Getting to know the object of your affection
In all bioluminescent organisms, a small molecule called luciferin interacts with oxygen and a bigger protein called luciferase, creating
chemical energy that is eventually released in the form of cold light. Every organism has its own version of luciferin and luciferase, with individual properties that could prove useful.
For example, one group has unsuccessfully tried to make glowing plants by splicing in genes from bioluminescent bacteria. But the chemicals involved in fungal bioluminescence might be more compatible with plants.
“Maybe it will be as difficult as people traveling to Mars or other galaxies, but maybe we will use it,” said Zinaida Kaskova, a chemist at Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow who led the study of bioluminescent mushroom molecules.
The constant light that fungi emit dims and intensifies according to a circadian clock that still isn’t quite understood.
Something exotic in your own backyard
On the Japanese island Hachijo-jima, tiny, common mushrooms — known locally as hato-no-hi, or pigeon fire — glow along forest paths during the rainy season from May through September. And in the Atlantic forest of southern Brazil,
or flor de coco, resembles a large, radioactive flower from another planet.
But among the thousands of fungi that grow in the subsection of the southern Appalachian Mountains I was exploring, there are a few glowers. The large, orange fruiting bodies of
or jack-o’-lantern, appear in great numbers around June through September. Then there’s
or bitter oyster, a summer mushroom that looks like a tiny, tan fan growing on sticks. You can also find a sometimes-parasitic fungus also known as honey mushroom that appears in the fall and makes wood look as if it’s glowing.
Some help won’t hurt
Don’t go into the woods alone at night. Find a guide in a local mushroom-hunting group. A good place to start is the North American Mycological Association, an organization of professional and amateur mycologists.
My guide, Muskat, is not a professional mycologist, but he has decades of experience — enough to write a book. A week before we met, he enlisted “informants” who provided leads on where to find our three mushrooms. These included photos and detailed descriptions of what trail they were on, how far down it they would be found and even the unique characteristics and type of tree they were under.
But tips don’t always pan out. We spent two hours wandering down a trail searching for honey mushrooms, only to find after we had turned back that the fungus was under the tree we had passed at the trail head.
Beauty in the rot
Foxfire is the glow that appears when a honey mushroom’s rootlike filaments infect and start killing a deciduous tree, often an oak. To see whether the fungus we had found would produce a glow, we looked for the dark, stringy infestation known as a rhizomorph, or shoestring rot, because that’s what it looks like, and that’s what it does to the wood.
Muskat found a rhizomorph at the bottom of our tree, but the healthy-looking wood and the dead-looking mushroom suggested it wouldn’t glow. Still, he shouted “lights out,” and we waited for even a faint light.
Something strange in the dark
The honey mushroom we found never produced glowing wood, but while I sat in the dark, I spotted tiny green dots: an unexpected cluster of bitter oyster, one of the other glowing species, lined up on a small stick.
More bitter oyster appeared, as if out of nowhere, in another spot where we were disappointed yet again by decomposing jack-o’-lantern mushrooms. The dead mushrooms looked like burned pancakes teeming with insects, emitting only a dim, ghostly, pewter aura.
As a mushroom’s metabolism shuts down in death, so does its ability to create light, said Kaskova: “Fewer and fewer molecules of luciferin are synthesized, so the glowing becomes weaker and weaker.”
A surprise in the sunlight
After an unsatisfying evening, we went looking for other mushrooms just for fun the next day. Unexpectedly, we found hundreds of jack- o’- lanterns in the daylight.
At home, I placed my fresh jack- o’- lanterns, gills up, in a cardboard box in the corner of a windowless bathroom and waited for my eyes to adjust. It didn’t take long before I saw the little glowing gills.
Hello there, my neon green friend. I’ve heard so much about you.