Foraging rewards memory more than almost any other outdoor activity, because mushrooms fruit in the same places year after year, in roughly the same weeks, when the weather cooperates. The problem is that human memory for forest locations is poor and gets worse over a winter.
A logged map fixes that, and it takes a few seconds per find.
What to record
- Position — the single most valuable field, and the one you cannot reconstruct later.
- Date, because timing repeats more reliably than quantity.
- A photo of the find in place, including the surroundings.
- Habitat notes: tree species nearby, ground cover, how wet the spot is.
- Quantity, roughly, so you can tell a good year from a poor one at the same spot.
What the map tells you after a season or two
Patterns emerge that are invisible in a single autumn: which slopes produce first, how many days after heavy rain a spot becomes worth visiting, which patches held up in a dry year.
It also stops the most annoying kind of loss — finding a good patch, being certain you will remember it, and then walking past it the following year without recognising anything.
Logging what you did not identify
Unidentified finds are worth saving too. A photographed, positioned, dated find you could not name in October is often easy to name in February with a book, and next season you know exactly where to go back and look again.
Over time these become the most educational entries in the log, because each one is a question you eventually answered yourself.
Building your map
- 1
Save every find
Photo, date and position, whether or not you identified it.
- 2
Add habitat notes
Trees, ground and moisture — the details you will not remember in spring.
- 3
Review before the season
Last year is the best guide to where and when to start this year.
- 4
Revisit and update
Note the years a patch produced nothing; that is information too.
Free to download on iPhone & iPad
Frequently asked questions
Are my find locations private?
Your finds are your own log. Foragers guard good spots, and the app is built to be a personal record.
Does the map work without a signal?
Position is recorded on the device, and the feature guide and library work offline — which matters, because forests rarely have coverage.