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Copyright (2014)
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Audubon
Mushrooms
App Review

Audubon Mushrooms App Review
This  fungi app has 550 North American species and quality photos but is best suited to users with  considerable  mycological knowledge  

The home screen  "Explore mushrooms"  is the Audubon doorway to identifying fungi via their shape,scientific family, common or scientific names or via advanced search.
Audubon Mushrooms main menu
 In Browse by shape the diagrams are just large enough to  discern identifying features.  However, unless you already know what a bolete, a  chanterelle, a polypore or a morel is you,  will find them hard to interpret.   

Additionally, only part of  the headings are visible, which compromises understanding of the common language descriptions.


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The menu diagrams work well for fungi with  clearly different shapes  like  corals,  puff balls and cups but is rather confusing when it comes  distinguishing species according to their gill to stem attachments or veil types. 
Unexpected & Confusing Species placements. Some searches yeild unexpected or inadequate results. 

For example, a search for mushrooms  with free gills produces three pluteus fungi species  but none of the Agaricus mushrooms  that most people associate with free gills.  

To find Agaricus species you have look under one of the two Veiled Mushrooms  categories  and then you will find Agaricus mushroom  species in categories  for Amanitas, Lepiotas, and Limacellas. This is very confusing.
   

 Other curious species placements include the toothed fungi, which are not represented on the main menu but  can eventually be found under  the polyporus and other shelf mushrooms  and boletes  menus.  However, I have still to discover where the Hedgehog  Hydnum species are found. 
Browse By Order/FamilyBrowse By Order/FamilyBrowse by family requires advanced knowledge  of scientific terms and mycological taxonomy, with only a few diagrams obvious enough to interpret  alone due to their very small size.   For instance,  if you don't already know what a Corticiale, a Eumycetozoa or a Helotiale is, the diagrams won't help.
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Selecting a category opens a huge  scrollable list of species with small icons and both common and  scientific names.  For instance the list for Agaricales has 289 items and it takes a while to realise that  the cog at the top right allows search within those species. 
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Pressing the cog doesn't lead to search within the chosen category, agaricales in this instance. Rather it takes you back to a list of all the app  shape categories  minus their visual icons.  And agaricales is not on the list. 
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Having again selected a category, you can search for colour and the American region in which the mushroom is found.   

Choosing  attached gills and  searching for yellow  produces 21 Agaricales of which 13 were yellow in some way.
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As shown in the above screen shot,   most thumbnails are close enough  to aid visual id  and pressing an icon bar  produces a photo that is about a third of the screen.
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In some cases the photo includes the underside of the mushroom but often the result shows only one view, like the one above.  

 There is no capacity for further enlargement, which is  often quite frustrating.  And there is usually only one photo per fungi species.   

This means you must rely on the  description to make a positive id.  
Pressing  description from  the four options at the top of the screen  produces  a tiny thumbnail and a description that is hard to read due to the inability to enlarge it and the lack of  formatting.  .
Fungi species description from Audubon Fungi app
Advanced Search is by far the most useful option for identifying a fungi find.   You can search via one or more of:  common or scientific name, colour, what the mushroom was growing on,  its texture, cap shape, stem shape, month of year and so on.

Add a Sighting is
  an elegant but largely unused function
  Pressing  the plus sign at the bottom of the screen allows you to post  photos and a description of  the species you have been looking at.  Your can also add a sighting from the main start menu. ln this  case you scroll through the species to  select the fungi you want to report a sighting of.

The app automatically adds the date and  maps the precise location, which can also be named from  a drop-down list.

You can then share this via Facebook, Twitter or email .

 Pressing the sightings icon produces a  world map with pins  for yours and other users sightings of the species.  The function then operates like social media so you can access  and choose to follow others' sightings.

Despite the elegance of this feature,  accessing various sightings maps show it to be largely ignored by app users.
Pros
  • Device resident
  • No more data usage charges for the catalogs.
  • Easy  to record your sightings with automatic  GPS,date, notes and pictures  and   upload them  to the Natureshare community
    Very nice social media functionality
  • Advanced Search works well.
Cons
  • A 500+ meg download that
        -  Needs wifi download   
        -  Hogs device space

  • Lack of pinch/stretch screen or orientation shift  makes it  hard 
     - to read  descriptions
     -  to see details in photos

  • Browse by Shape and Family  are frustrating
  • Mainly American  fungi

    Appstore reviews complain of instability and incapatability on newer phones.




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