Spinney Foraging Journal

Somewhere past the last fence the ground goes soft and the air smells of rain-soaked bark, and that is where the good hours begin. A spinney is a small wood — modest, overlooked, and quietly generous — and this is the notebook you carry into it. Slow greens, clay-warm accents and roomy type keep the pace of a walk rather than a feed. Nothing hurries you; the app simply waits at the edge of the path until you crouch down and start looking properly.

At its heart sits the Keying Table: choose what you actually see — cap shape, gill attachment, stem ring, flesh that bruises, spore print colour, the tree it grew beneath — and the candidate list narrows in front of you, each one showing how many of your observations it matches and what still disagrees. Around it live a seasonal shelf of what is fruiting this month, a field guide of forty species with habitat, look-alikes and honest caution notes, and a photo journal where each find keeps its place, weather and your own remarks. Kept species stay one tap away, a season reminder nudges you when a favourite comes back, and a small help shelf explains every part of the guide in plain words.