Have you ever seen a ghost ................mushroom?

Last time we did, we called the teenagers over we were camped near - come on guys, check these out! GLOW IN THE DARK MUSHROOMS! By their reaction, there wasn't mush-room in their lives for such awesomeness. They merely grunted: 'yeah, kinda cool' and left us to our freaking outness - man! glow in the dark 'shrooms! And I'm not even at Rainbow Serpent!

They appear all down the southeast coast, in Victoria (where we are), Tassie and southern parts of WA and SA. Last night we found them closer to home on a tip off from some funghi fans in the town over from us. We snuck over after dark to the secret rendevous and YES - ghost shrooms!

I'm not one to use pictures from the internet on my posts, but our photo was soooo lame - we only had a camera phone and to photograph these babies, you need a tripod and a better camera. Thus, all the photos you see here are not my own - but hey, ya gotta thank me for showing you they even exist, right?

Photo taken by Ockert Le Roux

If you saw Omphalotus nidiformis during the day, they'd look like ordinary mushrooms. In fact, you're better off trying to find them during the day, because I don't know about you, but wandering around in a damp pine forest in the middle of the night is just a little bit freaky.

They did speculate that the bioluminscence might be to capture certain insects, but that wasn't the case, and they aren't even sure what beneficial these chemicals might have. Maybe they are purely to make me flip my lid - I was pretty excited to see these gorgeous mushies.

Just when I thought there wasn't mush-room in my life for any other cool things!

There's a place in South Australia that you can visit to spot them - it's called Ghost Mushroom Lane so if you're over that way, check it out. There's a place near us too, but if we told you, we'd have to kill you. Sppooooookkkyyyyyyy.

What's the coolest mushroom OR bioluminescent fabulousness you've seen? Please - drop them in the comments below and I'm bound to upvote the ones that thrill me to bits. I'm easily excitable.

I'm also totally honoured to be a passenger on the #ecotrain - check out this hashtag for some pretty amazing posts permaculture to meditation, environmental issues to food forests - I highly recommend checking out this tag as you're guaranteed of sweeeetness!