Getting started

ForageGB is a companion for people learning to find, identify, log and talk about wild fungi across Great Britain. It helps you:

• Record finds on a private map and keep a personal logbook with photos and notes.
• Get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion from other foragers in the ID Workbench, including an optional AI pre-screen that offers an advisory suggestion.
• Learn the seasonality and habitat patterns of common species, and see what's reportedly flushing near your region.
• Browse a species directory and a beginner-friendly glossary of mycological terms.

What it deliberately does not do is tell you something is safe to eat. There is no feature in this app — including the AI pre-screen and the community consensus score — that constitutes a safety check. Identification of wild fungi for the table is a skill built over years, cross-checked against physical specimens, not a single photo upload.

1. Sign up with an email address and choose a display name — you don't need to use your real name in the community areas.
2. Set your home region (e.g. Scotland, Wales, North West England). This drives the fuzzed regional seasonality shown in In season near you and keeps location data coarse by default.
3. Have a skim of /safety and the glossary at /help/glossary before you head out for the first time — a few minutes now saves confusion later.
4. Optional: turn on notifications so you hear back when someone responds to an ID you've posted (see /help/using-the-app for what notifications cover).

These species are widely recommended as reasonable starting points for UK beginners because each has at least one fairly distinctive feature — but every single one still has look-alikes that have caused poisonings or unpleasant reactions, and "easier" is relative, not absolute. Treat this as a learning list, not a green light to eat anything without expert confirmation.

1. Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) — bright orange-yellow bracket on living/dead hardwood.
2. Beefsteak fungus (Fistulina hepatica) — oozes red juice when cut, grows on oak/sweet chestnut.
3. Giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea) — large, white, featureless ball; must be checked all the way through for pure white flesh (no gill outlines, no "egg" shape) to rule out young Amanita stages or earthballs.
4. Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) — egg-yellow, blunt false-gills (ridges, not true gills), fruity smell.
5. Hedgehog fungus (Hydnum repandum) — pale, with soft spines instead of gills or pores underneath.
6. Cep / penny bun (Boletus edulis) — bun-coloured cap, pores not gills, no red pore surface or strong blue staining.
7. Bay bolete (Imleria badia) — chestnut-brown cap, pores bruise blue, no red on the stem.
8. Field mushroom (Agaricus campestris) — pink-to-brown gills, ring on stem, grows in grassland — but confusable with young, deadly Amanita species, so always check for a sack-like volva at the base.
9. Parasol (Macrolepiota procera) — tall, shaggy-scaled cap, moveable ring, snakeskin-patterned stem.
10. Shaggy inkcap / lawyer's wig (Coprinus comatus) — tall, shaggy white cylinder that blackens and dissolves with age.
11. Jelly ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) — rubbery, ear-shaped, brown, on dead elder/other broadleaf wood.
12. Winter chanterelle (Craterellus tubaeformis) — small, trumpet-shaped, yellow-grey, common in conifer leaf litter in autumn/winter.

Learn each one from multiple angles — cap, underside, stem, smell, habitat, season — before you go looking, and cross-check every find against a current field guide and, ideally, someone experienced.

Once you're set up, the main areas you'll use are:

• Patch Map — log finds with a private pin; see a coarse, anonymised community heatmap.
• Logbook — your personal record of finds, with stats and export options.
• ID Workbench — post photos for community identification and discussion.

For a full walkthrough of each feature, see Using ForageGB.