Glow-in-the-dark mushroom rediscovered after 170 years | MNN - Mother Nature Network

Glow-in-the-dark mushroom rediscovered after 170 years | MNN - Mother Nature Network

BIOLUMINESCENCE: An example of a species of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, Panellus stipticus. (Photo: Wiki Commons)

Wed, Jul 13 2011 at 6:23 PM EST

It's something you would never expect to go missing, but one of the world's brightest glow-in-the-dark mushrooms has been rediscovered after an absence of more than 170 years, according to USA Today.

The bioluminescent shrooms had become a Brazilian legend of sorts. They were first spied in 1840 by an English botanist named George Gardner, who was alarmed after he saw some boys playing with a glowing object in the streets of Vila de Natividad, a village in the Goiás state in central Brazil. After that, no more sightings of the brightly glowing fungus had ever been reported.

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