the hardest harvest to make sustainable

When you pick a leaf or flower, the plant can grow more. When you dig a root, you take the part the plant needs to survive and spread.

The Forest Service black cohosh trials show how fine the margin is. Researchers removed either one-third or two-thirds of the plants in a plot²:

• Plots that lost a third of their plants for two years looked about the same as undug plots².
• Pushing either dial too far hurt. A third year of light digging caused significant declines, and so did a second year of heavy digging².
• After the third year, leaf area and stem counts were 65% to 80% lower in the lighter-harvest plots and 80% to 90% lower in the heavy ones².
• When digging ended, the gap didn’t close for at least two more years². Projections put leaf area back to normal in roughly four to seven years. Stem numbers, though, showed little or no sign of rebounding².

Stems that don’t come back suggest few new plants are taking root. The scientists suggested that taking no more than about a third of a stand, or digging no more than two years in a row, followed by rest and monitoring, might be sustainable at their Virginia site².

Goldenseal is slower still. It takes four to six years to reach flowering age, and it spreads mainly by buds on its roots⁴. United Plant Savers cites a 2000 analysis showing that close to half of Ohio’s known goldenseal populations had vanished⁴.

And much of the picture is unknown. Forest Service researchers note that in Appalachia, apart from ginseng, the size of the medicinal plant harvest is largely unmeasured¹³.

Which North American herbs are under the most pressure

United Plant Savers is a nonprofit that tracks native medicinal plants. Its current Species At-Risk List, first posted in December 2024 and updated in August 2026, sorts plants into three tiers³:

Tier	What it means	Examples
Critical (8 plants)	Don’t harvest from the wild or buy, except for research that helps the plant or traditional use by Indigenous communities connected to it	False unicorn, lady’s slipper orchids, trillium (beth root), peyote, sundew, Venus flytrap3
At-Risk (34 plants)	Use cultivated plants whenever possible; any wild harvest should be small, monitored and legal	Black cohosh, blue cohosh, bloodroot, goldenseal, goldthread, osha, lomatium, slippery elm, wild yam, Oregon root (Berberis), echinacea, American ginseng, white sage3
In Review (7 plants)	Being considered for listing; use with caution	Arnica, chaga, eyebright, lobelia, Solomon’s seal, wild cherry, skunk cabbage3

The group stresses that it isn’t calling for a ban on these herbs. Its goal is to keep declining plants abundant³.

Our echinacea, ginseng and white sage articles tell those plants’ stories and cover their rules.

Goldenseal shows the scale of demand. From 1999 to 2010, companies answering the American Herbal Products Association’s tonnage survey reported an average of about 63,800 pounds of dried wild goldenseal root a year⁴. United Plant Savers multiplies that by roughly 500 roots to the pound and gets more than 31 million plants a year⁴. The survey counts only companies that took part, so treat this as a rough size, not a census.

The plant is rated Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and is listed as endangered in seven states, including Maine, Georgia and Minnesota⁴. Canada’s CITES scientific authority reports only 28 known goldenseal populations, all small and isolated in southwestern Ontario, and Canada doesn’t allow wild goldenseal to be exported at all⁵.

What CITES protects, and where it falls short

CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, controls trade across borders for listed plants and animals. Goldenseal joined its Appendix II, the tier for species that need trade controls to avoid decline, on September 18, 1997⁶.

A 1999 notice from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service explained how that worked at the time. Goldenseal root leaving the country needed an export permit, and each shipment had to pass an inspector at a port chosen by the Agriculture Department⁶. The listing then covered live plants and roots, but not manufactured products such as powders, pills, extracts or teas⁶.

Don’t assume that exemption still holds. CITES later amended goldenseal’s permit rules, and Canada’s finding, revised in 2014, says export permits cover roots whole, in parts or powdered⁵. Check current rules before you ship or import any form.

CITES has a bigger blind spot online. For a 2024 report, the CITES Secretariat scanned the internet for 15 regulated medicinal and aromatic plants⁷. It found about 68.6 million hits. It judged that roughly 7.5 million might be sales ads, and that 3.5 million to 4 million of those would need permits⁷.

Fewer than 1% of the ads mentioned CITES or any permit⁷. The report also noted that sellers often use common or foreign-language names, which makes checking harder⁷.

The same study offers perspective on scale. From 2010 to 2022, about 95 million kilograms of 78 CITES-listed medicinal and aromatic species moved in commercial trade⁷. Wild sources made up about 54% of that weight, and just 12 species accounted for about 98% of wild exports⁷.

