Nature's hidden knowledge
Android
Naturlore is a nature folklore app for Android — point your camera at any plant, creature, fungus, or insect, and discover the myths, history, and living lore that surrounds it. Not a field guide. Not a species database. Something older.
Lore is the body of knowledge passed down through generations — not textbooks, but stories. The things your grandmother knew about elderflowers. What sailors believed about albatrosses. Why oak trees appear in a hundred English place names. Naturlore gathers that living tradition and puts it in your pocket.
Most nature apps tell you what something is. Naturlore tells you what it means. When you photograph a common oak, you don't get a Wikipedia summary — you get its mythology, its historical uses, the superstitions attached to it, the misconceptions people have carried for centuries, and a verse of poetry. Then the oak itself speaks to you in a short, vivid message written as if the species has a voice.
Every entry is written in the style of a regional literary tradition — British entries read like Bill Bryson meets Robert Macfarlane. Japanese entries carry the quiet of Bashō. Arabic entries draw from Al-Jahiz. The same oak, told in French, is an entirely different cultural experience.
Photograph something, or pick from your camera roll. Claude AI identifies the species and generates a full lore entry — true facts, mythology, folklore, historical stories, a poem, and seasonal notes — then caches it permanently. The second person to find the same species anywhere in the world gets it instantly, from the archive. First discoveries are credited by username, permanently.
Every species you identify is saved to your personal Field Journal, sorted by rarity — Common through to Exceptional. The Browse tab is a growing encyclopedia of everything the community has discovered, organised by category: Flowers, Trees, Fungi, Buggie Boo's. It starts sparse and fills as people explore.
Deep forest green, warm aged cream, burnt amber. Serif headings, mono labels, hand-press sensibility. It should feel like a Victorian naturalist's notebook, not a utility app. The rarity system — with its coloured badges and first-discovery credits — quietly makes wandering outside feel like an adventure.