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DIGITAL MUSHROOM ID APPS

The Best Digital Mushroom Applications

Is there an ideal mushroom identification app? 

(first published in Mushroom the Journal, Winter-Spring issue 2011 and updated March, 2014)

by DIANNA SMITH


As you are no doubt well aware, over the past few years, many hundreds of millions of smart electronic gadgets have been sold throughout the planet. We are attracted to what they enable us to do, saving us valuable energy and time. It is amazing that interaction with a hand-held device permits us to accomplish so many things – anywhere we happen to be. I am talking about the ability to take pictures and video, do internet research, read books and newspapers, receive and send e-mail messages, take GPS coordinates, learn languages, write notes or articles, create or listen to music, watch TV, store and display our fungi photos, and so much more. Some of them can even be used as a phone!

The functional possibilities are astounding: users can download an infinite variety of programs called applications – or “apps” for short – for free or a minimal fee. With well over a half-million apps currently available for Android and Apple devices, it is encouraging that several of these are actually mushroom identification programs. With varying degrees of success, they all take advantage of the features of the touch screen technology of today’s modern devices. At prices from absolutely free to a high of under $10, these mushroom applications can be purchased for considerably less than the price of any good field guide on the market today. But are they all equally useful (or worth the considerable investment in a hand-held device)? My aim is to help guide you through the maze of mushroom applications and their features and suggest which programs are worth buying and which are a waste of your device’s disk space. I will also provide any potential programmers among us with the features that I feel belong in the ideal mushroom application.

Besides the price, what are the advantages of having a mushroom identification application on your Apple devices or Android phone? To begin with, you don’t have to carry a bulky or weighty book into the woods with you. You don’t have to flip through the alphabetical index at the back of your favorite field guide in hopes of eventually getting to the mushroom description you want. And if you are used to using the larger field guides that are standard today, you also don’t have to do a bunch of page-flipping or searching to match up color photos with their descriptions. Digital field guides have no issues of printing cost that keep them from putting the two together. Fourth is the fact that you can you can potentially fit many other mushroom programs, books, and photos on these relatively little portable devices and information is delivered to you with a mere touch of the screen. It is amazing and almost magical.

I am going to write about five of these programs and how they operate on these newfangled gadgets. There are a few others, but they are not worth mentioning. As will be revealed, each of the five discussed has a unique user interface allowing the owner to search for descriptions; but they are not all equally comprehensive or successful. Two of the programs are electronic versions (one more faithful than the other) of standard printed field guides; the other three (which I’ll discuss first) are native electronic, although two of them also get their information from a previously- existing source – Wikipedia.

Fungi Kingdom

The data base for Fungi Kingdom by Simon de Bernard relies on the mushroom descriptions and accompanying photos published i n Wi k ip e d i a . T he r e f or e t he thoroughness and quality of the application’s descriptions are generally reliable, though variable. Some are elaborate in detail, while others are have sparse information or even spout inaccuracies. Like the text, most of the photos are accurate depictions of the mushrooms they represent. The kudos for content, where they are deserved, are for Wikipedia’s contributors.

With 578 species covered, Fungi Kingdom has about as many as the digital Audubon Guide which we will discuss later. However, they do not cover a representative example of all the different mushroom groups. For example, thirty- three Psilocybe species were included, eclipsed only by 37 Mycena and Lactarius each. Also well represented were boletes (30), Agaricus (20 ) and Amanita (48). In contrast, only 2 species of polypores and 3 species of Leccinum were included. Clavaria, Clavulina and Ramaria also get short shrift with a total of 4 representatives between them all. Clavaridelphus, Clavulinopsis, and Ramariopsis are omitted entirely. These as well as other omissions led me to wonder if these genera are uncommon in the selector’s region of the world. But after searching Wikipedia for neglected information on commonly found fungi like Ramaria stricta, I realized that the description for many of these fungi is either unavailable on Wikipedia or is composed in a different language (whereas the target audience for the application is clearly English speaking). So the spotty coverage is a problem inherited from the data source.

Now let’s have a look at what details the app creator has control over to enhance the user’s experience. If you know the name of a mushroom you want information about, you can easily find it by pressing on the letter of the alphabet with which it begins and then scroll down the list until you find the one you want. Although common names are mentioned underneath the scientific names, they aren’t searchable. There are additional search functions, which allow you to select from 6 illustrated morphological features: cap shape, hymenium type, gill attachment, simple or veiled stipe, spore print color and ecology. Needless to say, with no reference to cap color, stipe base, or habitat for example,  the  results allow for numerous possibilities. So when I selected from the choices given for a particular chanterelle, 19 different species of trumpet shaped fungi came up. That’s too many to be helpful for the forager looking for a quick answer. Perhaps the search would be more successful if additional parameters were selectable.

