[Tagging] Tagging for Foraging

[bkil]

Very good, I myself map all plants that are relevant in terms of
either food calories, used by herbalists, being poisonous or being a
puncture hazard to the tires of your bike.

I do use taxon:*=*, though (and taken the liberty to add some
redundancy until we have the needed presets and a tool for search &
visualization), but that doesn't matter much, It would be nice to have
presets and an OSM based website for this similar to some proprietary
ones:
https://bkil.github.io/osm-taxon/#/12

What I would also like tagged is the placement of the tree (in spirit
of fire hydrant placement), in that it could either reside fully on
public property, or just inside a fence, but with a significant amount
of branches growing out and/or a significant amount of fruit (or nuts)
falling on the ground and rolling out towards public property where
collection is feasible.

I don't have a suggestion about your harvestability question. As an
alternative, one might consider `fruit:access=*` as well. The mapping
ethics of this is indeed complicated - most things grown on public
property should be harvested either by the local authority if within
city limits, or the public road network operator if outside city
limits, or the railway operator if nearby their property, etc. The
state did sell harvestability rights back in the old days like 50-70
years ago for a symbolic price for the more valuable trees (like
Stanley plums), while other low value trees were free even back then
(like mulberry or cherry plum), but nobody bothers nowadays. There is
an explicit published rule in effect that allows collecting up to a
certain amount of mushrooms and berries per day from certain natural
reserves and forests.

On the other hand, many residents usually plant and maintain little
gardens just in front of their property around the sidewalk having
some trees as well, especially in villages, and there is a common
unwritten local understanding at all such places that she who
maintains the plants should be the one to enjoy its fruits. But then
again, certain trees are only kept for their nice blossoms during the
spring (like cherry plums or mulberry) and nobody bothers or likes its
fruit. Interestingly, some even post a sign on their apple trees that
it's "free to pick" and even provide a ladder for the passer by!

The part of the plant that is edible and its seasonality should be
identified based on taxon in an external database (wikipedia,
wikidata, wikispecies, etc.). I acknowledge that there could be quite
a shift between the ripening at different places due to the age of the
tree in question, how much moisture was present in its surrounding,
how many branches it has, how much watering it had encountered, the
type of soil, whether was shaded by other nearby trees or whether its
root systems competed for the same resources. And surely there could
be small variations based on the exact variety within the species.
Depending on how hot or dry a spring or summer is, a variation of up
to 2-3 weeks could be observed year to year, so I wouldn't pinpoint
this to an exact day of month or month range even (such tables exist
per species anyway). However, what might make sense is to store some
kind of crude offset like fruit:ripening=early/normal/late (with
whatever tags, but to a precision not more than this).

On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 9:52 PM Joshua Carlson <jdcarls2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello, all.
>
> I wondered if I could get some feedback on an idea. Several users were discussing tagging `natural=tree` and similar features with information relevant to foraging.
>
> The most important issue, to me, is access. Access to a tree is not the same as access to pick fruit from it. For instance, I may go up to, sit under, and even hang a hammock from most of the trees in my local park. But I've learned that picking fruit from the same trees, while not specifically prohibited, is something the Parks people would prefer being asked about in advance.
>
> Right now, tagging `natural=plant + species=*` is more than enough to keep track of plants of interest, but foragers in particular want to know: "will anyone care if I harvest this?" I thought it might be useful to have a tag, either `harvest:access=*` or `access:harvest=*` for this purpose. Is one preferable to the other?
>
> A second point, though less important, is seasonality. It was suggested that perhaps seasonality can be computed based on location and species, and so a specific tag is not needed. On the other hand, within even a single species, the peak harvest season of a plant may vary by region. And foraging is an in-person activity by definition, so users would be able to validate such information in person, even per-plant, if desired. But I acknowledge that if you're foraging, you probably don't need to be told when it's "raspberry season".
>
> And finally, is it worth the trouble of identifying the "harvestables" from a plant? For instance, wood nettle stalks can be harvested when very small, but as the plant ages, only the leaves are worth picking. A user on Discord suggested using similar syntax to conditional restrictions: `harvest:season=leaves @ (May-Aug); fruit @ Jun`. This would handle both multiple harvestables as well as seasonality.
>
> But perhaps that's taking things too far. I'd love to hear other thoughts on this topic, especially the access portion.
>
> Thanks much!
>
> -Josh Carlson
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