Glowing Timber.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 956, 28 December 1933, Page 8

Glowing Timber.

Nature Notes

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

TN THE vegetable kingdom, luminescence A of the most beautiful and amazing sort is provided by the quaintest of plants, the fungi. Their activity explains a letter from a lady at Newman, near Eketahuna, Wairarapa. She asks why a piece of timber, root of maire, should glow. Her son thought that it was a glow-worm on the wood-heap. Finding that it was a piece of timber, he took it inside. In a darkened room its glow, which continued for days, was very distinct, showing up the whole piece. It had been cut by a circular saw a few days previously. In England, a cartload of firewood was dragged up a steep hill. In it there was a log of larch, twenty-four feet long, one foot in diameter. The same evening, some young people walking up the hill were surprised to see the road strewn with luminous particles. Examination disclosed that the shining particles were pieces of wood and bark. Following the trail, the people came to a powerful blaze of white light, sent out from the log. Closer examination showed that the whole of the inside of the bark was covered with fungi. These produced the light, more intense where the spawn had penetrated deeper; and there the roughest treatment onlv caused the glow to be brighter. The lights had continued for three days when these tests were made.