Two labels cover wild harvests, and both have limits

FairWild. The FairWild Standard is a certification written specifically for wild-collected plants. Version 3.0 launched in December 2023 and covers wild plants, fungi, lichens and seaweed⁸. It has 7 principles and 24 criteria grouped into three themes⁸⁹:

• Ecological: the harvest should support the survival of the collected species and leave the area no worse off⁹.
• Social: collectors’ human rights and customary rights are respected, deals are fair, and their communities benefit⁹.
• Business: the trade is legal and run responsibly⁹.

Species judged high risk face extra requirements⁹. By FairWild’s own count, 72 species were certified by the end of 2024, 13 of them added that year, with operators in 29 countries and more than 11,500 collectors¹⁰. Those are the foundation’s figures; its summary doesn’t say whether anyone outside checked them. One more disclosure: TRAFFIC helped develop the standard and hosts its secretariat, so its recommendations to look for FairWild come from a close partner¹.

USDA Organic for wild crops. Organic rules have covered wild harvests since 2000¹¹. Federal guidance requires a defined harvest area with no prohibited chemicals for at least three years¹¹. The harvester’s plan must include a map, a monitoring system, a list of rare or endangered species in the area, collector training and records of how much was taken¹¹.

What the guidance doesn’t set is a number. It gives no harvest rate or regrowth target, and the presence of endangered species doesn’t automatically disqualify a site¹¹. In our reading, it also says nothing about collectors’ pay or working conditions¹¹.

Label or claim	What it checks	What it doesn’t
FairWild certified	Harvest planning for the species, collectors’ rights, fair dealing, legality89	Impact figures come from FairWild itself; only certified species and operators are covered810
USDA Organic, wild crop	No prohibited chemicals for 3 years; harvest plan, monitoring and records11	No numeric harvest limit; pay and labor not addressed11
“Cultivated” or “farm-grown”	Nothing on its own; it’s a seller’s claim	Ask which farm, and where
CITES permit	Legal export of a listed species6	Rarely visible to shoppers, especially online7

Broad phrases such as “sustainably sourced” or “ethically wildcrafted” need proof behind them. Our articles on sustainability claims and greenwashing explain what those words must show.

The people who know these plants best should share in the benefits

Wild harvesting is also a livelihood. In Namibia, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 harvesters rely on devil’s claw, one of TRAFFIC’s “Wild Dozen” heavily traded wild plants, as a major or only source of income, Mongabay reported in 2020¹⁴. In Nepal’s mountains, one study found commercial herb gathering supplied nearly 58% of household income¹⁴.

That cuts against a simple boycott. Refusing all wild herbs could take income from harvesters who gather carefully. Our view is that the better lever is paying for traceable, fairly priced, well-managed harvests. TRAFFIC’s recommendations point the same way: full traceability and more value reaching producers¹.

Indigenous communities often hold the deepest knowledge of these plants. United Plant Savers carves out an exception to its strictest tier for traditional use by Indigenous communities connected to the plants³. FairWild’s standard requires respect for collectors’ customary rights and benefits for their communities⁹. Our article on traditional knowledge covers the treaties that ask who should benefit when that knowledge is used.

For many natural-health readers, care for plants is the heart of the practice. Herbal traditions have always depended on the plants being there next season. Buying with that in mind honors both the plant and the people who first learned to use it.

Rules for gathering on public land

If you forage, the rules depend on where you stand. A North Carolina Extension guide from 2025 sums up the basics: you need a permit to harvest any plant you plan to sell, and harvesting plants in wilderness areas and national parks is prohibited¹².

National forests set their own limits. On Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest, for example¹⁵:

• No one may collect endangered, threatened or sensitive species.
• Permit holders may take no more than 30% of any separate patch when removing whole plants, and no more than 10% of the leaves from any one plant.
• For species that grow only along streams, root digging is capped at 10 plants per permit.

Some plants have their own rules. Digging ginseng has been banned in North Carolina’s Nantahala and Pisgah national forests since 2022 because so few plants remain¹².

Buy and harvest responsibly: a checklist

This checklist is our own, built from the sources above.

Questions to ask a seller

• Is this plant cultivated or wild-harvested? If cultivated, which farm or region?
• If wild, who harvested it, where, and under what permit or plan?
• Is it FairWild certified or certified organic as a wild crop? Can you show the certificate?
• For goldenseal sold across borders, does the supplier hold CITES export papers⁶?
• How do harvesters get paid, and does any money go back to their communities?

Buy only cultivated, or skip

• Skip entirely: plants in United Plant Savers’ Critical tier, such as false unicorn, lady’s slipper and trillium³.
• Choose cultivated: goldenseal, black cohosh, bloodroot, slippery elm, osha and other At-Risk herbs. United Plant Savers urges cultivated forms whenever possible³⁴.
• Be cautious: In Review plants such as arnica, chaga and lobelia³.

