A healthy herbaceous crop growing under forest shade. Sugar maples, ash and American beech are ideal trees. Where it occurs on other people's property, wildcrafting is very difficult to monitor. Collectors work within the concealment of the forest where no one is watching. A woodlot may be visited by several independent wildcrafters.
Temptations are likely high to take the best specimens of the wild plants they find.
If they don't take the best plants, someone else will. Degradation in the health of wild plant populations will result if the best specimens are always removed and the inferior plants are left behind. This practice is called high-grading. Under high collection pressure, each wildcrafter would select their crop from the poorer quality plants that previous wildcrafters have chosen not to take. Forest farming using managed gardens is conducive for sustainable crop production.