We hope that people will exercise some simple common sense rules when out foraging:
Users of this website should make themselves familiar with our disclaimer, terms of use, acceptable usage policy, and privacy policy.
We agree that one element of the fun of foraging is not knowing what you might find. If you prefer to look forage for yourself, then that is fine.
This website aims to reach out to people who may not have any experience of foraging, who do not know where they can find useful wild plants, and do not know how they can be used. Our aim is not to make foraging too easy, but to lower the barrier to participation.
Our map does not reveal the precise location of plants - it is not accurate enough to do that - so you will still have to do some foraging and identification for yourself.
No problem. This website was constructed with the belief that there are many people out there who would be happy to share their knowledge.
If you would like to use the map but keep your plant sightings to yourself, then you can mark your sightings as private when they are added to the map. This way they will only appear on your map, and not the public map. We are working towards functionality where you can control exactly which of your friends and groups will be able to see each plant sighting you add to the map.
We hope not. We hope that by educating people about foraging they will come to realise that overharvesting does not benefit anyone in the long run.
Only harvest a fraction of what you find, and be sure to leave enough to allow the plant to regenerate, and for other wildlife (including people) to make use of the resource.
The law varies from country to county, so this is not a question we can easily answer.
In the UK at least it seems that foraging on private land is fine as long as you do not uproot any plants, are not causing a nuisance, and are not foraging for commercial purposes :
This leaves a lot open to interpretation, so we suggest you exercise some common sense.
Uniquely identifying plants is a difficult process, even for experts, so this is not a problem we intend to solve on our website. If you want to identify a wild plant you have found we recommend purchasing a couple of wild plant guides relevant to your own area, and use a combination of sources to make a positive identification.
If you add sightings to the website we ask that you select a latin name for the plant as this allows us to uniquely identify the plant, and provide relevant usage information and photos from our database.
This is a difficult question to answer as even the experts seem to have different opinions. It depends partly on what part of the plant you are using, and how you intend to use it. Eating a plant from a roadside on a single occasion may not have deleterious effects, but we would advise against doing this regularly.
Apart from roadsides, it is equally important to be careful when harvesting plants grown near fields treated with chemicals, or near waterways downstream of cattle. We encourage you to check locally, and exercise your common sense.