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Shore up on your foraging with this map of local fruit trees

All those dots? They're food!
All those dots? They’re food!

Food. Need it to live, have to pay for it to avoid a lengthy prison term. You can’t get around the first part, but there’s a new map that could help you inch away from the second. Falling Fruit is an interactive map that informs you where fruit trees and plants are hanging out near you. People with foraging skills: your time has arrived!

To be fair, there aren’t enough fruit trees around here to actually stop paying for food. But the project, started by a couple of guys out of the University of Colorado, could at least point you in the direction of say, a cherry plum tree in Greenpoint. And you can make jam out of cherry plums!

In case you don’t know what a honey locust or a small-leaved Linden is (or what to do with them), the map helpfully links to the Wikipedia and USDA pages for each  fruit tree listed on the map. Obviously you shouldn’t just go around gobbling leaves and making teas out of leaves and flowers before making sure you won’t die or anything, but what the hell, you could always impress a date by showing her the leaves that are safe to eat and delicious.

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