Reading the forest before it speaks
How we forecast when mushrooms will come up
A flush of mushrooms looks like the miracle of a single morning. It is not. It takes weeks to prepare, underground, following rules that science has been studying for decades. Every night, micomapa applies them to every area.
What happens beneath your feet
The mycelium lives hidden in the soil all year round, among the roots of pines and beeches. It waits. When a real soaking rain arrives, it springs into action; if the ground holds on to that moisture and the temperature drops to autumn's sweet spot, a few weeks later it pushes up what you are going to find. If the soil dries out first, if there is a frost, if the heat has not yet gone, the flush is aborted and you will never know. Unless someone is watching.
What we look at
Every night, for every zone on the map, we gather how much rain has fallen over the last two months, how damp the ground is at the depth where the mycelium lives and how warm it is, today and over the next fifteen days. We set that against the woodland in each zone, its altitude and the calendar of each species. Out of it comes a single number, from 0 to 100, that tells you how closely this week resembles the ones that come before a good flush.
Why you can trust it
The model is not made up: it draws on what European mycological research has shown over the last thirty years about rain, moisture, temperature and fruiting, and applies it with professional-quality weather data. And it is honest: when the forest is not ready, the map is grey. We would rather show a grey that is right than a red that lets you down.
What we will never do
Point to a spot. micomapa talks about areas of about five kilometres, never about a clearing or a path. Whatever you find in there is yours and nobody else's. Nor do we identify mushrooms: what you take home is decided by your eye, or by the eye of someone who knows.