Despite the uneven representation of mushroom species, this is a very nice user-friendly application that I find myself consulting more at home than in the field. Since all the species information is contained within the user device, the program isn’t dependent on wireless network access to be fully functional while in the woods. The software application will be greatly improved when additional descriptions are provided by Wikipedia’s mycological contributors.

iFunghi

iFunghi for the iPhone and iPad by Nick Protopapas is one of the newest offerings. It is also based on Wikipedia’s mushroom species articles. The author is a professional programmer with a history of making freeware windows mobile programs for pocket PC, then mobile phones, and now Android and Apple devices. In the past, he has created various medical apps for doctors and med students. He clearly has no more experience with mycology than he does with medicine. This is expressed in various ways. For example, he seems unaware of the standard practice of putting the species name after the genus, choosing instead to have the species name listed first, bolded, and in red in starting with an upper case letter. So we get Abrupta amanita Amygdalinas boletusand . He doesn’t mention the name of the taxonomist(s) associated with any particular fungus. Worst of all, the author failed to credit Wikipedia for its content. And similarly, he does not attach the Wikipedia’s sources. Even the smiley and inedible face icons as well as the cross bones are snapped up wholesale from Wikipedia’s internet site.

Oddly, the application’s 71 descriptions cover only two genera, Amanita and Boletus. Since these are already covered in exactly the same way in the more extensive Fungi Kingdom app, wasting your money on this app doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Perhaps Mr. Protopapas plans on adding other genera in the future, though clearly Fungi Kingdom has beaten him to the punch. The mushrooms included in the app are searchable by species name, by genus, edibility and by a star rating the user can assign to any particular mushroom. Within the edible categor y are further selectable refinements such as ‘Choise’ (his spelling, not mine), Caution, Deadly, Edible, Edible Caution, Inedible, Poisonous, Psychoactive and Unknown.

On the positive side, the programmer does provide an empty page for each mushroom where you can add your own notes. There is also a world map where you can pinpoint where you found a species listed. The only downside is that it took a full six minutes to zoom in to the approximate location of my ‘find’. Though, once you are finally there, it is much faster. The accuracy of locating the exact spot where a mushroom is found is, however, dependent on Google’s level of detail for any particular location. A Google map of Central Park, for example, is so detailed that you can mark the exact spot you found your specimen down to its associated tree. Google doesn’t offer that level of detail for most parks. In any case, it’s hard to determine location when all you can see is an overview of a mass of closely packed trees. You really have to record the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates when you are down on the ground. Fortunately if you have an iPhone, Android device or an iPad or other tablet with you when mushrooming, you can.

ID Mushroom Browser

ID Mushroom Browser is self- described as “f irst professiona l pictorial description of mushrooms for the iPhone.” The photos are indeed stunning and the strongest feature of the application. You can enjoy enlarged versions by simply tapping the screen. But since this application was made specifically for the iPhone, it is not optimized to work on the larger iPad screen where enlargements are pixelated.

The program was produced by Brian S. Luther, long-time chief identifier for the Puget Sound Mycological Society in Seattle. The species’ descriptions in ID Mushroom Browser were also written by him, making this app the only one of the five with completely new content created specifically for the app. The descriptions themselves are brief but accurate. They cover attributes such as group, color, size, habitat, season, odor and edibility.

The application contains 236 common mushroom species, the fewest of the five apps I will be analyzing and perhaps far too few to be of significant service in the field. The user interface is quite simple. The main index has five sections for searching/accessing the mushroom lists: mushrooms by ‘family’ group (gilled mushrooms, poly pores, boletes, oddities); scientific name; common name; edible mushrooms; and toxic mushrooms. The user can access the descriptions by common or scientific name.

Unfortunately there are no other searchable parameters that would allow you to compare a fungus in your hand with one in the app. If you are looking to access information on a particular mushroom, you have to go through all the alphabetically listed descriptions that come before the one you want to see. In other words, without the ability to tap on an ‘x’ which would bring me to mushrooms beginning with that letter in order to find Xylaria polymorpha, it is necessary to flick through ALL of the 236 mushrooms in the program. Also because so few mushrooms are described, there’s a pretty good chance that you won’t find what you are looking for.

As it is, the application relies too heavily on the user to determine if his particular mushroom looks the same as the perfect one show in each photograph in the application. One only has to remember the days when we were novices at identification and our own inability to distinguish differences in detail between one mushroom and another to see how dangerous this approach can be. ID Mushroom Browser would be improved if it included more mushrooms, and more photos of each fungus. It needs a method of searching for species by morphological and ecological characters. The program hasn’t been updated since March 2, 2011 and is due for an overhaul that hopefully would at least include additional mushroom species.

