Forager's Assistant

What is Forager's Assistant?

Forager's Assistant is a community photo log for wild foragers. You can submit photos of forageable species you have found, tag them by species name, and record where they were discovered. The gallery lets you and other users browse and search submissions by tag, view location details, and get directions to where something was found.

Uploading a Submission

Click the + Upload button in the navigation bar from any page to open the upload panel. Fill in the following:

Photo — select an image from your device. If the photo has GPS data embedded (common on smartphone photos), coordinates will be extracted automatically.
Species Tags — type a species name and press Enter or comma to add it as a tag. You can add up to 10 tags per submission. Tags help others find your photo when searching.
Location — choose between letting the app detect your location automatically (from the photo's GPS data or your device) or entering a street address manually. Either way, the app will record the coordinates and find the nearest road.
Location Description — an optional free-text note about where you found the species, such as "north side of the trail" or "under the oak trees".

Browsing the Gallery

The gallery loads the most recent 20 submissions automatically and adds more as you scroll down. To search by species, type a tag into the search bar and press Enter or comma. You can add multiple tags — the gallery will show only submissions that match all of your active tags. Remove a tag by clicking the × on its pill. Clearing all tags returns to the full feed.

Click any photo to open its detail panel, which shows the full tag list, location description, GPS coordinates with a link to Google Maps directions, the nearest road, and the upload date. Clicking a tag in the detail panel adds it to your active search filters.

My Uploads

The My Uploads page shows all submissions you have made. From here you can:

Click a photo to view its full details.
Use the edit controls in the detail panel to update tags, the address, or the location description without re-uploading.
Use the Delete Upload action in the detail panel to permanently remove a submission. This deletes both the database record and the image file and cannot be undone.

Road Proximity Warnings

When a submission has location data, the app automatically checks how close it is to nearby roads using OpenStreetMap data. A coloured badge is shown on the gallery card if the sample was found near a road. These warnings are intended to help foragers assess whether a location may have been exposed to road runoff, vehicle pollution, or other roadside contaminants.

Warnings are shown for two categories of road:

Road type	Examples
Major road	Motorway, highway, trunk road, primary road, secondary road
Minor road	Residential street, tertiary road, unclassified road, living street

The badge colour indicates the severity:

near major road Yellow — caution. The sample was found within 60 m of a major road or within 30 m of a minor road. Mild contamination risk. Consider washing thoroughly.

near major road Red — elevated risk. The sample was found within 30 m of a major road or within 15 m of a minor road. Higher likelihood of road contamination. Exercise caution and consider avoiding consumption.

near major road Black — high risk. The sample was found within 15 m of a major road or within 5 m of a minor road. Very close proximity to traffic. Not recommended for consumption.

no address No location available. This appears only when the submission has no usable location data from any source, including manual lookup, device location, or photo GPS metadata. Without coordinates, road proximity warnings cannot be calculated.

Paths, footways, cycle paths, bridleways, and service roads are excluded from proximity calculations — only vehicle roads are considered. If no location data is available for a submission, no badge is shown.