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Wangchou Yang walked through his outdoor garden booth at the Hmongtown Marketplace on St. Paul's Como Avenue, gently touching leaves and stems.
He plucked a stem from a small plant, rubbed it between his fingers and inhaled its aroma. The stem, steeped into a tea, can help with stomach issues, he said. Bending slowly, he took a leaf from a different plant and rubbed it on his opposite hand. This one, he said, helps with skin irritation.
For the past 20 years, Yang and his family have built a reputation in the Hmong community for their vast collection of medicinal plants -- to treat ailments like high blood pressure, headaches, fever and rashes -- that they sell at their farmers market booth business, Hmong Specialty Plants & Herbs.
Knowledge of such plants has traditionally been a guarded secret in Hmong culture, a rare expertise that elders could charge $1,000 to share.
To the Yangs, that gatekeeping of the information has led to young Hmong people not knowing the history behind the medicinal plants.
With the input of 29-year-old daughter Tang Yang, the family is
modernizing its sales approach. Once only a face-to-face service, the Yangs now sell their products online and ship them, enabling the family to reach a wider audience of consumers interested in the multibillion-dollar market for plant extracts and herbal medicines.
Tang Yang also has been documenting her family's inventory and building a database of each plant's...