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Wild Berries and Herbs HD, an app from Alphablind, is available for US$8.99 at the
App 
Store.
When I was a kid, I spent quite a bit of time rambling around the local woods in the Pacific Northwest, and if you spend much time outdoors, you're bound to stumble upon wild berries. Some of the berries you'll find are bright, shiny, and altogether appealing ... but also potentially poisonous. We usually had no idea, and since our parents warned us of consequences, including immediate or slow and painful death, we generally avoided most all berries.
Of course, we knew huckleberries on sight, and would always eat those. Occasionally we'd snag some blackberries along a river while fishing, but other berries that were rumored to be edible, well, we just avoided them anyway. Until one day, I realized, I pretty much assume every berry I see while out and about is poisonous.
I'm not sure this is a healthy way of viewing the world, but it certainly is safe. So when I found the app Wild Berries & Herbs HD, I snapped it up, despite the $8.99 price tag.
Plan for the Install
At 402 MB, Wild Berries & Herbs HD isn't the largest app I have, but it's sizable. I wasn't paying attention to the time when I bought and installed it via home WiFi. But after cuing it up, I set my iPhone 4 down and walked away. I may have made a sandwich or unloaded the dishwasher, but whatever it was, when I returned to my iPhone, the app was still downloading. I wasn't overly worried -- just don't plan on buying this while you're in the middle of some trail hike where you happen to get a cellular signal. So why the large file size? Fantastic photos.
Each berry or herb has several -- to over a dozen -- photos of the berries and/or plants in various stages of growth or ripeness. This is critical because an unripe berry can look far different from the ripe version, and some berries look similar ... until you compare the rest of the plant it happens to be attached to.
The app is designed for both iPhone and iPad, and while the iPhone version is pretty solid and potentially more useful while on the go, the app really shines on an iPad. In horizontal mode, you can browse through a scrollable, alphabetical list of 186 berries and herbs in a left side column while viewing the photos and additional information in a large right side pane.
In addition to the name of the berry or herb, you get the names of some related species or simply alternate (maybe slang) terms. That's handy, but as near as I can tell, there isn't a general search function that would allow you to search for specific terms. So what do you do when you find a berry and you want to identify it? You start filtering.
You can filter out by category -- in this case, appearance. To refine, you'll use a selection tool to find options, like type of fruit, which further breaks down into little graphics with a description, like berries, drupes, apple fruits, nuts and nut-like, capsule fruits, cones, including schizocarp, which is next to a graphic icon that looks remarkably like maple tree "helicopter" seeds. When they fall, they spin, and when you break them in half, you can stick them on your nose. A kid thing. But to adults, apparently, they are schizocarps.
In any event, as you select these attributes, your 186 options are quickly whittled down. For instance, tap "aggregate drupes," which has an icon that looks like a clump of berries, our list will drop to three: Blackberry, Cloudberry, and Raspberry.
Nice. Aggregate drupes indeed.
Dandelions Are Herbs?
Meanwhile, there's more than just fruits and berries here. There's herbs, too. As it turns out, the app lists dandelions, which are those yellow-flowered "weeds" that take over people's yards, then turn into fuzzy globes at the top and attract children, who pick and then blow them apart into the wind, thereby dispersing the seeds into your yard all over again.
My mother has claimed dandelions are edible, just in case we wanted to eat them or if there was, you know, a zombie apocalypse, but I seriously doubt I'd want to eat the ones that came from my yard: they've got to be a weed-killer chemical resistant type by now, and the roots are probably laced with weed killer chemicals.
Still, young dandelion leaves can make you "a pleasant bitter-nutty tasting salad."
And that's part of the whole point of this app -- finding edible berries and herbs to eat. There are some recipes, as you might expect, for the fruits and berries, as well as quite a few tips on what's edible. As for what's not edible, those plants come with a skull icon -- or a skull and crossbones icon for the highly toxic types of nightshade.
Really, though, these features are for enthusiasts, the type of people interested in trying new things and eating off the land. There's also an extraordinarily difficult quiz, which shows you a photo of a plant and gives you four options. If you're not a plant enthusiast (or don't want to study up) it's no fun at all. Out of seven, I got four right, and that's because I happened to get lucky on three guesses.
All-in-all, I hesitate to claim that this app is anywhere near comprehensive -- at least, it seems as if there are a couple of berries that I remember seeing around the Pacific Northwest that aren't listed, or if they are, I can't identify them as a type or variety of a berry that is listed. One reviewer on the App Store noted that it's not comprehensive, but I'm not a botanist, so I have no idea for sure how these plants are classified.
The only thing I can say is, don't trust your life to it (unless there is indeed a zombie apocalypse). In addition, I only have one quibble -- it seems to have a much greater understanding of the locations of berries and herbs in Europe, which makes sense since it appears that the app originated from a company in Germany. Again, with the Internet, so much is virtual, but my point remains: While the app does note locations and ranges in North America, it's not always as clear as I originally expected. Still, the app does link to Wikipedia for more detail, so that's handy if you've got a connection.
Users can submit their own photos for possible inclusion, so that's a cool innovation. I expect this app to grow if enough enthusiasts get involved.
