"At certain times of the year when there is enough moisture, it fruits that short period where it fruits, it drops spores in the wind and it will colonise other locations," Mr Cole said. The glow is a form of natural attraction, inviting insects to feed and thus, spread the fungi's spores further afield and although the fungi's lifespan is quite long, it remains underground for 99 per cent of the time. He said the fungi was one of around 75 across the world that is bioluminescent with just a handful of species in Australia. "After my eyes adjusted to the dark, it looked like a small city." Ghost mushrooms glowing in a south-east pine forest. You could see this whole area aglow," he said. "After my eyes adjusted to the dark, it looked like a small city. Returning in the early hours of Friday morning, Ockert's patience was rewarded with a truly remarkable sight. The mushrooms, a creamy-white colour in the day time, had spread across the forest floor, around the remains of dead pine tree stumps, literally feeding off them. "I took a random road into the forest and lo and behold, I stumbled across this colony." "I read up about them on Thursday morning and starting hunting for them Thursday afternoon," he said. The light was so bright, you could read a newspaper when it was held underneath them.Īt night, the fungi sprouts a fan-shaped mushroom which gently glows a spectral green due to a chemical reaction between fungal enzymes and oxygen.īut the window is short to witness this spectacle - literally a few weeks a year.īoom-time is mid-autumn, when the weather turns cooler and rain tempts the fungi to sprout into mushrooms.Īlways up for a nature challenge, Mount Gambier photographer Ockert Le Roux said he was fascinated when he began researching the species last week. It's one of nature's most secretive light shows, but this glow-in-the-dark fungi only performs for a few weeks a year.Īs a mist drifts across a dark pine forest near Glencoe, in South Australia's south-east, it is easy it see why Omphalotus nidiformis is nicknamed the 'Ghost mushroom' and why Aboriginal tribes believed they carried a certain power.
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