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Medicinal understory herbaceous species cultivated under different light and soil conditions in maple forests in southern Québec, Canada

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Abstract

Many northern hardwood understory plants have medicinal properties but their cost of production under conventional cultivation practices is fairly high. Therefore wild harvesting continues putting the natural populations at risk. Their cultivation in a forest farming system seems a promising alternative. This study was aimed at assessing the impact of canopy opening and soil fertility on growth and active component production of four medicinal plants: black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), wild ginger (Asarum canadense), blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) and bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). Rhizome sections were planted in two sugar maple forests. Mortality and total leaf area were monitored during 3 years, while subplots were harvested at the end of the second year for biomass and active component analyses. Multiple regressions indicated that all species responded more to acidity related elements (pH, Al, Al + H, Fe, Zn) than to soil fertility (Ca, K, Mg, P, C/N, base saturation and cation exchange capacity). This suggests that adjusting the pH by liming could be appropriate. Growth increased with irradiance, except for blue cohosh, indicating that forest openings could also be part of an appropriate forest management plan for their cultivation. While active component concentrations of rhizomes and roots increased in conditions that negatively affected growth, such as low pH, soil fertility or light availability, their total active component content exhibited responses that were similar to those of the growth variables. Thus, it seems that soil and light conditions that favour the growth of these medicinal plants also favour their total yield in active components.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the Goyer and Brunelle families, who are the owners of the forests where our studies were conducted. Thanks to Dr. Paul Anger for allowing us to use his laboratory equipment to carry out the analyses of active components, to Isabelle Nadeau and Souad Bouchiba for their technical support, to Amélie Collard and Olivier Larouche for their field and laboratory assistance, and to William Parsons for English editing and revision. We would like to thank the Laboratoire de diagnostique en phytoprotection for identifying the species of insect larvae on black cohosh leaves. This study was funded by the Conseil de Recherches en Pêche et en Agroalimentaire du Québec (CORPAQ) and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) through the Actions concertées program.

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  1. Département de biologie and Centre d’étude de la forêt, Université Laval, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Julie Naud & Line Lapointe

  2. Département de phytologie, Université Laval, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Alain Olivier

  3. Centre de Recherche et de Développement en Horticulture, Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC, J3B 3E6, Canada

    André Bélanger

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  1. Julie Naud
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Correspondence to Line Lapointe.

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Naud, J., Olivier, A., Bélanger, A. et al. Medicinal understory herbaceous species cultivated under different light and soil conditions in maple forests in southern Québec, Canada. Agroforest Syst 79, 303–326 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-009-9262-6

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