Science/Tech

Falling Fruit will help you find where to chow down for free

By Lord Castillo | Update Date: Nov 27, 2015 04:48 PM EST

Technology has dramatically changed our life even our way of eating. We would post the food we eat on social media and we even use applications to know where is the best place to chow down.

An interactive crowd-sourced map called Falling Fruit allows urban foragers to map out and review locations around the world where the public can find free fruits, vegetables and herbs growing in their area. There are also listings for free markets and dumpsters that potentially contain food to gobble. The map also mines data from cities, which have information about fruit trees on public property.

There are no specific laws banning picking fruit in public spaces and of course you shouldn't pick anything on private property without the owner's permission first. The map indicates if the fruit tree is in someone's yard.

Falling Fruit that is currently based in Boulder, Colorado has 1,317 different types of edibles in more than 790,443 locations.

The U.S. has the most posts, with 465,000 locations flagged on the west coast, mostly in southern California and Washington State and 310,000 in the Northeast.

Outside the U.S., western Europe has the second most locations with 12,000 listings, followed by 2,000 in Australia, 115 off Africa's south-east coast, 93 in northern Argentina, 79 in Thailand and 18 in Finland.

According to the website's public database, the most common plants listed are honey locust trees, followed by small-leaved linden, sugar maple, cherry plum and ginkgo trees. There are also more recognizable food items listed, like apples, pears, cherries, olives, pecans, and even places to find fish.

Falling Fruit was launched in 2013 and their goals is not just to help find free food but to "facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in our neighborhoods."

They say that the map is not accurate and they encourage the users to share their reviews and photos.

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