This amazing, interactive, world map from Falling Fruit is a map that charts known fruit trees on publicly accessible land, and as an added bonus, you and your family can add your own finds to the map and share your knowledge of where to forage local food with the world. Technology has dramatically changed our life even our way of eating. We would post the food we eat on social media and we even use applications to know where the best place to chow down is.
An interactive crowd-sourced map called Falling Fruit allows urban foragers to map out and review locations around the world where the public can find free fruits, vegetables and herbs growing in their area. There are also listings for free markets and dumpsters that potentially contain food to gobble. The map also mines data from cities, which have information about fruit trees on public property. There are no specific laws banning picking fruit in public spaces and of course you shouldn’t pick anything on private property without the owner’s permission first. The map indicates if the fruit tree is in someone’s yard.
The team from the nonprofit Falling Fruit have long been involved in urban foraging and freeganism, and they are all map geeks. It was really only a matter of time before they pooled their resources to build their interactive map. As they state, “Our map of urban edibles is not the first of its kind, but we aspire to be the world’s most comprehensive.” They have drawn on everything from small urban foraging maps to city council tree inventories and compiled them into one resource that’s as easy to operate as Google maps.
To use the map, simply home in on your neighborhood or town and see what’s listed. At time of writing, the map has 767 different types of edibles (generally plant species) in 612,421 locations worldwide. Many of the listings have personalized notes added in by the lister. If a tree is in season, grab a bag or two and go visit. Even if your local trees aren’t in season, visiting them provides a good opportunity for kids to learn about the origins of their favorite fruits and how to identify fruit trees, and raises their awareness of their immediate environment. You’ll also be able to watch the tree go through its annual life cycle as you walk by at different times of the year. You and your family may even know of publicly accessible plants that aren’t showing up on the map. In that case, feel free to add to the knowledge base and tell the world about your local trees, it only takes a couple of clicks. Even a preteen mobile device addict is going to enjoy that!
Falling Fruit that is currently based in Boulder, Colorado has 1,317 different types of edibles in more than 790,443 locations. The U.S. has the most posts, with 465,000 locations flagged on the west coast, mostly in southern California and Washington State and 310,000 in the Northeast. Outside the U.S., Western Europe has the second most locations with 12,000 listings, followed by 2,000 in Australia, 115 off Africa’s south-east coast, 93 in northern Argentina, 79 in Thailand and 18 in Finland.
According to the website’s public database, the most common plants listed are honey locust trees, followed by small-leaved linden, sugar maple, cherry plum and ginkgo trees. There are also more recognizable food items listed, like apples, pears, cherries, olives, pecans, and even places to find fish. Falling Fruit was launched in 2013 and their goals is not just to help find free food but to “facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in our neighborhoods.”
For more information please visit: www.fallingfruit.org
