A Gram-reaction-positive, rod-shaped, non-motile, non-spore-forming bacterium (strain BX5-10(T)) was isolated from the soil of a ginseng field on Baekdu Mountain in Jilin district, China. The taxonomic position of this bacterium was determined in an investigation based on a polyphasic approach. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain BX5-10(T) was shown to belong to the family Nocardioidaceae and to be most closely related to Nocardioides plantarum NCIMB 12834(T) (96.5% sequence similarity), Nocardioides dokdonensis KCTC 19309(T) (96.2%) and Nocardioides fonticola NAA-13(T) (95.1%). Strain BX5-10(T) was characterized chemotaxonomically as having ll-2,6-diaminopimelic acid in its cell-wall peptidoglycan, MK-8(H(4)) as the predominant menaquinone and C(18:1)ω9c, C(16:0) and C(17:1)ω8c as its major fatty acids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 70.3 mol%. The novel strain could be differentiated genotypically and phenotypically from all recognized species of the genus Nocardioides. Based on the results of the phylogenetic analyses and the genotypic and phenotypic data, a novel species, Nocardioides ginsengagri sp. nov., is proposed. The type strain is BX5-10(T) (=KCTC 19467(T)=DSM 21362(T)).