 Rogers Mushrooms

Rogers Mushrooms covers all the mushrooms that are in Roger Phillips’ books on the wild mushrooms of North America and Europe, which is reason enough to want to get it. With a species count of 1560, no other application comes close to describing so many mushrooms. The program design and coding were performed by Glen Byram, who based his work on Phillips’ web site. Roger Phillips’ mushroom books are all written as if designed by a programmer and the application follows the same format. While the descriptions can be dry to read, most of the important information is there and with a few exceptions is generally correct. To the designer’s credit, the app has been updated a couple of times since first being installed. Like the book, it includes a glossary. You can focus just on mushrooms that are uniquely American, as well as European names of fungi believed to be the same on both continents as well as Britain. The entire list of mushrooms is conveniently displayed with scientific names in alphabetical order as they are in Fungi Kingdom. As in that application, you can short-circuit going through all the names to find the one you want, by just pressing the letter of the alphabet that the mushroom begins with. Searching by common names is not possible. Byram’s visual key is not based on general mushroom shapes or characters. Instead it asks you if the mushroom is gilled or not. If it is gilled and has white, cream or “light” spores (which is not always easy to discern) it goes into one group. Dark spored Agarics – brown, purple, pink, orange, etc. – go into second category. Fungi without gills go into a third category. Each category leads the user to a page with photos of relevant examples. The main deficiency of this categorization method is that with the gilled mushrooms, it is not always possible to determine their spore-color, especially when it has not yet begun to produce them. To use this visual key, the user is required to make a spore print. That makes the visual key useful after the hunt while at home, but it is not much help in the field.

Fortunately there is the so called Easy Key which is admirably extensive. It includes reference to location (Europe or North America), edibility, fungus color, size, cap type, stem type, flesh characteristics, spore- color and habitat. Despite the number of detailed options, if you cannot determine a mushroom’s spore color and nothing of its edibility (and we shouldn’t be using edibility as the start of a mushroom key!), your search will reveal numerous possibilities. In searching for Cantharellus cibarius, 1,217 partial matches based on eight attributes came up. Cantharellus cibarius was listed as number 231. When I include information on spore color and edibility, the chances of having the intended mushroom increase significantly to 31 out of 1,217. This is still not good enough for the beginner. This will be less of a problem for the advanced mycophile who will appreciate Rogers Mushrooms for the sheer number of mushrooms described.

For me, one of the least successful aspects of the Phillip’s book applies to the app, too. To its credit (as well as the book version), there are often two or three photos per described mushroom, and some 2,660 in total in the application. Unfortunately, most mushrooms are displayed on a medium blue cloth background. Most of us would rather not see described mushrooms removed from their habitat. An improvement over the book, though, is the ability to tap the photo and get a full-screen version of it. The application could be improved by permitting the user to also add their own photos and GPS location information.

Despite a few criticisms, Rogers Mushrooms may be my favorite fungi identification application. I especially like the fact that one can jot down your own field notes associated with a particular fungi. At only $3, you can’t beat the price or value. There is also a free “Lite” version, but it has a severely truncated list of mushrooms. It is not worth downloading except to get an idea of how the full version operates.

The National Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America

In contrast to the Phillips’ app, the National Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America covers only 570 mushrooms, not the 756 that are described in the book. They were unable to find enough photos to accompany all the descriptions. Presumably, this situation will be rectified in future updates (though it hasn’t been updated as of Feb. 2014)! The 570 mushrooms described, however, are the most commonly encountered. Speaking of the photos, most  are  quite  good,  typically showing each species in its natural environment. Also to its credit, Green Mountain Digital has included additional photos for several of the described mushrooms. As for errors, in this latest iteration I have so far only found a few typos and an occasional wrong photo attached to a description, a significant improvement over the first deeply flawed published version.

Like the Rogers Mushrooms app, the Audubon Field Guide is generally organized as the book is organized. If you are familiar with the book version, you will quickly realize that nearly all the text included in the app is taken verbatim from Gary Lincoff’s book. The people at Green Mountain Digital in Vermont apparently bought the rights to convert all the Audubon guides into applications. In fact, throughout the series, the same pleasingly sophisticated interface is used. 

There are a few different ways to use these programs: you can browse by shape, by order, and by name. The shape variables are the most extensive of all the mushroom identification applications. Ten orders are covered. In their attempt to make the contents user-friendly to novices, bias is given to the common name (many invented by Gary to comply with the Audubon format), rather than the scientific name. Nevertheless it is possible to search using botanical names, though it requires an extra click to get to this list.

As we are all aware, since the book was first published in 1981, many mushrooms have undergone classification and name changes. The Green Mountain Digital made the conscious decision to use the latest taxonomic information available. Many mushrooms previously in different orders are placed in the currently accepted orders. HericiumPhellodon, Mycorrhaphium, Hydnellum and Climacodon, for example, have been put into the Cantharellales.

