The Arnica montana harvesting activity is undertaken only by the locals harvesting not only from their own meadows but also from meadows outside their property. The harvesters are firstly trained by using some special materials concerning the sustainability of this process (for details see Training). According to the studies performed in the area, the species has been collected for over 30 years, but the sustainable harvesting issue was highlighted only by Arnica Project and Ecoherba – Bioflora Apuseni System. In the past, the harvested material had poor quality and was low priced. At this moment, as result of training activities and quality control, the fresh harvested material has been substantially improved comparative to the one in the past and the harvesters get a fair price for the delivered kilogram. In order to obtain a good quality material, the inflorescences must be harvested only on sunny weather after the dew dried out. There are harvested only bloomed inflorescences with very short peduncle, the old flower heads and buds aren’t accepted. It’s recommended to leave at least one flower head on each plant in order to ensure the species perpetuation. The fresh material is harvested in textile bags which allow the air flow, thus heating inside the fresh flower heads bulk is avoided. The harvesting activity must stop before the dew sets in.

Inflorescences harvested this way are delivered either directly to the processing centre, either to collecting points. The collecting points are set depending on the area and number of arnica habitats in a certain area. In the same time, the resource quantity in these habitats is taken into consideration in order to reduce the time of harvesting of inflorescences in the field until the deliver is done to the collecting point, respectively to space out the quantity of inflorescences sent to the processing centre. The fresh material is transported to the collecting point the day it was picked up, the flower heads being checked, sorted and weighed by collectors, who are purchasing only the best quality. In other areas, collecting the fresh material is done directly in the field due to the long distance to the collecting point. At the collecting points, the harvested flower heads are set in cases and, afterwards, transported to the processing centre.