Our Mission

Who Built This

Spore & Scout was built by Jim Conklin, a forager and woodsman from Florida, NY. A man with 63 years of experience in the field. A person who spent a lifetime learning what the woods can give you and what it can take from you if you are not careful.

Jim did not start with a mission. He started with a product. A few guides. A little income. Something worth building. But somewhere in the building something shifted. The mission got bigger than the business. Sell a few guides make a few bucks became save lives. He did not plan that. It found him because he brought the right things to it. Honesty. Humility. A standard that never moved.

Why It Was Built

Every year people are poisoned by wild mushrooms. Children who picked something up in the yard. Families who foraged something they were certain was safe. Experienced foragers who encountered something unfamiliar at the wrong moment. Emergency physicians at two in the morning with a patient and no reliable reference. Veterinarians whose patients cannot say what they ate.

Most of the information available online is scattered, incomplete, or regional without saying so. A mushroom that is safe in the Pacific Northwest may have a deadly look-alike in the Northeast. A database that covers one region leaves a gap that costs lives in another.

Jim built Spore & Scout to close that gap. A single resource. Ten regions. Every species. Built to the standard that the person searching for an answer deserves the right answer every single time.

The Standard That Cannot Move

Spore & Scout is a safety resource first. Everything else is secondary.

No entry goes in without verification. No identification is made without the full picture. No species is listed as safe without acknowledging what it looks like that could kill you.

The known species disclaimer is permanent and non-negotiable. Spore & Scout identifies known species only. It does not identify unknown specimens. It is a reference tool, not a field identification service. That line must never be crossed.

The Poison Control number is on every clinical page. It stays there forever. It is not a design choice. It is a commitment.

The Phrase That Cannot Change

This is not a tagline. It is the single most important piece of foraging wisdom that exists. It is built into every search result. It is woven into every guide. It is the answer when the answer is uncertain. Anyone who carries Spore & Scout forward must carry this phrase with the same weight Jim carried it.

The Tier System

Species are classified by risk level. This system must be preserved exactly as designed.

• WARNING — Deadly. Death cap. Destroying angel. Deadly webcap. Autumn skullcap. These are the species that kill. They appear first. They carry the highest visual weight. They are never softened.
• Tier 1 — Highly toxic. Serious illness. Hospitalization likely.
• Tier 2 — Moderately toxic. Medical attention required.
• Tier 3 — Mildly toxic. Gastrointestinal distress. Still dangerous.
• Edible — Known safe species, with look-alike warnings always present.

No species moves between tiers without verified scientific justification. No edible entry exists without its dangerous doubles documented beside it.

The Ten Regions

The database covers ten foraging regions: Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, Rocky Mountain, Pacific Coast, Pacific Northwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Eight of those regions span the continental United States. Alaska and Hawaii are designated as standalone regions because their species profiles are ecologically distinct from anything found on the continent. Alaska encompasses boreal forest, tundra, coastal rainforest, and subarctic zones — a breadth of ecological diversity that produces species assemblages not found in any continental US region. Hawaii's tropical island ecology supports year-round fruiting and includes species such as Chlorophyllum molybdites and Macrocybe titans that do not appear in any continental US guide. A forager or clinician operating in either state encounters a genuinely different set of risks, and a reference built for the lower 48 cannot cover them reliably. Both regions require their own clinical reference to reflect those differences honestly.

Every species entry is regional. What grows in one region may not grow in another. What is safe in one region may have a deadly look-alike in another. Regional accuracy is not a feature. It is the foundation.

The People It Protects

Spore & Scout was built for everyone who has ever stood in a field or a forest or a backyard and looked at something growing from the ground and wondered.

It was built for the parent whose child picked something up. For the new forager taking their first steps into the woods. For the experienced forager who encounters something unfamiliar. For the emergency physician who needs a clinical reference at the moment it matters. For the veterinarian whose patient cannot speak. For the hiker on a trail far from help.

It was built for the person who does not know they need it yet.

A Message to Whoever Carries This Forward

Jim's greatest hope was that if something happened to him this resource would survive. Not for him. For the people it would save.

If you are reading this because you are the person who carries Spore & Scout forward, understand what you are holding. This is not a website. This is not a business. This is a safety net stretched across ten regions of this country built by a man with 63 years of knowledge who gave everything he knew to protect people he would never meet.

The standards are not suggestions. The tier system is not flexible. The known species disclaimer is not a legal footnote. The phrase when in doubt throw it out is not optional.

Carry it the way it was built. With honesty. With humility. With a standard that never moves.

That is what Jim asked for. That is what the people who need this deserve.

Classification Methodology

Species are classified using a tiered toxicity system grounded in mycological and clinical toxicology consensus. Tier 1 designates species that are immediately life-threatening — those capable of causing acute hepatic failure, rhabdomyolysis, or death within hours to days of ingestion, including amatoxin-containing and orellanine-containing species. Tier 2 covers species that cause serious but typically non-fatal illness requiring medical intervention — including muscarine-dominant, ibotenic acid/muscimol, and gyromitrin-producing species. Tier 3 encompasses species that cause moderate gastrointestinal toxicity: nausea, vomiting, and cramping that are self-limiting in otherwise healthy adults but may require supportive care. Separate from this toxicity ladder, species are classified as edible, toxic, or inedible — the inedible category covering species with poor palatability or uncertain safety profiles that fall outside the edible designation but do not carry established toxicological risk. No species is reclassified between tiers or categories without documented scientific justification grounded in peer-reviewed or peer-accepted sources.

Primary classification draws from core mycological literature — Bessette, Roody, and Bessette's Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States; Arora's Mushrooms Demystified; Lincoff's National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms; and regional Bessette compendia covering the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Great Lakes. Clinical toxicology references include the AAPCC annual report series, Dart's Medical Toxicology, and published case literature from poison control centers and emergency medicine journals. These sources are cross-referenced against regional foraging references and medical mycology texts — including Spoerke and Rumack's Handbook of Mushroom Poisoning — to reconcile taxonomic updates, regional variant data, and emerging clinical findings. Where sources conflict, the more conservative classification is applied.

Errors in classification are taken seriously. Corrections submitted by clinicians, toxicologists, and mycologists are reviewed against primary sources before any change is made. No correction is incorporated on the basis of personal experience or anecdote alone; each must be traceable to a verifiable reference or documented case. This database is a living document — updated as taxonomic understanding evolves and new clinical evidence emerges. Clinicians or mycologists who identify a classification discrepancy are encouraged to contact us at sporeandscout@launchyard.app with the species name, the identified error, and the supporting source. All substantive corrections will be acknowledged and documented in the revision history.