Ginseng's flowers, on the other hand, are pink and its fruit, a small berry, is red. The leaves are compound, digitate, oval and thin. Some say the leaf resembles the human hand, thus the common name five fingers. Ginseng's roots are 5-6 cm long, grayish white to amber yellow. The surface is wrinkled and furrowed.
Rings are transverse wrinkles that appear from the shrinking of the root.
However, since ginseng produces only one aerial shoot for each growing season, the number of stem scars on the rhizome may also be used for establishing the age of the plant. Ginseng is a very long lived plant. The life span of ginseng plants has been reported to be from thirty to three hundred years old. Fork shaped roots with many annular circular wrinkles or scars on the root stock, or rhizome have the greatest value. The closer the resemblance of the root is to the human body, the greater it is thought of as having associative signature.