Glow in the dark tree chips?

[freakazoid]

Just got back from a camping trip with some of my friends out in the western half of Virginia. Well during the day we had chopped up a fallen trunk for firewood with a hatched and later that night I had noticed that a lot of the chips were glowing a greenish color. I had never seen this happen before or heard of it happening. Unfortunately it was to dim pick up on my camera. Does anybody know why it would do that?

[KD5NRH]

Just got back from a camping trip with some of my friends out in the western half of Virginia. Well during the day we had chopped up a fallen trunk for firewood with a hatched and later that night I had noticed that a lot of the chips were glowing a greenish color. I had never seen this happen before or heard of it happening. Unfortunately it was to dim pick up on my camera. Does anybody know why it would do that?

http://inamidst.com/lights/foxfire

[230RN]

Huh!  I was wondering what those green glowing patches were in my bathroom.

Now I know.

[freakazoid]

Interesting. It could be that but it wasn't the bark that was glowing but the exposed part from being cut. Also the site says that it could last for days but I had put a few in my backpack in hopes of being able to bring it back but by the morning it stopped glowing, :( It was the same greenish color though.

[230RN]

Try spritzing the chips with water to see if that "wakes it up."  I'd be curious about that. The fungi still have their "food" (i.e., the bark) and they're hard to kill, so the only other variables I can think of are water and maybe temperature.  And maybe the disturbance of cutting into the bark.

I know that those little one-celled critters (noctilucent miliaris?), that create the phosphorescence in ships' wakes, glow when disturbed.  I did a little research on those critters a long time ago (ca 1963) when there was an "invasion" of them into Long Island Sound.  Quite interesting, especially watching the waves glow.  I collected a mess of them by sieving them with my ex-wife's scarf and put them in a big fishbowl.  Fun to watch the whole bowl light up when you tapped it.

Terry, 230RN

[Ryan in Maine]

Sounds like a small fungi. It will grow closely enough to appear to chip as part of the bark. Do you know what the tree was?

[freakazoid]

I have no idea what kind of tree it was. It definitely wasn't the fungi itself. Some of the pieces still had bark and it was only the exposed wood that glowed.

Try spritzing the chips with water to see if that "wakes it up."

After seeing that it didn't glow the next night I took it out of my pack,  Now I wish I had collected some and brought them back.

[Tallpine]

"Fairy sparks" in decaying wood indicated the place where fairies held their nightly revels.

I like that explanation 

[Nick1911]

What forest did this come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Forest

 

[Stand_watie]

     I've seen this phenomena exactly once in my life. I was hiding from the cops in the woods, and so unable to give it the wonder and contemplation I thought it deserved.  Repeated trips into that location of woods after dark were unfruitful in locating that patch of interesting fungi.