Glowing green mushrooms a spectacular vision in Merimbula backyard

In a backyard in Merimbula, the "flowering" of these unusual mushrooms was on a scale not seen before by the homeowner and ecologist Heather Meek.

So much so, she was inspired to invite ACM out to capture the rare sight on Thursday night, January 18.

It was an invitation this reporter, and friend David Rogers, could not pass up.

The ghost mushroom (Omphalotus nidiformis) is a bioluminescent fungus that emits a soft green glow at night.

White with light brown colouring during the day and softly glowing like a ghost to the naked eye at night, they become even more spectacular through a camera lens on a slow-release shutter speed.

Then they positively shine fluoro green.

The species is native to Australia and can often be found growing on decaying plant material, either on the ground among leaf litter, or on tree stumps.

Ms Meek said she had been living and working as an ecologist in the Bega Valley since the 1970s, and while she had seen ghost mushrooms on several occasions, it was never to the extent of the sight that greeted her this week.

The remains of a bloodwood trunk in her Merimbula garden was covered in the glowing fungi, spreading out like a gown.

"I've seen it at Rocky Hall a couple of times and managed to get this chap who was a professional photographer at the time to to record it," Ms Meek told ACM.

"That was a period of 30 years we were there and I saw it very rarely.

"Then we moved here [to Merimbula] in 2005 and in all those 18 years we've been here I've seen it maybe three times in three different locations.

"And just once at the foot of the massive bloodwood out there.

"That's why this time I thought oh, wow, this has got to be recorded.

"I just want people to be aware of these phenomena that we have, because so many people just don't realise what incredible things go on in nature."

Ms Meek said the main body of the fungus was underground and what was being photographed was the "fruiting body".

"It's made up of probably millions of tiny little threads called mycelia," she explained.

"They are busily doing their thing underground and it's only when certain conditions come about that they send up what you've been photographing, which is the fruiting body.

"It's when the conditions have pushed them into going into the reproductive phase.

"And so the whole reason for existence of what you've been photographing tonight is to create spores and send spores off off into the environment so they will grow in other places.

"That's why you only see it an intervals and it's virtually impossible to predict, but it'll be when conditions are really moist and when it's really humid and and warm."

Ms Meek said the latest theories on the luminescence was that it attracted certain bugs and beetles that approach thinking they've found a mate, but instead end up spreading the spores.

She said they were also a favourite meal for possums that visit her garden, which would spread the fungus through their scat.

"Everywhere out in the bush there's this incredible mat of fungal mycelia all over the place, and some of them are interacting with plants," she said.

"The more the more the scientific community investigates this, the more they find these incredible interconnections and communications going on between plants and and other plants, and between plants and fungi.

"This is just one of thousands of types of fungi. They're no longer included in the plant kingdom - they are in a kingdom of their own."

In the textbooks spread across Ms Meek's dining room table, examples of Omphalotus nidiformis are explained in scarce detail alongside images of small clumps.

"Notice how every text I've got shows just a little bit of it, like a single clump.

"And that's what I saw at Rocky Hall - just a single clump - and on the ground rather than up trunks of trees.

"Nothing like what I've got out there.

"It's quite extraordinary.

"It's just one more bit of Mother Nature that people ought to know about."