A wildcrafting code for home foragers

• Get permission or a permit first, and learn the local rules¹²¹⁵.
• Never take a listed endangered, threatened or sensitive species¹⁵.
• Take far less than the legal limit. The Cherokee National Forest caps whole-plant removal at 30% of a patch, and the black cohosh trials suggest even a third can harm a stand if repeated²¹⁵.
• Prefer leaves and flowers over roots. Leave root harvests for plants you’ve grown yourself.
• Don’t return to the same patch year after year. The black cohosh plots needed years of rest².
• Grow your own. In the wild, goldenseal lives under a mature forest canopy that casts about 60% to 80% shade, so look for a similar spot, and be patient⁴. In North Carolina, people who grow and sell protected plants need state permits¹².

What the evidence shows

Claim	Evidence rating	What it rests on
Black cohosh stands can withstand heavy, repeated digging	Evidence says no, or unsafe	Multi-year Forest Service field experiments showed steep losses2
Removing about a third, then resting the stand, can be sustainable	Promising but early	One study site; authors call for monitoring2
FairWild certification improves wild plant populations	Not enough evidence	The only impact figures we found come from FairWild itself10
USDA Organic wild-crop status guarantees a sustainable harvest level	Evidence says no, or unsafe	Guidance sets no numeric harvest limit11
Online sellers reliably follow CITES rules	Evidence says no, or unsafe	Fewer than 1% of ads mentioned permits7

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

Most medicinal plants in trade are still gathered from the wild, and for a handful of slow-growing roots that harvest has outpaced what forests can replace. Black cohosh and goldenseal show the pattern: high demand, heavy reliance on wild plants and slow recovery.

You don’t need to give up these herbs. Buy cultivated forms of at-risk plants, look for FairWild or wild-crop organic certification, ask sellers where and how a plant was gathered, and forage lightly and legally. Those choices keep the plants, and the people who depend on them, in the picture.

Related reading

• Echinacea came from the prairie and barely touched colds in big trials
• American ginseng eased cancer fatigue, but a review found a quarter of products adulterated
• How to appreciate white sage without taking, since yours may have been poached
• What “sustainably sourced” has to prove, and what it doesn’t
• An ancient recipe led to a Nobel prize, and new treaties ask who benefits

Sources

1. TRAFFIC. Jenkins M, Timoshyna A, Cornthwaite M. “Wild at Home: An Overview of the Harvest and Trade in Wild Plant Ingredients.” TRAFFIC, June 2018. traffic.org
2. Small CJ, Chamberlain JL. “Experimental Harvest and Regrowth in Appalachian Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa) Populations: Implications for Sustainable Management of a Medicinal Forest Herb.” Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, 2018;145(2):109-120 (USDA Forest Service copy). research.fs.usda.gov
3. United Plant Savers. “Species At-Risk List.” Published December 16, 2024, updated August 26, 2026. unitedplantsavers.org
4. United Plant Savers. “Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis).” Updated August 25, 2026. unitedplantsavers.org
5. Environment and Climate Change Canada, CITES Scientific Authority. “Goldenseal: Non-Detriment Finding.” Government of Canada, 2007, revised 2014. canada.ca
6. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Public Meeting on Implementation of the CITES Listing of Goldenseal.” Federal Register, 64 FR 20320, April 26, 1999. fws.gov
7. CITES Secretariat. “Trade in Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Species.” PC27 Doc. 32.1 Add., 27th meeting of the Plants Committee, Geneva, July 2024. cites.org
8. FairWild Foundation. “The FairWild Standard 3.0: Simplifying Complexity and Expanding Inclusion to Wild Plants, Algae, and Fungi.” FairWild, December 19, 2023. fairwild.org
9. FairWild Foundation. “About Us: An Overview of How the Standard 3.0 Works.” FairWild, accessed October 2026. fairwild.org
10. FairWild Foundation. “FairWild Impact Report 2024” (summary). FairWild, 2025. fairwild.org
11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, National Organic Program. “NOP 5022: Wild Crop Harvesting” (guidance). USDA, issued May 9, 2011. ams.usda.gov
12. Baker M. “Stewarding Protected Plants in Our Forests.” N.C. Cooperative Extension, Buncombe County Center, August 20, 2025, updated February 19, 2026. buncombe.ces.ncsu.edu
13. Kruger S, Chamberlain J. “New Methods for Estimating Non-Timber Forest Product Output: An Appalachian Case Study.” USDA Forest Service, Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-931, 2015. research.fs.usda.gov
14. Kimbrough L. “The Wild Plants in Your Pantry: Where Did They Come From?” Mongabay, July 2020. news.mongabay.com
15. USDA Forest Service, Cherokee National Forest. “Non-Wood Forest Products.” Accessed October 2026. fs.usda.gov