Not all the genera are in their proper order, however: Fistulina and Bondarzewia are still in the Polyporales. There are other inconsistencies as well, which won’t bother most people. They also tried to update the species names of many mushrooms. So you will find Polyporus badius under its new name, Royoporus badius and Boletus ornatipes called Retiboletus ornatipes, for example. To Green Mountain’s credit, earlier or alternative scientific designations are retained in the Comments section of the text.

Despite the attempt to show evolutionary relationships, the program necessarily relies heavily on morphological characters to search for mushrooms. Unique to the program as opposed to the book – and really only possible in a digital format – is a search page in which the user can input characteristics of an unknown mushroom and receive possibilities to select from. The characters include shape, habitat, color, size, time of appearance, cap shape and textures, gill attachment and stalk shapes. Oddly, there is no provision for spore color, and in fact the program altogether eliminates Gary’s valuable spore chart. Nevertheless, knowing in advance what mushrooms I wanted to come up in searches, I found this method was reasonably accurate, though it doesn’t always work. Part of the problem arises from the fact that there are not enough common mushrooms included in the application, and of course a general background discussion. Here is where the book has the advantage over the digital version: the section called All About Mushrooms, the important introductory material discussing mushroom morphology, identification, cooking and eating, mushroom  poisoning,  and  the glossary.

An excellent set of features includes the ability to keep a ‘life list’ of sightings, record notes and take photographs of your finds. All this information is synchronized and saved with your personal online account. Initially I thought that the life-list feature was simply for the purpose of recording a first sighting that you would check off one mushroom by one mushroom. I thought the function might work better for bird, insect and animal sightings. But after playing with this aspect of the program, I discovered that it can keep track of every sighting you make along of a particular mushroom complete with date and time of coming across your find, as well as GPS coordinates! The user can also add photos of the sighting taken on the spot. What is more, you can add your own field notes associated with each find. These features can be convenient to the user who may want to keep track of the reappearance of particular mushrooms year after year in particular locations. (Now it would be wonderful if they made use of this information to create a national mushroom location survey). If you are a Facebook participant, you can also upload your photos to that site or email your finds to yourself or anyone else you choose.

I know that some of you are probably thinking that you don’t want the GPS coordinates of you secret mushroom collecting places revealed. The program allows you to turn off that function whenever you want. The only two features I wish were added to the application are the important information on lookalikes, and the spore print color guide from the printed book. These additions, as well as the inclusion ofthe full complement of fungi covered in the hard copy would be desirable additions for a future upgrade. The digital version of the Audubon Guide to Mushrooms of North America costs $4.99, as do each of their several other electronic publications.

Conclusions

Of the two apps that draw from Wikipedia, I prefer Fungi Kingdom. It not only includes more mushroom genera and species than iFunghi, it is honest in stating that the original text and photos are from Wikipedia. In the latter’s favor are the ability to put in one’s own notes with the mushroom’s text and add GPS coordinates. Both programs would be better if they included more species and allowed the user to add one’s own photos (as you can with the Audubon app).

I have to say that the Phillips and Lincoff apps are my favorites and the only ones I consult on mushroom walks. The Wikipedia app, Fungi Kingdom, is great when it is accurate and has been comprehensively researched. It can make interesting reading when studying at home, but it is not as useful in the field. The Phillips application describes the most species and they are easily searchable by scientific name. Common names are mentioned in the text, but real-estate is not wasted on them on the home page or in searches. For this reason it may appeal more to the intermediate or advanced user. The Audubon text, on the other hand, is easier to read and digest; and the mushroom photos are for the most part displayed in their environment. In some cases they also display more than one photo per species. The photos in both apps can be enlarged full-screen to show morphological details with a tap of the screen usually without losing too much of their resolution. They look amazing on the 10” iPad screen.

If  you  already  have  or  are considering purchasing a smart device like the iTouch, iPhone, iPad or an Android phone, you will want to invest a little money in these three recommended programs: Rogers Mushrooms, Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America and  Fungi  Kingdom.  For  under $10 you can have access to over 2,500 descriptions in the palm of your hand. There aren’t too many mushroom books on the market that you can get for that price. Now the cost of the device it plays on is another matter altogether.

Drawing from the best features of all of the applications analyzed here, it is possible to come up with a list defining the essential attributes that are required to build the nearly perfect mushroom identification application:

  1. It would contain a list of at least 2,000 fully described fungi common to North America.
  2. It would be searchable by its scientific name, by genus and species, and by the common name where there is one.
  3. It would include complete data about their characteristics (shape, cap, stem and base, spore print color, size and texture), as well as time of fruiting, geographical region, habitat and function in the environment.
  4. It would include information on look-alikes.
  5. There would be excellent photos, several to a species shown in situ and in different phases of its visible life cycle.
  6. The user would have the ability to add field notes.
  7. It would be possible for the user to upload photos and GPS coordinates to Project Noah or some other nationaldatabase of mushroom sightings.