Are you familiar with planet Pandora, the fictional place from James Cameron film Avatar? Pandora is a dreamland with so many plants and fungi that glow at in the dark, but did you know that we also have some glowing plants and animals here on earth? Perhaps the Avatar’s creative team picked up the idea with our very own bioluminescence phytoplankton, jellyfish, worms, fireflies, termites, mushrooms and more.
During the late summer, a faint, eerie glow can be seen in forests around the world, where bioluminescent mushrooms grow on moist, rotting bark. The greatest diversity of foxfire occurs in the tropics, where moist forests encourage fungal growth. The newest varieties of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms were introduced to the world just last year, after being collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Are all mushrooms glow at night? Of course not! There are more than 80,000 species of fungi, but only 71 species of fungi are able to glow in the dark. Check their glowing beauty below!
