Description
The jack-o'-lantern mushroom's fruiting body (its stem and cap) is an orange color. Its bioluminescence, a blue-green color, is only observable in low light conditions when the eye becomes dark-adapted. The whole mushroom doesn't glow — only the gills do so. This is due to an enzyme, called luciferase, acting upon a compound called luciferin, leading to the emission of light much as fireflies do when glowing.
| Omphalotus olearius | |
|---|---|
| Mycological characteristics | |
| gills on hymenium | |
| cap is infundibuliform | |
| hymenium is decurrent | |
| stipe is bare | |
| spore print is yellow | |
| ecology is saprotrophic | |
| edibility: poisonous | |
Read more about this topic: Omphalotus Olearius
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)