Starting to feel like I’m running out of time & there’s still so many fun fungi ideas I wish to explore. But I have to get this one down. So it’s back to the fabulous fungilegium form to capture another extraordinary genus of mushroom.

Today’s Factoid is perhaps the silliest of the month — & as such, quite possibly my favourite.

[Disclaimer: Another block of catch up poems, all written on the correct day (Tuesday) but unable to get online in time.]

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fungilegium: Night-light Mushroom
Mycena chlorophos

Emits mysterious green glow in the dark.
Beautiful word. Bioluminescence. Say it. Ahhh!
Concentrated colour in the cap & blades.
(chloros = green, phos = light). Bright light in night.
Attracts insects which disperse spores.

Technical. Luciferin molecules oxidise/catalyse 
luciferase enzymes. I don’t really know. But energy 
ie photons released. Thus. The neon green scene. 
Naturally this magic light : creates local legends,
supernatural phenomena, magic, & omens.

Like JayC in the tomb : only lasts three days 

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Day 28 Factoid — Two Wise Old Men Ponder How Word Order Matters

Foxes on Fire

Aristotle observed bioluminescent fungi
382 years before the birth of the big guy
called it “Foxfire” & said was cold to touch

All month I’ve been thinking of a spy novel
read in high school wondering if I can use it
in a poem — to discover just then it was called

“Firefox” — so not even the most tenuous fungal link