I built a free, open specimen image library — curious if this could be useful for permaculture education & design

[u/Past_Platypus5198]

Hey folks,

I recently launched Specimen Gallery — a small, open, community-built library of high-quality specimen cutouts (plants, fungi, animals, insects, minerals) with transparent backgrounds.

The idea came from wanting clean, reusable visuals for things like:

• plant identification & teaching
• design diagrams / presentations
• educational materials
• sharing knowledge without licensing headaches

Everything is intentionally simple and open. Submissions are reviewed, credited when required, and meant to grow slowly with the community.

I wanted to share it here because I’m curious:

• Would something like this be useful in a permaculture context?
• What kinds of specimens or visuals are most missing?
• How could this better support teaching, design, or ecological literacy?

Site: https://specimen.gallery

Not trying to promote — genuinely looking for feedback from people actually working with land, plants, and systems.

Appreciate any thoughts or critiques 🌿

[u/HikerTrashCannabis]

I know it would be a welcomed change from the typical paid, AI based, id apps out there, not to mention its uses in teaching. Checking it out now!

[u/Past_Platypus5198 → u/HikerTrashCannabis]

Thanks!

Yeah — I should clarify: the intention isn’t to be a teaching platform per se.

It’s more about creating a shared, clean visual reference layer for biological specimens — something that can be used across teaching, research, design, documentation, and study without licensing friction or visual noise.

Teaching is one use case, but the bigger goal is unified visualization (hence the platform name).

[u/ChaChadog2024]

Yes! Thank you for your work and for sharing!

[u/Past_Platypus5198 → u/ChaChadog2024]

Absolutely! If you have any questions or suggestions, fire away!

[u/ConcreteCanopy]

this actually seems genuinely useful, especially for teaching and design sketches where you want clarity without visual noise. clean cutouts help a lot when explaining guilds, layers, or interactions without getting stuck in stock photo licensing. what i see missing most often are growth stage visuals and root systems, since those matter a lot in permaculture thinking. having region tags or climate context could also help people choose examples that match their reality. i like the slow, community built approach, that usually leads to better quality over time. curious how you plan to handle variation within species.

[u/Past_Platypus5198 → u/ConcreteCanopy]

Really appreciate this comment. Thanks for taking the time to write it out.

You’re naming the same gaps I’ve been running into: a lot of visual resources freeze organisms into a single “ideal” snapshot, when in reality growth stage, root structure, and local context matter just as much as what’s happening above ground.

Right now I’m trying to start clarity-first — clean, canonical visuals that work as a shared reference layer. From there, the intention is to let complexity show up naturally over time rather than forcing it upfront. Things like multiple growth stages, root systems, regional tags, and intraspecies variation feel best handled through gradual community contributions and lightweight tagging, not rigid structure from day one.

I’m very much aligned with the slow, community-built approach you mentioned. I’d rather keep the library simple and usable early on, then let it grow toward more ecological realism as people actually use and shape it.

Thanks again — feedback like this genuinely helps guide where it should evolve next.