Florula — Privacy

Last updated 27 September 2026

Your almanac lives on your phone. The map of your place, every plant on it, every note and photo — all of it is in one file on the device, and none of it goes anywhere unless you export it and send it somewhere yourself.

We do not run a server and we do not hold your data. There is no account to make with us and nothing here for us to look at. The rest of this page is the detail, and most of it is about the few times the app talks to the internet at all.

The rule

The app never sends anything about your almanac. Every trip below starts with something you tapped, and each one carries the smallest thing that could possibly answer the question. The one time the app goes out on its own is to finish one of those trips: if a map service didn't answer when your map was drawn, the app asks it again later, for the same square, and stops after a few tries.

Finding your place

When you found an almanac the app asks where the place is, and you can skip that entirely. If you type an address, what you typed is sent to OpenStreetMap’s geocoder, run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, which answers with a coordinate. If you tap Use my location instead, the app asks the phone for permission, reads your position once, and keeps the coordinate on the phone. It never reads your location again, and it has no permission to read it in the background.

Either way the coordinate is stored on your phone as the centre of your map. That is all the app knows about where you are, and it stays there.

Drawing the base map

Once you have framed your place, the app draws the ground under your almanac: buildings, roads, the parcel lines, the contours of the land, and a satellite photograph. To do that it sends the square you framed — at most 600 metres on a side, and nothing else — to public map services and keeps what comes back. While you are framing, it fetches the roads and a satellite photograph for about 1.2 kilometres around the address you chose, in the same way, so you can see what you are framing. That picture is thrown away when you finish.

• OpenStreetMap, for buildings, roads, and woods — read from OpenFreeMap's map tiles, or from the Overpass service when those cannot be reached.
• The United States Geological Survey, for the elevation the contours are drawn from, and for aerial photography across the country.
• State open-data services, where a state publishes its parcel lines or its own aerial photography — NC OneMap in North Carolina, VGIN in Virginia, and more than thirty states and territories in all. The app carries a list of these and asks the ones that cover your square: usually one, or two if your square crosses a state line.

The answers are cached on the phone. The app goes back only when you redraw or move the map from the map’s menu, or to finish a fetch that failed. These services sometimes don't answer, and when one of them misses, the app asks that one again, for the same square, when you next open the map: after an hour, then six hours, then a day, then three days. After five tries in all it stops, until you redraw. Nothing you have drawn or planted is ever part of these requests; they carry only the square.

Looking a plant up

Tapping a plant’s latin name opens your web browser at a plant database with that name in its search — the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Plant Finder, or Wikipedia, depending on where your place is; you can pick another in Settings. It is your browser making that request, not the app, and the app sends nothing. The name is the only thing that leaves.

Two trips that are not about your almanac

• Apple’s check on the unlock. Buying the app, or restoring a purchase, is Apple’s payment system talking to Apple. We never see who bought it.
• A check for a newer version. The app asks whether an update is waiting. It sends the platform and which version it is running. No identifier, nothing about your place.

Photos

Adding a photo to an observation asks for access to your photo library and copies the picture you chose into the app’s own storage, resized. The copy is on the phone with everything else. The app never reads the rest of your library, and never uploads a photo anywhere.

Export

Export makes a zip file — the almanac as plain JSON, and the photos — and hands it to the standard iOS share sheet. Where it goes after that is up to you. Export is never behind the purchase.

What this app never does

• No server of ours and no account of ours.
• No analytics. Nothing in here measures what you do.
• No request that didn't start with something you asked for, and none that carries your almanac.
• No location in the background, and no location at all unless you tap the button.
• Your export is always yours, and never behind the purchase.

If you email us

Writing to us with a question or a problem reaches us the way any email does: with your address on it, and whatever you chose to write. We keep it for as long as it takes to deal with it and use it for nothing else. It is never added to a mailing list, never sold, and never connected to anything in the app — there is nothing in the app it could be connected to. If you would like your messages deleted, ask, and we will delete them.

Children

The app is not directed at children and collects nothing that would identify anyone of any age.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change ever makes a material difference to what leaves your phone, it will be described in the app’s release notes as well as here, rather than left for you to notice.

Contact

Florula is published by Schema Software, LLC, North Carolina, United States. For anything in this policy, including a deletion request, write to support@schemasoftware.co.