There's been a little bit of nonsense in my twitter timeline about this app here. A mushroom identification app, where you allegedly point your phone at a mushroom and the phone tells you what the mushroom is. Now thats a great idea and I love it. I don't for a heartbeat think it'll work, but just because something can't be done (yet) doesn't mean I don't love the concept. But will it work? Well, no, as things stand this actually unnerves me a bit.
There is in fairness some advice on the page about this app - get a nice, big picture of the mushroom without any fingers in it. But I am a little worried that when I click on 'support' I'm sent to a tumblr. The three reviews I can see are damning.
Mushrooming is great fun and a marvellous way to get superb ingredients for free, and if you step into it bit by bit, species by species, taking advice where you need it and consulting the books where thats handy, its not as hard as all that. But it isn't just a visual thing - yes, there are species where a keen-eyed forager will tell you what something is likely to be from a car going past at 40mph (although on one occasion that wasn't a giant puffball, it was an actual football), but actually to confirm an identification can be more challenging. Those of us who've been foraging for a while have all had fuzzy photos of a mushroom from above sent to us, and had to reply that yeah, it might be (x) but we can't tell from that image. We need to see the top, the underside and the stipe (stem), we might want to know where it was growing, how big it is, what it smells like, what it feels like, whether it changes colour when you cut it, etc. One picture? That will rarely be enough.
Take the yellow stainer mushroom. Quite a varied appearance, but generally very like a horse mushroom - there are samples you'll find which are essentially indistinguishable until you pick one and bruise it, or give it a good sniff. A picture isn't enough. Take the whole Russula genus - there are single species that can be four different colours, and after a rainstorm many different species represent a serious challenge to identify, requiring chemical tests (or, sometimes, a taste test). I promise you, you're not fully differentiating them from any photograph.
There are assorted other apps and sites that purportedly share sites and info, and I guess thats cool if its your kind of thing. Its been done various ways - there are GPS related apps where you share sites of wild food, there are shared online maps. And yeah, ok, if thsts your thing. Fine. It isn't mine though - and many experienced foragers will, I'm sure, share the same reserve (which is why I think the Cambridge map I've linked to there is so hilariously incomplete).
When you spend years looking up at trees, down at the ground, into hedges etc. you get a depth of knowledge and understanding of your local habitats few others appreciate - you learn whats good one year won't be good the next, you end up with a depth and breadth of knowledge that can't be simply replicated. And yes, the time and effort taken to achieve this does make us rather jealously guard our foraging spots - not out of fear someone else will pick, but out of fear that those who haven't put the effort in to learn won't have the same respect for our sites. The learning, the hard graft to gain knowledge, breeds respect and love for the resource. We don't fear others using the resource - we fear them ruining it. I'll share locations with other foragers who I know have the same attitude but not, ever, with a newbie who may not. I want more people who'll respect our local habitats and stand up for them, as foragers will - I don't want people who'll trample down rare orchids to get to common fairy ring mushrooms. There's a real need for understanding here.
We've a long way to go before the already incredibly powerful pocket super-computers we laughably refer to as 'phones' are able to distinguish sufficient information to safely identify mushrooms on our behalf. That in itself would be quite something. But I do worry that if foraging a wide range of species becomes too easy, we may see it done far less responsibly and sustainably. Time will tell, I suppose. But a negative impact of careless technology use on our environment? Who'd be surprised?
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