Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
magicmushroommap.com
Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
1–10 of 112 posts
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#2Hi HN,
Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time.
To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coordinates of historical liberty cap growth records with data on habitat (e.g. land cover, elevation, soil acidity) and weather (e.g. temperature, rainfall). Second, I used this dataset to train a model describing the conditions in which liberty caps are more or less likely to thrive (for the statistically-inclined: kernel density estimation with model selection by maximum likelihood cross-validation). Finally, this model is used to make live predictions of the likelihood of liberty cap growth across the world on any given day.
For now, the map is limited to parts of Europe and North America (PNW + east coast of Canada) where liberty caps are known to grow.
I used the following data:
- Weather: ERA5 by ECMWF (historical) [1], GFS by NCEP (forecast) [2]
- Land cover: Corine Land Cover by Copernicus (Europe) [3], Land Cover by NALCMS (North America) [4]
- Soil acidity: SoilGrids by ISRIC [5]
- Elevation: SRTM by CGIAR [6]
- Growth records: Psilocybe Semilanceata by NBNAtlas [7]
[1] https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datas...
[2] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datas...
[3] https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover
[4] http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-c...
[5] https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids
[6] https://bigdata.cgiar.org/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-databas...
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#3I can appreciate that this site is using Mapbox and Plausible instead of giving out user data to Google
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#4Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coor…
Very cool! Is it true that they are this rare in North America? Only a small part of the Pacific Northwest and the east coast of Canada?
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#5Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coor…
I was wondering, if there is a reason, that britain has lots of areas with high propability and the mainland has not, but then I saw that the growth records [7] indeed only cover the british islands. So I suppose the data on the map is not really accurate as of now?
Otherwise what I would have expect from such a site, would be of course also detailed informations on how the mushrooms look exactly and where to look for them specifically. (And also a warning, that if you pick the wrong ones, you die a horrible death and even if you pick the right one, but are in the wrong mentally conditions, your are into horror either)
Anyway, your project is nice and your map inspired me to have a look in my area and see, if it matches your data.
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#6Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coor…
I found this map + twitter towards the end of last year (after the season had ended), so I'm looking forward to exploring in a few months to see how accurate it is.
I don't have much more to say - I just like niche mapping projects like this.
Congrats on launching the new features + new areas!
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#7Isn't mushroom picking something that requires rather more than a modicum of research upfront before any layman should attempt to do so because of the existence of poisonous mushrooms?
I mean, this feels eerily reminiscent of Google sending people up to the summit of Ben Nevis across dangerous terrain via a naive line connecting it to the geographically nearest car park.
This website does not seem to give any warnings about the risks involved; are there none? Although perhaps smoking (which I guess is what you do with these) may not kill you as much as eating a poisonous mushroom.
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#8I don't feel like this could help you find the mushrooms. More like it can predict when they will grow in the places you know they could grow at?
Would love to see an animation over time after season. Or perhaps you could do that on older data? To see how it differs across location, whether there are more peaks, etc...
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#9Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coor…
Very cool! Is it true that they are this rare in North America? Only a small part of the Pacific Northwest and the east coast of Canada?
For liberty caps, yeah. There are some rare reports from other states in the US (mostly east coast) but I don't want to give people false hope by including those states in the map.
However, there are many other species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in North America. You can check out the Shroomery for more info on species in your area [1]
Re: Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map
#10Neat. I’d recommend looking into a hexagonal coordinate system. It has the benefit of each block being equidistant from its neighbors and clustering is a breeze. It also looks better. There’s a couple open source libraries Uber has that make it a breeze to work with.